My Grandmother was taken advantage by a real estate company who bought her house from her for 262,000 and sold it 4 months later for 405,000 my grandmother is old and has no idea of the worth of her property can we do anything about this swindle.

I don't know anything about this.. but I can say this much.. get yourself a good lawyer.. and gather every little detail and dirt and bad thing you can dig up..

I know that something can be done. They always try to take advantage of clueless people..

Hope all goes well..

I would check for elder support groups in your area. While hiring an attorney is a good idea, it might be cost prohibitive in this case.

Frankly, its not a given that your grandmother was taken advantage of. You do need to get an appraisal of the property at the time it was sold. Contact a professional residential appraiser for this. It should only cost a few hundred dollars. But the difference could be reasonable. Maybe the house needed work that the real estate company put in that raised its value.

Armed with the appraisal you can take the case to the district attorney or local real estate oversight board.

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Originally Posted by dallen1174

My Grandmother was taken advantage of......... can we do anything about this swindle?

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Hello dallen:

I agree, your grandmother was taken advantage of, but I don't think she was swindled.

Indeed, let's say you saw an old rusted 1967 Mustang in a neighbor’s back yard. You offered, and they accepted $200. You sold it the next day for $10,000. Would that be a swindle or a smart business deal?

Ok, let's say the owner was old. Does that make a difference?

excon

Ok, what did they do to the property after they bought it, buying and selling property within a few months is called "flipping" it is a business investment many people do.

They try to find a run down house in a great neighborhood. And yes buying them for 200,000 and selling for 400,000 by merely cleaning it up, doing some land scaping, and updating kitchen and bath are what a lot of us do on a daily basis.

What some US TV and you will see TV shows that show nothing but people doing this. While I don't have the money to buy 200,000 homes to sell ( plus in our area of the country even the good homes only sell for about 120,000.

But I will buy 30,000 homes and sell them in a few months for 60,000 or so. There are people who do nothing but this, and may have two or three houses going at any one time.

So if they bought it and put maybe 20,000 to 50,000 into fixing it up,
That is merely what people do.

The house as she sold it, may not have been worth much more than what she was paid, I can't say, but this is common in home fix up and sale.
It is not uncommom to invest 30,000 in improvements and increase the selling value by 100,000 or more.

Little things, like some land scaping, new kitchen counter and appliances will often make the difference from no offer to a lot of offers.

I am not saying she was not cheated, but tell us, what did they do in improvements ?

Have you talked to a real estate professional, even a broker about what the house was like before the sale, and then at the 2nd sale.

Merely before and after sale prices tells us nothing, since this is what 100's of people do everyday.

If they bought it, did not even paint or mow the yard, OK, then you may wll have an issue

Next did she have it for sale, or did someone come to her to buy it from her ( she did not have it for sale)

If she had it for sale, she would have been working with a real estate broker, who would have given her a rough estimate of its worth, and she should have paid for a home inspectoin and apprasial.

So please post a lot more details

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dallen1174

My Grandmother was taken advantage by a real estate company who bought her house from her for 262,000 and sold it 4 months later for 405,000 my grandmother is old and has no idea of the worth of her property can we do anything about this swindle.

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What FR Chuck said... I laugh at the "Flip This House"... Property Ladder shows on TV... you will note that the SUCCESSFUL flips are in TX, SC and the UNSUCCESSFUL flips are in CA... UPDATING a property is very COSTLY and a RE company (like Richard Davis' Trademark in SC) KNOWS what they are doing and the novice flippers are clueless... I'll bet the RE company who purchased your GM's house spent between $50,000 and $100,000 on rennovations and upgrades and it actually made money because it IS a RE company with agents on staff and a full marketing capability...

Have GM invest her money wisely.

So you have 4 (of 5) answers that told you basically the same story. To sum it up, based on the scanty info you gave us, we can't say for sure whether there was a swindle (unlikely) or someone being taken advantage of (possible).

This points to what you should do when asking a question and that's provide us with as much info as you can. I suspect, you learned what the house resold for and that got you upset. I wonder where were you when grandma was selling the house?

If the property was in a trust, who was the administor of the trust,

Also if she was and you can prove though medical records she was not of soiund mind, you have grounds to contest the sale.

But it is going to get tough, since most likley they have now sold it, and most likley you will not be able to actually get the house back.

And if there are new owners who bought it from the people who bought it from the trust, they may also be parties to the law suit.

And if they bought title insurance ( and I don't know who would not) the insurance company will be invovled also, since they would be the ones who may first have to pay you, and then go back against the seller.


And yes on the house flipping shows ( there are a few on TV now) I laugh and laugh at people that buy a home over the phone without looking at it, or that buy it without a full inspection and have to take off the entire roof and more. Most of my houses I buy are slums and I do major work using "cheap" labor. My last house I bought for about 14,000 and put a new roof, new plumbing and appiances. Plus a lot of sheet rock work.
But because I use my own cheap labor sourse, I do things very cheaply.

But I would normally either rent them out, or sell them on a contract for deed myself, not using a real estate company. ( of course that is why I am working on getting my real estate license.

