State Shuts Down Durham Real Estate Firm; Property Owners May Be Owed As Much As $100,000
Independent Weekly, The; Durham, N.C. › July 31, 2009
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Summary
As the proprietor of AT&G, [Booker Tate] managed about 30 apartments and duplexes that rent for as low as $250 a month, according to commission and court records. Tate took over Dunbar's business in April 2000 from Lavonia Allison, a prominent local activist and chairwoman of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People. Allison, whose family started the company in 1935, ran into her own problems with regulators throughout the 1990s. (See "Walking the Walk?" Nov. 21, 2001, www.indyweek.com/durham/2001-11-21/cover.html).
[Joseph Williams] told investigators he was only marginally involved in Tate's business, even though he was officially listed in paperwork as the "broker in charge" responsible for overseeing the books at AT&G. State regulations require each real estate firm to maintain at least one person with a broker's license to manage property for third-party owners; Tate was only licensed as a salesman. According to commission records, both men let their licenses lapse sporadically over their tenure at AT&G, including being on "inactive" or "expired" status several times, though they apparently still continued to operate the business.Tate's history of real estate management difficulties also spill into the court system, where records show he owes a Hurdle Mills woman, Jean Tyler, nearly $24,000--a judgment imposed on him in March 2004 at the conclusion of a dispute over ownership of a house on Angier Avenue in Durham. In another civil suit, AT&G client Mildred Easterling sought the court's help with problems that echoed similar complaints other property owners had lodged with the state, such as Tate not paying her rent proceeds and failing to account for money allegedly spent on repairs to her property on Martha Street. Easterling won a judgment of $1,600. Records show both debts unpaid as of this month.See the full content of this document
Extract
State Shuts Down Durham Real Estate Firm; Property Owners May Be Owed As Much As $100,000
State investigators have put a Durham real estate management office out of business, closing the latest chapter in the seven-decade history of a firm that helped the city become known as America's "Black Wall Street."
Citing property owners' complaints of missing rent money, auditors' findings of sloppy and nonexistent bookkeeping and license-related paperwork problems at AT&G Associa...See the full content of this document
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