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Please help. Fraudulent seller

Nakoliss

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Jan 9, 2008
Messages
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Bonjour everyone,

This is Daniel from Quebec. I need help dealing with a dishonest and fraudulent seller. My partner and I have been working on this deal for a long time and we are looking for a lawyer in Quebec to help us out dealing with this. If you know of a good real estate lawyer that would work on a commission of money we would get instead of a normal salary, please let me know.

So far, our fees and money paid in this project is not that great. Approx. 540$ for Inspection and some fees on registered letter sent. We also have a 5000$ deposit but this shouldn`t be a problem getting back. Where we need more help is the fact that we concentrated on this particular deal and passed others. We worked for approx. 5 months and we changed units 3 times with these people because of their dishonesty. There should be some damage paid back to us.

Here is a brief idea of what has happen during the 5 months:

The first unit we were told the unit was already bought but when I looked on the city website, it is still in the possession of one of the owner as of this day. We did not spend a lot of time on this 1st condo but this is to show how dishonest they are.

The second unit that we were almost ready to close on, when we received the lease we noticed that the tenant had signed for the same amount he was already paying but until July 2009. According to our plan and what was given to us, we would have raised the rent 100$ more in July 2008. This signature of the lease was done without our knowledge and nobody came forward to tell us straight out. We had to find this on our own. The deal wasn`t as profitable anymore so we changed for another unit.

For this new unit, everything was going fine, we had our financing, etc. The only thing left was the inspection, finding insurance, and closing. Last week when I went for the inspection I started talking with my future tenant. This is when I learned that she was moving out very soon. I told her that it was strange since I had a lease signed by her stating she agreed to an immediate raise in rent and another one in July 2008 until July 2009. She said she never agreed to this and pointed out that there was a spelling error in her signature.

Basically, the seller is doing fraud be providing us with a "fake" lease intended to make us close on the deal, no?

Any suggestions on what we should do. I`m really disappointed that this is going like this. I was looking forward owning my first profitable investment property. :-)

Just to let you know how the sellers are also lying, we were told all unit were already sold. After I checked, I can see that out of 18 units, only 8 are sold (9 if we would buy ours).

Merci beaucoup,

Daniel.
 
Get out of the deal, get your deposit back, and consider the money you have spent as experience. If the deal is this bad, it is not worth pursuing.
 
Daniel, you could spend lots of time and money and will almost assuredly never see a dime in damages. And the negative energy generated would be immense.

Or you could get out of this deal now and move on to pursuing deals that will take you forward towards your goals.

By the way, I was involved iust 2 weeks ago in the purchase of my my nephew`s first house in Chambly, a suburb of Montreal, and I learned that deposits there are not required and are quite rare. Suggest you consider not making deposits if that is the case where you are.
 
Daniel: I concur with all the advice - just get out. I know you perhaps might be emotionally attached to the deal cause its your first, but emotions are deadly in investing -any investing (real estate, stock market, start-ups etc etc).
It will cost you far less in the long run to cut your monetary losses and get away fro this deal as soon as possible.

Where I hope my advice is most helpgful is the following; please don`t undervalue your time. What most people fail to do is to say "I`m in this deal for $xxxx.00 and I don`t want to lose the money. Meanwhile, they may spend dozens
of hours trying to get their money back realizing that they are spending their most valuable, non-renewable
resource; TIME.

Be very careful how you spend your time and what you value your time at. I don`t look at anything worth my time unless it earns me at least $100 per hour, that`s the bare bare minimum. If lawyers can charge 2x,3x,4x that rate then I know my time is at least worth that. Given the amount of money I raised last year in JV money, my time is probably worth $250-$300 per hour.

I am not saying that to impress you; I am saying that to impress upon you an important concept: Always do the math on these things. At $100 an hour, if was going to take you 10, 20, 30 hours to recoup your money - and you probably won`t, well, there`s certainly no guarantee that`s for sure - what`s this deal worth to you?

The money you lost is what you paid to learn this experience. Remember your lesson always, don`t repeat it, find a way to do some extra due dilgence if applicable, write a purchase contract more in your favor, whatever.

But I`d walk away at this point.

Mike `Smitty` Smith
 
Thank you all for the great advice. At this point looking for a lawyer doesn`t seem worth it. :-)

Merci beaucoup,
Daniel.
450-471-0185
 
Bonjour Daniel,

Before moving to Calgary I kind of dabbled into the Montreal real estate market. That was over ten years ago now but from your post it seems that nothing has changed. You can and should not rely on verbal information but luckily as far as I can recall, land titles and purchase agreements are public documents so you can easily find out everything you need to know. There was a fee to access the archives but a very modest one.

But please, please when a very charming, outgoing, energetic, warm and seemingly trustworthy individual offers you to use their own lawyer (notaire) for the transaction in order to save you money, well it may be time to run away.

Cheers,
Simon
 
Hi Daniel, I agree with everyones advice to walk away. Legal action will just cost you alot of money. However you might want to contact your local TV station or newspaper. They would like the storey and it might help warn other potential buyers to stay away. Good luck.

Craig
 
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