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Originally Posted by dallen1174

if someone buys a valuable car from someone worth 10,000.00 for 200.00 thats wrong and you know it

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Hello again, dallen:

I'm going to bow out of this discussion, but not without a comment first.

NO! I don't know that it's wrong – not even close!

excon

PS> (edited) The other day I was browsing in a thrift shop. I found a piece of silver amongst some pot metal, that they were selling for $2. I bought it, and sold it that afternoon for $87. Was that wrong?

Comments on this post
dallen1174 agrees: You are right I did not provide enough information. My Grandmother was dieing of brain cancer and the property was part of a trust estate my Grandfather had built and it was a brand new house sold to these people because she died 3 weeks after.


As Chuck asked, who was administrator of the trust?
With the additional information, provided by your comments, you MAY have a cause of action against the Administrator. But I think I can safely say, that no one took advantage of your grandmother (except maybe the administrator). That's because your grandmother was clearly in position to make business decisions so those decisions were made by the admin.

However, I still see no info that shows that the admin did not act properly. We still have no idea what the value of the house was at the time of the sale. You mentioned it was brand new ans in never lived in? Was it completely finished? A brand new house might be in a development that was still under construction. The value would increase once the surrounding area was developed.

Comments on this post
dallen1174 disagrees: This was a brand new house not some old mustang and if someone buys a valuable car from someone worth 10,000.00 for 200.00 thats wrong and you know it.

May I suggest you check out my suggested guidelines on using the Coments feature here:

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/feedba...ure-24951.html

Since you were dealing with an issue of opinion a negative comment was not called for.

Also I agree with excon here. Your example is not well taken. The house was not sold for 500x what it was paid for. The difference of $262K-$405K over 4 months is not that great and there could easily be legitimate explanations for the increase. If someone is putting something up for sale, they have a responsibility for determining its value. If they don't do that, then they deserve the loss. So if someone has a vintage car and puts a for sale sign on it and, when asked, prices it at $200, then I see nothing wrong with someone buying it for that, even though they know it has greater value. What I would see as wrong, is someone driving by, seeing a vintage car in a driveway unused, and offering $200 when they know its worth so much more.

Which brings us back to the administrator of the trust. If they sold the property for $262K when it was worth much more, then they violated their fiduciary responsibility. If so, you have a cause of action against them. So before you go to the DA, you NEED to get an appraisal of the property at the time of the sale. Because if you do go the DA and file charges, you could be opening yourself for a libel suit.

Yes a little off, but I had a yard sale last summer, in it I was selling a lot of items past tennants had left in the houses I rent out.

Well I normally know values of a lot of things fairly well, but I missed one item big time, I had a necklace I put a dollar on, guess it was worth a few hundred dollar. A man was buying it, but he could not do it without telling me the truth, I let him have it for a dollar since that was the deal.
( he did give me a donaton latter that week for the church)

But just last week I bought a antique pistol ( about 1890's) from a person for 30 dollars, I sold it before the day was over for about 100.
And it will sell for a few hundred after it is cleaned and fixed.
buying cheap and selling for more money is an America dream.

And I will add except for a couple of people on here, none of us are lawyers, I went to law school but followed another path in life.

( want to have a higher judge here my cases)

So all of us are using our experinces in life, So really you need a real estate attorney ( maybe) at least to start to see if there is anything against your states real estate law in the first sale of the home.

There are crooked real esate investment firms that do take advantage of the elderly ( many more in there mortgage industry) so I am not doing to say it does not happen.

But at times unlike the TV house investment shows, people often do make bad choices when buying or selling their homes. I have two houses that I can almost still lose sleep over, where I was as close to cheated as you can get and be legal. So the best you can do is have a private attorney investiage it to see what civil case the estate of your grandmother may have. Remember that it is the estate of your grandmother, and who ever is over it, to bring this action.

I have to disagree with Chuck on a couple of points. First, he's right that most of us are not attorneys though many of us do have knowledge from life experiences that enable us to help with many situations.

But I disagree that you need an attorney quite yet. As I've said, your first order of business is to get an appraisal of the property effective the time of the sale. If that appraisal comes under $300K then I doubt if you have any case.

The other place I disagree is who can bring an action and against who. As I've said, the only person I think chargeable here is the administrator of the trust. If they sold the home for less than its worth they may have violated their fiduciary responsibility. The only way the purchaser becomes chargeable is if they colluded with the administrator (i.e. the admin got a kickback). I believe any beneficiary of the trust can bring an action. If the grandmother was the only beneficiary, then it would be the executor or a beneficiary of her estate that would bring an action. However, if there was collusion, that would be a criminal action and anyone can bring it to the attention of the DA. But I would not go to the DA with only suspicions. I would get some proof first.

The ADMINISTRATOR of the trust that your GM was the beneficiary of has a fiduciary responsibility to make sure the home sold for the BEST price for your GM... you need to have a frank discussion with this person... since your GM has passed, you are apparently concerned about the "remainder" funds in the trust... the RE company did not do anything wrong - the trust admininstrator may well have not performed their duties correctly when signing the deed for the sale.

You need to review the trust documents AND the property sale transaction - have a RE attorney do it.