my gift. hope you join me on "sunday morning futures," 10:00 a.m. with orrin ♪ >> i'm bob massi. for 35 years, i've been practicing law and living in las vegas, ground zero for the american real-estate crisis. but it wasn't just vegas that was hit hard. lives were destroyed from coast to coast as the economy tanked. now it's a different story. the american dream is back. and nowhere is that more clear than the grand canyon state of arizona. so we headed from the strip to the desert to show you how to explore the new landscape and live the american dream. i'm gonna help real people who are facing some major problems, explain the bold plans that are changing how americans live, and take you behind the gates of properties you have to see to believe. at the end of the show, i'll give you critical tips you need to know

in the massi memo because information is power. and the property man has got you covered. [ woman vocalizing ] thanks for joining us. i'm bob massi. i'm going to go and meet a woman named coleen who thought she was selling her home. but she said she actually got scammed into just giving it away. the property man's going to go in and talk to her and see what happened, how it happened and if we can help her. when coleen and her husband moved, their old house wasn't selling. >> we built this home in 2007. everything you see, my husband and i did. we did the patio. we did the iron gates. >> it was a beautiful home built just before the housing bubble burst. >> it was 4,000 square feet. we became empty nesters when my youngest moved out. it was just too big. >> did you try to sell it? >> almost 2 1/2 years. >> it sat on the market, slowly draining their pocketbook. they tried renting it out,

were still losing money month to month. they got lowball offers from about six investors. coleen says they checked all of them out as best as they could. they decided to go with an investor named peter ted malone, who, with his wife, mary, called themselves tema housing solutions. the card that i'm looking has this -- this guy's name on it, ted malone. and at the top, it says "stop foreclosure. save your credit and get your house sold in 7 days." did he show you this card? >> he gave us several of those cards. and they're on the bottom of his e-mail as well as his websites. they seemed very nice, very knowledgeable, had said they'd been doing this for a while. they had a few houses in scottsdale. >> okay. did you check out to see if the llc was legitimate with the secretary of state or anything like that? >> we did all that. but nothing came back on any of it, couldn't find anything with anybody saying that this was not legit. >> and your... at that time, your house payments were current. your hoa was current. your property tax was current. everything was exactly the way

it should be. >> yes. >> malone offered to buy the house for the amount owed on the mortgage, 395,000. >> this seemed to be the best option for us because they wanted a 1-year or close sooner. and the way he made it out to be was he had somebody that wanted to buy it right away. >> they said he agreed to take over the mortgage payments, hoa dues and property taxes. >> they reassured us, sitting at that table behind you, that they would pay the loan. on his contract, it said if he made any type of money, we wouldn't see that. but he would pay our loan off. and he said that he's been very successful at doing this with other homes in the area. and the night before we were supposed to go to the title company, he said, "you know what? since there's no money being exchanged at this time, we've been told by our lawyer all we have to do is do this quitclaim deed, sign these papers with a, um, notary." >> this deed is a way to transfer ownership of property. the owner or grantor quits their rights to claim ownership

and grants those rights to the other party, called the grantee. a quitclaim deed contains no warranties of title. it just says, "i'm giving up my interest in the property and transferring it to you." you sign all these documents and then you basically felt, "the deal's over. we're done. and things -- life is good. he's gonna start makin' the payments." then the bills started rolling in, bills she thought they were no longer responsible for. >> i was getting very strange e-mails from him saying, "oh, my wife's in, um, the hospital. the payments are gonna be made. we almost lost her, blah, blah, blah." and then my husband and i started digging. >> and what they found out wasn't very good. the address listed for tema housing solutions also happens to be home to 250 other businesses. and why? because it's actually the postalmax, a shipping and mailbox rental store located in a shopping center. their office, mailbox 171. and ted and mary, well,

they had been arrested in 2015 for multiple cases of fraud related to firearm sales. peter malone received a 4-year deferred sentence on the felony theft charge and 4 years' probation. mary received 4 years' probation for the misdemeanor theft charges. anybody home? well, this is the house that we were talking about earlier. looks like it's vacant. there's no furniture, lookin' through the window. >> this is my first time back. >> how does it make you feel? >> sick. >> in what way? >> i built this house. i -- i actually planted everything you see by hand. my husband and i spread the rocks out. so, yes, it makes me very ill. i knew i wasn't gonna get anything out of it. but at least i thought i wasn't gonna be ruining my credit by giving it this guy. i want my house back. and i want him to pay. and -- >> civilly. >> yes.

