KENTWOOD, Mich.— One father's hopes to move his family into their dream home were shattered after a deal with a licensed real estate agent went sour. The disabled veteran and father of two was out $5,000.
Richard Jennings says the $5,000 was all he had to put towards owning the home of his wife and two daughters’ dreams. A dream that died at the last minute when investors tied to land a contract to get the home backed out.
“Your dream is to have the American Dream and own it, and when it gets yanked out from under you like this, you have to start over,” said Jennings.
Jennings took the risk to fulfill that dream, putting down thousands of dollars toward a home in Kentwood. He even had to borrow against a life insurance policy to make the deposit, and show he had more equity in the home under the guidance of his real estate agent, Sam Prince.
“Nowhere to be found, my $5,000 is nowhere to be found. We don’t have a choice, we’re going to have to rent. That was the money we had to purchase a home,” said Jennings.
Jennings says he trusted Prince to get the deal done.
Jennings says Prince knew he didn’t have a lot of money from the start, advising him to use a land contract to get the home he wanted.
A land contract is an agreement someone with bad credit can use when a bank will not finance them. They can go through a private investor that is willing to buy the house, and then the buyer will pay back the investor in an agreed amount of time. If the buyer doesn’t pay the investor back in that amount of time, the investor can keep the house. It was a deal Richard could live with, but he couldn’t live with what came next.
“I felt very used, and surprised,” said Jennings.
Surprised because he found out Prince was a real estate agent with Priority One Real Estate, which has since closed. Since Prince is only a real estate agent, Jennings later realized that’s not the same thing as a realtor. He’s not a licensed realtor or part of the approved realtor’s association. Prince advised Jennings to take actions that didn’t work out in the end.
Prince allegedly had Jennings put down a thousand dollars to start the search for a home, telling him when they found a place, there would need to be more money to put down.
“We had already put a thousand dollars down, and the owners wanted more money down earnest, so we put another $4,000 down, and Sam supposedly approached all of his investors,” Jennings said sarcastically.
Jennings received deposit receipts from Prince that were signed refundable, but as the deal approached a closing date Prince didn’t have the investors he’d promised.
“He started delaying, saying the investor was in the hospital that this was just a temporary delay that he had other investors,” said Prince.
Closing day came, and there was no one to invest, which meant no money to get the deal done.
It wasn’t just Jennings who was wronged, the owner of the home spent money to fly to and from Milwaukee several times to close this sale.
“The owners threatened to sue us for the return of the money,” said Jennings.
Already out $5,000 with no more money to spare, the threat of a lawsuit convinced Jennings to sign a contract with the seller forfeiting his deposit to them. Prince agreed to talk to the Problem Solvers on the phone. He says he never meant for the deal to fall through in the first place. He said with less people using land contracts and investors, deals always have a chance of falling through. However, he did insist that he never told Jennings to sign the contract that the sellers demanded Jennings sign.
“I never told him to sign that, and once he signed that, that’s when things turned ugly,” said Prince.
Prince said he was scrambling to find another investor to help seal the closing of the house, but everyone backed out. Prince says the investor he lined up lost interest last minute, deciding the value of the home was too low, something even Prince admits the investor should have known in advance.
“Yes he should have known. I mean I have had deals fall through for similar reasons, but I think it was just the value and the equity he was going to have in it, said Prince.
As for Jennings, he’s starting over, this time with a registered realtor.
“You can deal with the fact that you have to buy another house, but when your deposit gets taken, you have start over,” said Jennings.
FOX 17 reached out to the selling real estate agent. He says there were a lot of things that were disorganized with the closing of the deal. The real estate association says to always go with a realtor that is licensed and a part of association, instead of a real estate agent.
