ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The I-Team has learned a wholesale real estate company used a type of document you’ve probably never heard of to try to cash in on a property transaction that fell through years earlier.
The company is filing these documents to enforce agreements and to prevent property sellers from walking away unscathed from signed contracts.
One woman said it prevented her from being able to sell her home years after she thought she got out of her original deal.
A deal falls through
Since 2017, retired social worker Angela Passard lived in a small unit in a St. Petersburg 55-and-older condo community.
She paid cash, renovated it herself, and doesn’t owe anything.
But when Angela decided to sell, her title company told her there was a problem caused by a document filed with the Pinellas County Clerk of Court in 2020 by real estate investment company Simply Sold.
The company is the marketing arm of wholesale real estate broker Equity Pro and shares the same office and employees.
“I got a postcard in the mail from them, a solicitation,” Passard said.
Angela contacted the company and initially agreed to sell her home to Simply Sold.
She signed a sales agreement for $29,000 on June 29, 2020.
On July 2, she decided to back out, saying in an email, “At this time, my circumstances have changed, and so my condo is no longer for sale.”
“They were harassing me with phone calls and emails, and I just shut down and ignored them,” Angela said.
Document filed with clerk’s office
On July 6, four days after Angela emailed the company and said she would not close, Simply Sold filed an “Affidavit and Memorandum of Agreement” with the Pinellas County Clerk of Court.
“They create this document out of thin air called this affidavit or memorandum of contract. Then it’s signed, notarized, and dated,” said real estate attorney Andy Lyons.
Lyons said these documents are common with real estate investors, who often don’t plan to buy the properties themselves.
“What they’re going to do is to take your property and list it on Facebook or somewhere else to see if they can get more money. And if they can get more money, then they will sell your property before they even buy it from you.
We found dozens of affidavits like Angela's from Simply Sold filed in Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Pasco Counties.
The contracts were assignable, and, in many cases, Simply Sold wasn’t the buyer.
The Simply Sold employee Angela dealt with regularly advertises to investors on Facebook.
Angela said the calls and emails from Simply Sold finally stopped a month after she signed the contract.
She said they never did an appraisal or inspection of the property.
“They never came out, they never gave me any money, nothing. So I thought this was over and done, I swear to God,” Angela said.
Until her title company called to say she couldn’t close.
Company requests $10,000 to release document
Angela said she called Simply Sold to try to get it resolved.
“Their first request from me was $10,000, and then $5,000, and now $2,000,” Angela said.
“Their thinking is they will just record it and leave it in the chain of title and just sit and wait,” Lyons said.
“I said how would you like somebody to do what you’re doing to me, to your mother or your grandmother? How would you feel about that? They didn’t answer,” Angela said.
Lyons said you only have a year to file a legal action to enforce a contract in Florida, but that doesn’t mean the document can’t hurt property owners.
“They get caught in this problem where either they have to throw some money at this to make it go away, or they’re not able to sell their house,” Lyons said.
We called Simply Sold attorney Timothy Harris, who also is a licensed real estate sales associate with Equity Pro.
Angela said he was involved in the negotiation.
Harris called us back later that afternoon.
He declined an on-camera interview but agreed to let Angela out of her agreement without payment.
“This is the best news!” Angela said when we reached her on the phone.
Before she got that good news, Angela shared some advice for anyone thinking about selling to a wholesale buyer.
“They should be 100 percent sure of what they’re getting into. They should read all the fine print, and if they can afford it, they should hire a real estate lawyer to help them in the process,” Angela said.
Angela sold her home on May 10th, 2024, for $75,000, nearly three times the amount she was offered in 2020.
If you have a story you’d like the I-Team to cover, email us at adam@abcactionnews.com
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