>> and, at this point in time, they still haven't been served with a lawsuit. >> no, they haven't because we were advised not to try to serve them because we really didn't know where he was. >> this is not in any way to make you feel worse than you already feel. but for our viewers, you never, ever give up title to your property when you have a loan that remains in your name. you never should give limited powers of attorney or any powers of attorney to people because, you know, you're basically saying, "you're my agent." now, what could you do? well, first of all, you have a competent lawyer who is filing a lawsuit. there's different ways to perfect services, we call that, even if you can't find 'em. they're not gonna respond. if they do respond, they're bigger idiots than we thought because now they have to go before the court under oath. and that makes no sense, which is only gonna open more criminal prosecution for them. matter of fact, that may be the best thing that happens. if they do get served, then they are stupid enough to get a lawyer to defend it and go under oath, where your competent lawyer will crush 'em. that would be the best-case scenario.

but chances are people like this, they run from the law. they run from the courtrooms. they run. they run from justice because they know they're gonna lose. so once that happens, you get the deed to the property back because a court ultimately, in reviewing your lawsuit, will say, you're entitled to it back because it was based on fraud. don't feel bad about this. this happens to the best of people that have been in real estate, with your knowledge, for years. what you do know, and you're kind enough to send this message out to viewers, you know, "don't let this happen to you, and because we all could be victims." >> right. >> and shame on these people. i'm going to dig a little deeper into the malones and see what i could do to help coleen get her house back. i'll update you on the situation on a later episode. up next, new life for a building with some serious history, 100 years in the making. [ woman vocalizing ]

♪

>> welcome back. i'm bob massi, the property man. every day, you probably drive past hundreds of buildings without ever really know the rich history that resides within those walls. now, here in phoenix, a 100-year-old building with an amazing story is getting a new life. it's a property that might seem oddly familiar to alfred hitchcock fans. it's called the barrister building, formerly known as the jefferson hotel. >> in the opening scene of "psycho," that hotel in the beginning is this building's claim to fame. so right before you get nice and scared, this is the building that you get to see. >> but the building's history started long before that with a young developer and traveling salesman. >> salim ackel was an immigrant from the middle east. he moved to arizona at 18 and started selling wares out of wagons down in the mining towns in southern arizona. >> this building was constructed in 1915 and operated

as a very high-end hotel for quite a long period of time. >> it became the tallest building in phoenix. and it stayed that way for five years. when this building opened, it was a huge event for the city. it was a very luxurious building. it got six pages in the arizona republic completely devoted to it. the interior was marble and mahogany. all of that is gone now. it also had rooms for traveling salesmen so they could set up temporary storefronts, which was common at the time. >> for decades, part of the vibrant phoenix downtown scene. but in the '50s and '60s, suburban sprawl took people away from the core of the city. >> downtown was transforming. the jefferson hotel degraded as people moved from staying in downtown. and that is likely why it was featured in the film "psycho." >> the shots in the movie make it feel like a cheap fleabag hotel. and people began avoiding the building. >> the beginning of that movie is a terrific snapshot

of what downtown phoenix looked like, when there's some buildings under construction. some of the older buildings are right before probably getting torn down. >> and being associated with "psycho" certainly didn't help. >> when rumors get started, it does cause the building or the hotel to decline even faster. you know, now we use yelp. and we see what everybody thinks about the building. back then, it was word of mouth that this really wasn't someplace that you wanted to stay any longer. >> yet somehow, it survived. >> it was a hotel through the '70s. and then it was transformed into the barrister place office building. the interior was completely gutted. the storefront was modified. >> in 1990, the city purchased the building as an overflow space for its office. and they functioned in the space until 2010. >> the historical significance of this building really lies in the construction methods. >> historic preservationists and others fought diligently to keep this building here. >> so the building was saved. but it sat empty until now.

>> we took it out for an open process and have selected a developer who intends to build, in this building, 25 for-sale condos with ground-floor retail space. they will be protecting the facade of the building and the character of the building. so it will continue to look just like it does today. >> it's part of the trend we've seen across america, a move away from the suburbs and back to the urban core. >> when this building was first built, this was the center of the city. this was where everyone truly lived, right around this area. in the '70s, '80s and '90s, it really became known as the area only for courts and government. and anybody who worked in the central city, as soon as 5:00 hit, they were gone. that's all changing now. the central city now is becoming this vibrant, revitalized urban hub. >> but that just doesn't mean throwing up new buildings. it also means preserving history. >> we were creating a very homogenous, kind of vanilla downtown with

no depth, no fabric. and this building was part of what would keep that fabric alive. you're using these buildings to attract companies that want some unique "psycho" hotel that they can turn into a place where their workers feel connected to the building. and they're connected to the city that created that building. instead of having the haunted vibe be something that causes people to avoid, my guess is it will be what absolutely sells this building quickly. you'll be able to show your kids and your grandkids the opening scene from "psycho" and say, "that's where i live." ♪ >> still to come as "the property man" continues, i've got some updates to a few of the stories we've told you, including a zombie mortgage that wouldn't die and a man who got divorced but couldn't remove his ex-wife from the mortgage. i'll tell you what finally happened next. [ woman vocalizing ]

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♪ >> welcome back. i'm bob massi. i wanna update you on a few of the stories that we brought to you a few months ago now that there is some resolution. we've talked in the past about homeowners' associations and what their powers are when homeowners don't pay their dues. hoas have legal rights and powers over properties. they can, in fact, initiate foreclosures over monthly dues, fees and assessments. back in florida, we met marshall, who's the neighborhood volunteer chairman of his hoa. he took me to a home that sat abandoned in the neighborhood after the homeowner skipped town. and the bank's foreclosures never seemed to get completed. it's what we've called, in the past, a zombie foreclosure. do you have any idea why they haven't foreclosed on this property? >> i have no idea. >> it's probably because they don't wanna pay the hoa dues. and they don't wanna pay the insurance. and they don't wanna pay the taxes. >> that is probably correct.

