HomeVestors of America claims to be the country’s largest cash homebuyer and says it helps homeowners out of jams. But a closer look reveals that the company trains its franchisees to cash in on homeowners’ desperation.
When people say that financial literacy needs to be taught in schools, this is the kinda thing we mean. Payday Loans, Rent To Owns, Flipping, MLMs, stuff that happens in the REAL world that people should be able to recognize as too-good-to-be-true.
Wait a second, was someone under the impression that this company and others like it weren’t going to screw over those in need of their services? I guess maybe the people who don’t get that PayDay loans are a horrible idea. Or who think the $1/mo Car Insurance is a deal.
Honestly I think all that needs to happen is have a law passed that forces these types of companies to explain in very simple language that they are providing a service that not in the homeowner’s best interest. “We are buying your home and are expecting to make somewhere between X and Y dollars in profit when we flip your home. We will be doing the following things to your property to sell it.” Some people will still use their services but at that point no one can say they were duped because legalese was used to trick them.
From https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-ugly-houses:
“The homeowner, Corrine Casanova, had bought the three-bedroom Baldwin Park bungalow with her husband in 1961 and now owned it outright… Although she was once a skilled bookkeeper and president of the local women’s club, dementia now carved into her short-term memory: A recent neurological assessment had found the 82-year-old was unable to say what year it was or name the city she was in. She routinely mistook her adult son for his uncle… But by the time he left that evening, Evans had a contract to buy the house for roughly two-thirds its value, signed in Casanova’s shaky script.”
We need real solutions to these problems, not neoliberal bullshit. Public option banking and strict regulation on insurance & realty industry.
Agreed. This is full on abuse of someone with a mental disorder. This shouldn’t be legal in any type of situation and those in charge should be doing real hard time.
At some point if you are of sound mind I don’t know if we really should be stopping people from doing things harmful to themselves. The goal should be making sure they are fully aware of the fact they are being taken advantage of. If we want to just jump in and stop it from happening then we would need to abolish all religions and the vast majority of politicians asking for donations as they do far more damage to a vastly larger number of people.
Unless we solve the issue of needing money and the constant cost of living growing leaps and bounds compared to income, these services exist because people need money.
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Any company advertising ‘We buy xxxxx’ is a bad idea for the seller, always. If it wasn’t screwing over the seller, it wouldn’t make enough money to pay for the advertising.
