South Bend landlord owes damages to 2 tenants. One lost her home; other says she fell through stairs.
SOUTH BEND — A local landlord with a history of legal trouble recently lost judgments in separate cases awarding more than $1.1 million in damages to two tenants, one of whom was allegedly swindled out of her home while the other says she suffered a broken leg and ankle while moving into a house with alleged safety issues.
The Indiana attorney general's office on Wednesday announced it won a judgment of more than $250,000 against Steven Kollar, an area landlord whom lawyers accused of fraudulently taking over the title to a South Bend woman's home. Though she was promised payment in return, the woman received none and was left temporarily homeless.
The state also reached a settlement for $88,000 with Gary Griner, an attorney who worked with Kollar on the transaction.
In another unrelated case, Kollar managed a South Bend property owned by an unlikely out-of-state landlord: James Lu, an internet entrepreneur who's the chairman of Grindr, the LQBTQ dating app, and a co-founder of the educational services company Chegg.
Shortly after moving into the home last July, a tenant says she fell through a shoddy staircase, shattering her ankle and breaking her leg, according to a statement from the law firm representing her. Last month, a St. Joseph County judge awarded the 25-year-old single mother $866,000 in damages after she had surgery and missed work for about half a year.
In both cases, St. Joseph County Magistrate Judge Andre Bernard Gammage issued default judgments against Kollar and the other defendants because they failed to file responses to the lawsuits. The judicial orders say each defendant has joint and several liability, meaning the wronged parties can collect the court-awarded damages from any or all of them.
Kollar plans to appeal both rulings, he told The Tribune in a Friday phone interview, noting that the court denied his requests for more time to make his arguments.
He denied that he was deceptive in the case of the homeowner, saying that she misunderstood their deal and went back on her end. He also rejected the claim the rental home had safety issues.
Attorney general wins judgment against local landlord
The attorney general alleges that Kollar convinced a senior citizen who had fallen behind on her property tax payments to transfer ownership of her home near the River Park neighborhood to him in September 2021.
Kollar led the woman to believe he would buy her home from a St. Joseph County tax sale, renovate it and split the proceeds from a future sale with her. He instead used the property as collateral for a loan before converting it to a rental unit, according to court documents.
The woman found Kollar after his assistant left a flyer in her mail telling her she had only a few hours "to gain some time or some cash" by reaching out to him. After a phone call with Kollar in which he reportedly told the homeowner she had until 5 p.m. that day to sign a quitclaim deed, which would transfer her home's title to him, his attorney prepared the document and she signed it.
The woman was "a very vulnerable target because when she received Mr. Kollar’s flyer, she was under the impression that, effectively, if she didn’t agree to whatever he was offering her, she would lose the house," said Chase Haller, the state's deputy attorney general who leads the Homeowner Protection Unit, in a phone interview with The Tribune. "In her moment of desperation, she followed his instructions and signed the property over to him.”
The woman, originally represented by the Notre Dame Law Clinic, filed a lawsuit against Kollar in May 2023 alleging that she tried to reverse the deal shortly after she'd made it. But Kollar refused to let her back out of the transaction. The home she lost was reportedly worth about $100,000.
The state attorney general's office joined the lawsuit Dec. 20, alleging that Kollar violated multiple civil statutes outlawing deceptive acts in real estate transactions.
In addition to a monetary judgment of nearly $253,000, the judge on March 8 permanently barred Kollar from soliciting people whose properties are subject to tax sales and from serving as a trustee for any trust formed in Indiana.
In a January interview with The Tribune, Kollar contested the homeowner's version of events.
Kollar alleged that the deal broke down when the tenant involved the Notre Dame Law Clinic, which he believes holds a vendetta against him after attorneys represented a group of tenants who sued him in 2018. He said that after he refused to allow the tenant to back out of the deal, she stripped the home of many interior fixtures and so he declined to pay her.
"My position was that she was going to lose the house, we were gonna pay for it, we were gonna go in ... and do what we call a light rehab," Kollar said. He said he then planned to sell it and split the proceeds with the homeowner, who was apparently planning to move anyway.
Then, he said, "Notre Dame legal aid stepped in and tried to renege and get (her) out of it."
Tenant says she fell through staircase, couldn't work for months
Last July, Kollar entered a one-year lease agreement with a low-income single mother who needed a cheap place to stay, according to her attorney, Joe Burger of Burger Law Firm in Frankfort. Kollar was managing the property near the Rum Village neighborhood through his company Western Rentals 2, LLC.
Upon entering the home, the tenant says she found significant safety issues. She agreed to clean the property and move in anyway in exchange for a reduction in her monthly rent payments.
But a day after signing her lease, while she was cleaning, she was walking downstairs when "her foot went through a defective staircase," her attorney claims. She broke her right ankle and her right leg, according to her attorney.
The city of South Bend's code inspectors would later cite the home for a lack of heating, large holes in the ceiling that exposed electrical wiring, water that leaked into the basement and a lack of smoke detectors, according to Burger. Indiana law requires landlords to provide safe, clean and habitable units that comply with local building and health codes.
The tenant had surgery to repair her injuries and couldn't continue her work as a certified nursing assistant, Burger said. She's been left to sleep on her mother's couch. Just this week, doctors removed the boot she's been wearing while she recovers.
The property is owned by South Bend Homes LLC, a company under the control of Lu, a prominent internet entrepreneur with his own Wikipedia page. Lu ran the company through his firm Longview Capital Holdings LLC, whose listed address is in Seattle.
Lu did not respond to an email requesting comment Friday.
Kollar said nothing appeared wrong with the staircase when he visited the home afterward. He didn't know about the tenant's injuries, he claims, until he filed to evict her and she responded with a lawsuit.
Burger said absentee owners are problematic because they often don't know the condition of their properties. They rely on third-party property management companies like Kollar's to maintain their units. But those management companies have almost no liability and often don't have insurance to cover their negligence, Burger said.
“These property owners are reliant upon these management companies to maintain the value," Burger said. "But these management companies have no incentive to do so. Their only goal is to make money.”
Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Judge rules South Bend landlord Steven Kollar fraudulent and negligent