>> the home's exterior began to deteriorate. and it became an eyesore for the neighborhood. >> most of the screens ended up blowing out. and because this represented a safety risk, the health department from the county came in and secured the pool area itself. so there was a lot of things growin' in there, an enormous amount of algae. neighbors ended up complaining to me all the time that the pool looked bad, the screens looked bad and the roof had mold on it. driveway had mold and mildew on it. what to do? and i said, "we were told by the homeowners' association you can't do anything because the property isn't ours." >> the homeowners' association could have decided to foreclose. but they do that subject to the right of the first mortgagee and, in this case, the bank. but they then have to pay for repairs, taxes and insurance. >> if we remediate the home, uh, we're gonna end up spending probably the bulk of the homeowners' equity in the entire neighborhood. and, uh, it may end up leading to, uh, an assessment increase in the years to come. >> and guess what, guys.

the bank, at any time, could wake up from their zombie and decide to foreclose on the property. >> we'd fix up the house, make it beautiful, uh, get a tenant in there. and that would not, basically, stop the bank to come in and go, "hey. we want our house now." >> so what happened? well, i worked with marshall to evaluate his options and helped him decide how to move forward. we just got this e-mail from marshall filling us in on the latest.

while in florida, i also went to meet with dennis. he got divorced. and his ex-wife deeded their home to him even though her name was on the original note and mortgage. >> what she was lookin' for was to have her name removed from the note so that she could move on with her life. and i perfectly agree with that. >> now, remember, folks. when you get divorced, the language in the divorce decree does not bind the creditors. this is a problem that dennis soon learned. when his ex-wife moved away, dennis was approved for a loan modification based solely on his income and qualifications. the loan mod was processed without her having to sign anything. >> the whole thing was done solely and based on my salary alone. the modification was complete. and i was in the trial process for three months. unfortunately, on the third month, i got a letter saying that they were selling the loan to caliber home loans. >> lenders pass on their loans to servicers. those are the people that you make your monthly payments to. and then your money is sent on to the lender. >> i got nothing from caliber

until after the modification was complete. and then it was finished. the caliber wouldn't do anything, wouldn't even discuss an assumption. >> now in this case, the new servicer refused to remove the ex-spouse's name from the loan even though the lender only looked at dennis for the ability to pay. why? because they're both still responsible for the underlying loan in case of a default. >> this is the way i see it is that caliber is holding her hostage. there's no reason for her to be on the mortgage or on any note or anything like that. the whole modification was completely based on my salary. >> one of the misunderstandings, dennis, that happens is when people get divorced, there's certain language that -- that is put in divorce decrees or property settlement agreements that basically say, "you get this property. you get the car. you get this bank account." and transfers of title happen. for example, in this case, right, your wife deeded the property to you. many times, the thought process is, "i have no more responsibility

on the note." but in fact, she did. so here's what i was able to do. i contact the servicer. i explained to them that dennis was always the primary person that had the income to get approved. i explained to them that he wanted his ex-wife to be able to go out and get a new loan. after dealing with them and their lawyers, they finally released his ex-wife from the loan. and she now can go on with her life. and dennis is happy. here's two stories with good results. and they both have pretty much the same message. don't give up. up next on "the property man," the massi memo, what we learned from coleen, who was scammed into giving away her home. stick around. [ woman vocalizing ] it's time to rethink what's possible. rethink the experience. rethink your allergy pills. flonase sensimist allergy relief uses unique mistpro technology

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♪ >> welcome back. i'm bob massi, the property man. and it's time for the massi memo. you know, sometimes desperate people do desperate things. and earlier in the show, we talked to coleen, who thought that she sold her house, a legitimate sale, and found out she was the victim of a scam. let's look at what she did. she executed what's called a quitclaim deed. what does that mean? that means she transferred title to her home to a third party who, honestly, she didn't know much about. number two, she signed a limited power of attorney giving that same person the power to execute documents

on her behalf. so what's the significance of this? you should never, ever transfer your property to a third party that you don't know, number one. you don't do business with strangers. that's dangerous. and she found out because now she's a victim of it, because what she thought she sold, she now finds out that these people are part of a bigger scam that's been goin' for years in this country where people were desperate. they thought their house was gonna be foreclosed on. and they quitclaim and transfer their property to somebody, again, a victim of a scam. so when you're involved with any type of person that approaches you to transfer title to property, back away because if it sounds too good, it's most likely a scam. and if you have any papers to sign in reference to any real estate whatsoever in reference to your house, powers of attorney, please get sound, competent legal advice. that's the massi memo. that's what you have to remember. there's more information

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