Newsflash: Really huge company bounces check, somehow it affects me

The BBQ Pit
1

I bought a house - I’m sure I told ya. It takes alot of work to buy a damn house. Lotsa phone calls, paperwork, running around, getting stuff done. And that’s all before you even get the keys.

After all that was done, I got a letter from my friendly County Taxman welcoming me to the county and reminding me I had to pay taxes. The letter was to verify the address to which tax bills would be sent.

“Is this the right address?” they asked. Beneath that it said:

“REQUEST FOR FORCLOSURE”

Huh, I thought…that can’t be right. The address that the tax stuff needs to go to would be my mortgage company, since they’re going to be paying the taxes for me…

So since my county is super-cool and technologically hip, I shot them an email with a scanned PDF of said letter asking if maybe uh…this was a mistake.

The treasurer’s secretary got back to me lickety-split saying that yeah there had been a tax lien on the property previously (I knew this - was assured it’d be taken care of) and she’d confirm with someone about this mix-up and all would be dandy.

Later that day I got another email from the secretary.

“Hold up!” she said (in so many words), “I looked into this further and the taxes have NOT been paid. This is a SERIOUS problem and you need to get it taken care of right away. You need to look at your closing statement to see who was supposed to pay those taxes…get back to me ASAP…here’s the number of the guy you need to call in the Office Of Taking Away Your House When You Don’t Pay Taxes Office.”

Wha-ha? Damn, I THOUGHT that the whole mortgage thing seemed too easy to be true.

Put in a call to my real estate agent - who is the world’s best real estate agent, I guarantee you. She did not seemed worried. Not much worries her. I could call her and be like “uh hey…there appears to be tigers living in my crawlspace” and she’d have it taken care of before I hung up the phone. She was more worried that the fridge she was going to give me wasn’t ready yet because her new fridge wasn’t delivered…

I don’t hear from the realtor again for a bit, but in the meantime the county lady emails me again to confirm i got her last email and she is very worried and repeats that I MUST TAKE CARE OF THIS IMMEDIATELY!!!

Bugger. Another call to the realtor, who gets her crack realty secretary on it this time.

4:30 later that day, I get a call from the woman at the title agency who handled my title transfer. She tells me that yeah, there was a mix up but not my fault. The lien was supposed to be paid by the seller, and it was. But the check BOUNCED…and like…i dunno, no one noticed except for me?! (by now it’s been about a week or 2 since the title transfer)

She says they’ll call the county the next day and get it taken care of. Right on.

Weird…the guy I bought the house from has been a bank manager for at least 30 years. Could he have seriously written a bad check? Is this even logistically possible?

4:40…get call from the Crack Realty Secretary. She wants to know if the title agency called me. I said they did - said something about a bounced check.

“I know! I can’t BELIEVE they told me that!” she laughs. “That is not something you go bragging about…”

Excuse me? The seller didn’t bounce a check…the TITLE AGENCY BOUNCED A CHECK!!! FOR A FUCKING TAX LIEN AGAINST MY HOUSE!!!

Fuckin a !!!

Now…I ain’t gonna say who this goddamn company is because my realtor hinted at a slight chance of litigation if these asswipes don’t clear this up right off. And as of Saturday (2 days after the title lady said “we’ll call tomorrow and fix it”) the problem has NOT been fixed.

But this fucking title company is OWNED BY THE SAME COMPANY AS THE REALTY COMPANY. That’s right. How this is a good idea, I don’t know.

So you’ve got this HUGE midwestern realty company (6th in the nation! woohoo!!) that is big enough to do all their own realty, mortgage, title and insurance services…and they CAN’T BACK A FUCKING $3000 CHECK, even though according to all the paperwork the seller paid them the $3000.

Fuck, I run a small 3-man business and we bring in about 1/100 of what this company brings in each year, and I could figure out the math to pay a $3000 bill if my client hands me $3000 to pay it with.

I’m not exactly sure what all this means. “REQUEST FOR FORCLOSURE” is kind of a scary thing to wake up to. Everyone (except the treasure’s secretary) has assured me this is not my problem and it’ll be taken care of…but Jesus Fucking Christ - no one even NOTICED it until I got a form letter from the county. The letter didn’t even acknowledge it. All it said was “REQUEST FOR FORCLOSURE” where someone’s address shoulda been.

