Welcome to the foreclosure Twilight Zone, where a distressed homeowner struggles to save his property from bank repossession, while at the same time, attempts to evict the illegal Occupy Wall Street protesters who set up shop in his living room when he (unwisely) decided to leave.

Such is the curious case of Wise Ahadzi, a single father with two young girls, who vacated his house in Brooklyn, N.Y., when he could no longer afford to pay the mortgage. He apparently didn’t realize that he could remain in the home until the foreclosure was complete. In fact, the lender has recently confirmed that he is still the rightful owner of the property until the foreclosure process has run its full course.

Meanwhile, “Occupy” members targeted his house and vowed to fix it up and move in a new family, looking make a bold statement against the major financial institutions that the movement blames for the current economic crisis in the United States.

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The length of the foreclosure process depends on several factors, including the lender, government programs, state in which the distressed home is located and individual circumstances, among others. Foreclosures, if ever, are rarely the same.

However, there are state-by-state averages, which Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS) tracks each month. Nationwide, homeowners facing foreclosure are collectively 611 days late paying their respective mortgages.

The top places where foreclosures on average take the longest include:

• New York (767 days)
• Florida (757 days)
• New Jersey (708 days)
• Hawaii (681 days)
• Washington D.C. (676 days)

The top places where foreclosures on average take the shortest include:

• Wyoming (398 days)
• Nebraska (407 days)
• Alaska (411 days)
• Idaho (416 days)
• Arizona (418 days)

Homes in states that follow the judicial foreclosure process typically take longer to get through the system because the courts are so overburdened. Non-judicial states, therefore, are going to typically recover faster, according to Herb Blecher, a senior vice president for analytics at LPS, in a recent interview with BusinessWeek. com.

For more on the foreclosure laws in your state click here. To search foreclosed homes for sales in your area click here.

Co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records, Damon Dash, is about to lose his duplex loft, which is located in a Tribeca, N.Y., “power building,” according to Curbed.com.

Dash, who purchased the 5,200 sq. ft. “stunner” in “The Atalanta” building for $3.875 million in 2004, currently owes his lender nearly $9 million after a refinance in 2006. He stopped paying the $78,000/mo. mortgage in late 2008.

Here’s a description of the property:

“This stunning 5,200 SF duplex loft boasts 20 foot ceilings in the living room, 4 bedrooms and 4 baths on TriBeCas best block. Add huge windows facing north and south, a mint kitchen and luxurious bathrooms, it leaves nothing to be desired. Located in the preeminent full service doorman building, the Atalanta, Must be seen!!”

The duplex is scheduled to be put on the auction block today (Wednesday, July 28, 2010) at 1 p.m. ET, during which a new buyer will emerge or the bank will claim possession of it.

Stay tuned.

For more on background on Baldwin’s bankruptcy and potential foreclosure action click here. To learn more about “The Restoration of Stephen Baldwin” click here.

(Tip via Zillow.com)

Madoff, Madoff, Madoff!

The former building in which infamous Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff bilked countless high-profile investors out of approximately $65 billion over two decades is “inching” toward foreclosure, according to the NY Post.

The tower at 885 Third Avenue in New York, N.Y., which resembles a tube of lipstick, “has fallen on hard times” and the bank that holds the note on the skyscraper is shopping its $210 million mortgage.

Renters, and a lack of tenants, including Madoff — who started serving a 150-year bit in federal prison in 2009 — appears to be the reason behind the building’s financial distress.

Howard Michaels of the Carlton Group explains what went wrong:

“It was an ingenious finance structure at the time, which was predicated on a significant growth in rent, which due to Madoff and market factors did not occur.”

Madoff and his crooked operation reportedly took up three floors of the building — all told 40,000 sq. ft. — at $49 per sq. ft.

(That’s $1.96 million in case you don’t want to do the math.)