It took a good amount of ego-bashing to actually own up my husband and I have been conned. We held to our belief(hope) that we were not, and in fact,the person was honest and would pay us back eventually. That is because this was a new strategy we've never heard before. Even if 1 person is helped by this post, I would be happy.
An agent held an investor meet at a RE office where a friend of mine was working. She was launching a 2-family project in Newark, NJ that we could partner in. Now I am very familiar with the area and there was no way the project she proposed would lose. Her acquisition price was good, her fix up numbers made sense, and as a realtor myself, I knew the price it was worth after fixing up. Her strategy was to get a home loan for her son who would buy the house from us. She also said she had already spoken to the lender. According to her, we would get back a handsome return for our investment, which was very doable.
The fix up dragged on for ages, well past the 3 months she promised and went for over a year. Now during all this time, she was responsive, and kept giving us stories about how the work was dragging. Finally , all of a sudden one day, when we called as usual, she told us, the property did not appraise as her son's loan was FHA .So she sold at a loss to her son!!! No consulting us, no looking for another buyer, nothing. Just like that .She just sent us a PnL statement. To add insult to injury, she told us she has started paying another bigger investor, little by little,from the rent from the tenant upstairs. No proportionate payment to us, whatsoever. Now, no response to our calls, emails. We finally came to terms and bid farewell to our $10K
PLEASE BEWARE OF THESE SCAM PARTNERSHIPS -ITS BEING DONE IN THE NAME OF A COMPANY THAT WOULD APPALL JOEL GREENBLATT !!
I realize now that no one will make us money. We were lazy and hoping for easy and we deserved that loss. Hope you guys don't have to go through that . Think a million times before you part with one cent!
