SitemapCommunity Legal Aid, a nonprofit law firm serving low-income communities, filed a lawsuit against Vision Property Management accusing the real-estate management company of fraud, breach of contract and predatory sales practices.
The lawsuit filed Monday alleges 18 counts of illegal actions against Vision, its subsidiary companies and its leadership. Under land contracts, prospective owners pay rent to a seller for a predetermined number of years before having the option to purchase the property. The contracts, however, often push the burden of maintaining, repairing and dealing with financial issues attached to the property onto the renters, offering them no protections that would otherwise be available to traditional renters or mortgage-holders. This leaves renters open to any number of pitfalls, including pouring thousands of dollars into repairs or agreeing to rent a property that is, unbeknownst to them, in foreclosure. Steve McGarrity, executive director of Community Legal Aid, said the legal responsibility to ensure the home is habitable is on the landlord, not the tenant. “State and federal law don’t agree on the idea of ‘buyer beware’ when it comes to these contracts. Landlords have special requirements to disclose issues with the property to prospective tenants and homeowners,” he said.
When tenants ran out of money attempting to make the homes habitable – or when they decided to stop paying their rents to Vision Property upon realizing they’d been misled – Vision Property has evicted them without providing compensation for the investment they’d made in the buildings. Community Legal Aid also names several of the Vision Property companies as well as Vision Property CEO Alex Szkaradek and Chief Strategy Officer Steven Randall as defendants. McGarrity said Vision Property’s tactics were intentionally misleading and predatory. “They told our clients that these homes were habitable. Their website is filled with false claims about their properties. In many cases, their clients weren’t allowed to even see the interiors of the homes before signing a contract,” McGarrity said. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.