The whole situation doesn’t quite bother me. I am not scared. I am just PISSED OFF at this stupid realty/title company. I don’t know what kind of clerical error would make a check come back “NSF”…not like someone mis-typed something. “Not Sufficient Funds - NSF” means THERE IS NO MONEY IN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT.

For the record this is the same goddamn realty company that 2 months prior sold a house down the street to my two best friends, and conveniently “didn’t know” that the entire basement had once been filled with water (yep, to the ceiling) and the foundation is shit. Unfortunately for them, they ended up both selling their house through this company and buying from them. Took them like 9 months to sell the house with a 4-month overlap of double mortgage. My friend says she had a hard time getting ahold of the realtor by the time they finally closed on the house they sold. He’s probably scared about his big blunder with their basement.

Having to deal with this shit makes me glad I decided to stay in this house for the next 70 years. I don’t want to have to deal with sheisty realty companies any time soon.

2

Oh man. That’s scary. Best of luck. Be pro-active as you know. Clearly you’ve got the assertiveness to take this head on, but as I said, pumping out some fellow home owner love your way.

3

And people ask why I stay with apartments…

4

Have you talked to a lawyer about this? I’m not telling you to sue but to protect yourself? It’s Tuesday before Thanksgiving - honestly if the title company hasn’t cleared it up by now you may be looking at next week. Meanwhile, there’s possibly interest building up on the back amount and the taxman isn’t going to be interested in any of this story, just in his payment.

Lawyers can be your friend, sometimes. The Royal Tax Collector - never.

Or maybe I’m overreacting.

5

Lemme understand this…the realty company completely screwed someone you know, and you continued to do business with them and are surprised that, wonder of wonders, something bad has happened t your real estate transaction as well?

There’s a reason that realty companies rely on word of mouth…this is it.

6

I spent this morning filling out mortgage paperwork for my first home purchase. Stuff like this makes me feel right at ease. After all, if you’re getting all the incompotence, that means there’s less incompotence for me, right? Right?! That’s how it works, isn’t it?

:cool:

7

In late August, we sold a house and bought a house. Consecutive closings on consecutive days.

In yesterday’s mail is a letter from the law firm we used in the selling. Says we owe their $500 fee.

Hasty check of closing documents, confirms that was taken from our proceeds of the sale.

Somewhat nasty phone message left at 8 PM last night resulted in an “oops we screwed up” voice mail I recieved this morning.

Keep EVERYTHING, and follow up.

8

No, you’re not. Zipper did you have a lawyer at the closing? Also, even if the answer in “no”, I assume you purchased title insurance. Have you recieved a copy of your policy, with all appropriate exceptions waived? Was the broker your broker, paid by you, or a subagent of the seller?

Sounds like you need to see a lawyer licensed in your state.

General comment: especially if you don’t have a lawyer, this emergening trend where GiantCo is the dual agent for the seller and buyer, the title insurer, closing agent, and lender is just full of scary conflicts of interest. Try to avoid that. And get a lawyer - one that’s recommended by someone other than the broker.

9

By all means, ZipperJJ, overreact. You’d be surprised how little justice there is in the world, and a huge glut of that lack concerns real estate. If you don’t watch your jots and tittles, you could lose everything.

I know Halloween has passed, but you guys want to hear a scary story? turns out lights, shines flashlight under chin

Years back, a FOAF and her husband bought a house. It had once been heated with oil, but had since been converted to electric. There was an oil fill pipe in the yard, not connected to anything. It was capped securely. Locked. They had no account with the oil company. It was clear that oil did not go into that pipe. Any moron could have seen that.

So all was well, right? Wrong.

They came home one day to find their house burned down. Apparently the oil company came by, pried the cap off of the fill pipe, and pumped hundreds of gallons of oil into the ground. The homeowners not only lost their house (and for some reason it wasn’t covered by insurance), but were ordered to pay the cleanup costs for the oil contamination. When they tried to sue the oil company, the oil company’s team of lawyers threatened to bury them in paperwork for 10 years.

