08/01/2026
Who said Real Estate isn’t exciting???
This is crazy!!!!
I haven’t verified this story but what an interesting one!
In November 2021, John Bonomi Jr., a retired lawyer, paid $5.5 million for a roughly 5,000-square-foot mansion perched on a coastal bluff in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The views were extraordinary—sweeping vistas over Cape Cod Bay and Wellfleet Harbor, an Instagram-ready kitchen, multiple en-suite bathrooms, and the quiet prestige of a private coastal retreat inside the Cape Cod National Seashore. The location, however, was not.
The house sat on an eroding cliff above the bay, on land that had been losing ground to the ocean for decades. The bluff had already retreated more than 50 feet in the ten years before Bonomi bought it. Coastal professionals estimated the erosion rate at between 3.8 and 5.6 feet per year, with some earlier engineering reports citing rates as high as six to seven feet annually. By the time of the purchase, the foundation sat only about 12 to 14 feet from the edge. This was not a secret. It had been the subject of local headlines, legal battles, and failed attempts to build a protective seawall going back years before Bonomi ever signed the papers. The previous owners, Mark and Barbara Blasch, who had built the shingled house in 2010, spent years seeking permission for a stone revetment. The Wellfleet Conservation Commission and National Park Service consistently denied those requests, citing the need to preserve natural sand movement and the potential harm to nearby oyster beds and beaches. The Blaschs’ lawsuit against the town remained unresolved when they sold.
Bonomi paid the full asking price anyway. In the years that followed, the cliff continued its relentless advance. Storms, tides, and wind steadily undercut the bank. Attempts to stabilize the property or obtain permission for hard armoring failed, just as they had for the previous owners. By late 2023, Bonomi had listed the house for $1 million less than he paid, but no buyer emerged. The structure drew national attention as photographs showed it edging closer and closer to the drop.
In February 2025, three and a half years after the purchase, Bonomi had the mansion demolished. The cliff edge had crept close enough that allowing it to collapse into the ocean on its own would have created an environmental hazard—debris, construction materials, and potential toxins washing into the bay and threatening local shellfish beds. The controlled demolition cost an additional $250,000. What remained was a rapidly shrinking parcel of land. Assessors later valued the empty lot at roughly $385,000, a fraction of the original purchase price.
The mortgage, however, did not disappear with the house. The $3.85 million loan from JPMorgan Chase runs until December 2051, at roughly $21,053 a month, on land where a building no longer stands, above a bluff that continues to erode into the sea. Bonomi made the payments for nearly three years before stopping in September 2024 as the property’s fate became clear.
So Bonomi sued JPMorgan Chase. His lawsuit, filed in October 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, makes two central arguments. First, that the bank should never have approved a mortgage on a property whose erosion risk was widely documented public record, and that any proper due diligence—including appraisals and review of engineering reports—would have flagged the loan as inappropriate. The complaint contends it “strains credulity” to believe the bank did not understand the collateral could soon become nearly worthless. Second, and more unusually, that he was suffering from an uncontrollable manic episode due to his Bipolar I Disorder at the time of purchase, and that the bank either knew or should have known he lacked the mental capacity to enter into the agreement. Bonomi has said bipolar disorder can produce irrational risk-taking, impulsive behavior, and reckless spending, and that “no rational person” would have bought the property at full asking price under those conditions.
JPMorgan Chase is vigorously denying both claims, stating it acted in good faith and followed reasonable commercial lending standards. The case is active in federal court and no liability has been established.
