Hi, I am posting this in the hopes of saving someone else the trouble I went through. I beleive I was the victim of a real estate scam. On March 6, 2009 I offered full asking price for a condo located at 310 W. Greenbriar Unit 2B in Glen Ellyn…The seller accepted my offer of 95K and submitted the offer to the bank as this was a short sale. Within about 3 weeks, the bank accepted my offer. We had a deal…or so I thought. I got an appraisal, an inspection and a loan. My bank processed my loan and within a few weeks they said they were set to close. The seller, however, seemed to resist a little..he wasn’t cooperating and through his attorney, I was told that the seller had suffered brain tumors and was not easy to deal with. Weeks dragged on, and still the seller refused to schedule a closing date. Finally, after about 6 weeks, the seller left a message on my attorney’s voicemail saying he had no intention of selling this property. Two days the later the seller officially put the property back on the market for 95K…I couldn’t beleive it…I wasted nearly 3 months and thousands of dollars waiting for this guy to sell and it turned out he never had any intention of selling in the first place. At this point I had lost my lease and had nowhere to live. Here’s the scam as I beleive it to be, this seller has another property in the same complex, this one is at 475 Raintree Ct, Unit 2B, that he continually tried to get me to buy. This property, however, was in full fledged foreclosure. There is a rule that if the seller has a contract with someone, it will stop the foreclosure/short sale, giving the seller time to catch up on his payments…essentially this guy is buying himself time…and he’s using unsuspecting home buyers for his own gain. He has no intention of selling, b/c if he did sell it would have to be a short sale as he paid over 150K each for these condos. I now know that I am not the first one to fall for this scam. Here’s the kicker, this seller is an attorney and is strongly politically connected to the City of Chicago…I can’t afford to sue him and yes, I could sue him and win and he would have to pay my attorney fees, but I still have to put the money up front…I simply can’t afford to do that, SO this is my resolution…I can deal with the fact that I didn’t get the condo, but I would never forgive myself if I didn’t warn others about this.
This post was submitted by Katherine Shackelford.
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