Foreclosure Listings Do Not Exempt Mayors
April 21st, 2009 by 
Joseph Smith
Foreclosure listings are getting to be like earthquakes these difficult days; they now affect everyone in the area, whether rich or poor.
A former mayor of Eagle, Nancy Merrill, and her husband, are now offering for sale their four-bedroom dream house built in 2000 through a short sale to prevent their credit record from being stained with foreclosures listing.
Nancy Merrill served as Eagle mayor from 2002-2006 and served for 16 years on the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission and on the city council. Her family also donated land for a park named for the Merrills’ patriarch Reid Merrill.
Next week, the Merrills will be asking their lender to approve one of two purchase offers under a short sale transaction. If their bank does not accept the offer, their home will be sold through an auction scheduled on May 29.
The Merrills’ financial problem started when they took a mortgage on their home in 2000 and spent their retirement benefits to take over a ranch-based poultry business that supplies eggs to all Treasure Valley Albertsons supermarkets and in surrounding areas.
When the business, later called Merrill Egg Farm, accepted demands by Albertsons stores to deliver eggs to out-of-state distribution centers, operating costs shot up as gas prices and feed costs soared. Soon, the Merrills’ profit margin plunged to two cents per 12 eggs, and in 2007, the egg farm closed, and in September last year, the business followed the fate of other assets added to foreclosure listings.
The Merrills considered selling their farmland to raise funds to save their home, but foreclosure listings have pushed down property prices to more than half of what they were worth two years ago.
Additionally, their home has deteriorated in value as foreclosure listings battered the market and as the credit crisis made affordable consumer loans scarce. Based on appraisal from the Ada County Assessor’s Office last year, the Merrills’ home, valued in 2007 at $1.2 million, declined to more or less $700,000.
Worse, the Merrills’ mortgage balance of $898,601 was still higher than their original $865,000 loan and even much higher than the 2008 valuation of their home at $700,000.
According to notices announcing the trustee sale of their home on May 29, the Merrills have not been making their $3,563.16 monthly payments since October last year. Such is the fierceness of business failures and foreclosure listings, encroaching on all levels of society.