10

I’ve heard of stuff like this happening. From what I’ve been told, it usually has something to do with not commingling funds, and/or the incoming checks not being cashed prior to outgoing checks. Stupid mistakes, but I can see how something like that might happen.

11

Unfortunately the friends’ water basement thing didn’t happen until shortly after I closed on the house. They’d been in there for a few months when water started dripping in.

How was I to know that they can’t pay their bills?

In any case, tho, what was I to do? I really wanted THIS house and it happened to be for sale by THIS realty company.

But, I did get a realtor to represent me and sell me the house, from a completely different company. She is one of my clients and you guys wouldn’t believe me if I told you how awesome she was. I know alot of local realtors (you join the local chamber of commerce, you have the unfortunate pleasure of meeting too many realtors) and she is miles beyond them.

Yes, I do have title insurance. I do not have a lawyer just yet but I know that if I do need one, my realtor will hook me up.

I’ll call the guy from the Office of Taking Away Your House Office right now and see what he has to say.

freido - if you’re buying a house in Ohio/Pennsylvania then email me and I’ll tell you who to look out for :slight_smile: Otherwise, I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with a new batch of stupidity in your own region.

12

I don’t even want to go into the boring details of the story but I just had to refinance my house so I could give my ex-wife a boat load of money in exchange for her taking her name off of the title. The title company tried to fuck me out of $1500 and then tried to blame it on the mortgage broker. Me refusing to back down one inch and a three way call with the title company and the broker cleared it up. The independent notary who was in the room took me aside and said that 90% of the population would have ended up paying it.

Watch that shit like a hawk. No one is going to take care of you except for you.

13

It was nice to recieve the paperwork that told me my mortgage was entirely paid off. All the papers stamped and signed in the correct places, and even a little congratulations letter to boot.

The only thing is that it had been sent mistakenly about 28 years too early. Damn I was tempted just to shut my mouth and not say anything, cause it was a pita to get it set straight.

14

And their lawyer didn’t laugh in the oil company’s face? There must be some missing facts here. Did they settle and get something from the oil company up front, or did they take the whole loss on the chin?

15

Small update:

I called the nice man at the Office Of Taking Away Your House and he was helpful. He said they still haven’t paid, and I should talk to the person at the prosecutor’s office who’s handling this “foreclosure.”

I spoke with her and she was wicked nice. She was utterly dumbfounded at the nerve of this title company bouncing a check.

She flagged my file and said she’d keep on top of it. The other guy also said he’d email me as soon as the deadbeats paid.

She said that if they don’t get their shit together within 10 days I need to go ballistic on their asses. So we’ll see if it comes to that.

My my…so much growing up in so little time. First a mortgage then a pending lawsuit! Pretty soon I will have to start shopping for caskets.

16

This doesn’t sound right. If you don’t carry homeowner’s insurance yourself, the mortgage holder will slap their own policy on it and charge you out the yingyang for the privilege. Unless the house was free and clear?

17

Start taking notes. Document, document, document. I don’t think it would hurt to start firing off certified letters either to all parties concerned. CYA, my friend.

18

Not to hijack, but my title-company story was pretty scary in retrospect, too.

We had about 12 people sitting around the table, including the lawyers, two title company reps, two realestate agents, and others (including my wife and me).

As we were flying through the documents, I was functionally oblivious. My wife, an accountant, was paying more attention.

As we were running down the final balance sheet, something tweaked her brain. There was an addition error that would have put us on the hook for an additional $8,000 in mortgage. She was irritated, and I was a bit angry as well. All of these smiling “professionals” had missed an error that would have cost me $8k. I was the recipient of several shocked stares (the gall!), as I explained (at increased volume) that in my industry (Medical insurance…please direct comments to another thread), and $8k error was a big deal, and that I couldn’t believe that the title company was trying to “screw me out of $8k”.

Read everything…they can’t leave until you do.

-Cem

19

The house three doors down from us had a similar thing happen last winter. They got a heating oil delivery straight into their basement. The place didn’t burn down, but they were left with quite a cleanup. Not sure if they managed to get any redress from the oil company.

20

I told the story the way I heard it, other than that yes, they did eat the loss. If there is more to the story, I have no way of finding out what it is.