Family can't move into house they bought

[tyecopeland]

Story involves covid eviction issue and California law so might end up in dc.

https://www.foxla.com/news/couple-bu...orium-loophole

Added article in spoiler for those who don't like clicking links.

Spoiler!

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - When Tracie and Myles Albert purchased a beautiful four bedroom house in Riverside, California they never realized that at the end of escrow the seller would suddenly refuse to give up the keys and leave.

"It’s just draining, emotionally and financially," says Tracie. On January 31, 2020, the couple purchased the home. More than a year later, they still haven’t been able get inside their property. Chris Taylor is the Real Estate Agent who sold the house to the Alberts from a man who wanted to sell immediately.

"He needed $560,000 from the sale of his house in two weeks and he called me on a Sunday, so in traditional real estate there's no way of doing that unless the buyer’s a cash buyer," says Taylor.

Since the house was free and clear and worth more than $560,000 the Alberts felt it was a great deal.


"It took us scrambling to get everything we had, our life savings put together and a hard money loan on top of it to make that happen," Myles stated.



During escrow they discovered there was a $30,000 tax lien on the house which slowed things down, but in the end, all parties signed on the dotted line and the sale was completed.

"We own the house, outright. That's our house and it's all in a contract, written, legal, done. He's been paid the money in his account. How could we have no rights to go into our home," asked Myles.

FOX 11 News tried to speak with the seller but when reporter Gina Silva knocked and announced herself, no one came to the door.

Taylor says, "It’s genuinely unfathomable to me that we live in a state where something like this is even possible. They closed escrow on this home January 31, 2020." The Alberts and Taylor have contacted authorities and tried to get the seller evicted but because of the pandemic, they’ve gotten nowhere.

"They have this case under a COVID tenant situation, of no evictions when it doesn't fall under that at all. This transaction went through in January 2020 before any of that, it isn't a renter who was getting thrown out. It's the guy who collected all of this money," stated Myles.


Eviction Attorney Dennis Block says, "This year alone, we’ve handled at least 7 maybe 8 cases of this exact type of situation."

He says people purchasing homes need to be extremely cautious, especially if they notice any red flags during the process. Block says what’s happening to the Alberts could happen to anyone.

"This person is not a tenant, it’s a previous owner who is enjoying the benefits of the money that was transferred to his account but of course doesn’t want to move out of the premises that he no longer owns," Block stated.

The Alberts filed an unlawful detainer but because of the California eviction moratorium, the case has been stalled. Time is simply passing by and the immaculate house they fell in love with is now becoming an eyesore.

Tracie says, "I tried watering the lawn one time and he came out and ripped my sprinkler lines, ripped all the wires. The Palm trees are dying, everything was beautiful and everything is dying."

Her frustrated husband says when he contacted law enforcement, they told him, "If you were in Arizona, if you were in Nevada, this wouldn't be a problem, you would just go take your house back. But in California, like our hands are tied, even though we're on your side, there's nothing we can do."

[cooper barrett]

Appraisals have nothing to do with a houses value, just what it should sell for at the . Did you know the appraiser knows the sale price before seeing the property?

I had one that made a 210SF error and gave up 10K for the error.

[cooper barrett]

You were desperate.

Originally Posted by dmahurin

Not necessarily desperate, as I had it in quotes. They were buying another house and needed to sell this one to afford the new one. The market being crazy, we wanted to make sure out offer was accepted and 5k over asking is nothing compared to the 20k+ I have heard about other people paying. The appraisal came back and I still got a good deal even paying slightly over asking.

[dmahurin]

Originally Posted by cooper barrett

You were desperate.

Are you always miserable or just on CP?

[cooper barrett]

How many houses has he or you bought? multiply by X 5 and you're not even warm of how many I have built.

This paying over list is total bullshit in any market I have lived in,

In a popular vacation area in Ca. (Serrira Nevada Mountains) we have "bid" sales where you slipped $5K and your bid in a box but that's still not paying over asking price.

[tredadda]

Originally Posted by cooper barrett

bullshit, cough, BULLSHIT

Ok.

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by tredadda

Ok.

He gone. Guy has to have the record for the most thread bannings in CP history.

[scho63]

[Graystoke]

Originally Posted by Lzen

Mind if I ask where was this located?

Sorry, late replying to this.
Located in Cedar Falls Iowa.

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by Graystoke

Sorry, late replying to this.
Located in Cedar Falls Iowa.

Thanks for the response. I was just curious. We sold ours a little over a year ago. It definitely was not as easy as your story and some others I've heard about. Must depend a lot on the location. I don't know if that's just my city or the neighborhood within.

[displacedinMN]

homes here are selling like crazy. many fast and over asking

cheap money


like this one. It is in great shape but not worth 369k. On the market for 7 days and already contingent.

https://www.themlsonline.com/minneso...-Hope-MN-55427

Mine is 5 years old. I could sell it in 4 days for at least 75k more than I paid for it. I have put 0 investment in it.

Need rain man to chime in

[tredadda]

Originally Posted by Bugeater

He gone. Guy has to have the record for the most thread bannings in CP history.

[Valiant]

Yeah, sadly the exodus from cali is going to hurt all the surrounding states. As a large portion of those people will take their insane policy thoughts with them and drive up costs.

As for houses, it is insane. Houses are selling In my neighborhood for almost 100k more than what I bought. My house I grew up in in the 90s were 90k, dropped to 40ks because of all the other hud homes taken over. Now the neighborhood hoods is around 200k for 3bed one or two bath homes around 1200sf.

I have read that they are trying to drop the canadian lumber tariff.

That will help, but no builders want to build starter homes either unless you find these tiny home builders.

[vailpass]

It would be frigging insane to be trying to buy a house right now. Buyers are offering well above asking price and waiving the inspection just to get an offer accepted. Can you imagine doing that?

[Rain Man]

Does anyone else get home value updates from Zillow? Zillow is loving my house right now. It just shot up almost 15 percent.

These home value estimates are all over the board so I don't put too much stock into them. Redfin is 25 percent lower than Zillow on my house, for example. But I think the Zillow estimate is much closer based on what I see in the neighborhood, and I'm tempted to sell it and go live on a yacht in Bali.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by displacedinMN

homes here are selling like crazy. many fast and over asking

cheap money


like this one. It is in great shape but not worth 369k. On the market for 7 days and already contingent.

https://www.themlsonline.com/minneso...-Hope-MN-55427

Mine is 5 years old. I could sell it in 4 days for at least 75k more than I paid for it. I have put 0 investment in it.

Need rain man to chime in

Yeah, houses have been selling over the asking price in Denver for years. I guess supply just can't catch up with demand, and low interest rates are ramping demand up even higher.

I did a housing study for a city here in Colorado a while back, and we started tracing back what was causing the big increases. To our surprise, we're still feeling impacts from the Great Recession. Construction shut down for a while and population growth didn't. For states with positive in-migrant flows from other areas, it's created a wave of home demand (buying and renting) that keeps getting bigger, and losing basically two years of construction in the 2009/2010 time frame was a big deal that's still reverberating through the market today.