Complaint Review: Bernard S Sparer - American Real Estate - Lender Services Group

Bernard Sparer owns rental property located at 2030, 2032, 2034 and 2036 N Sycamore, Los Angeles CA that he rents out as "luxury" housing (two residential houses w two units in each). The properties are located in the residential division of North Hollywood above Franklin (above the Chinese Mann Theatre).

I initially signed the lease in December 04 w the rent starting Jan 15, 05. As I was moving my family from out of state, I called Sparer a day before the move on January 22nd to confirm that all was ready for my arrival (after reading about heavy rains during the previous two weeks in LA) - I was told that the apartment was ready.

Guess what - when we pulled into the driveway on the afternoon of September 23rd there were construction workers putting the floor in our apartment and painting the walls - needless to say we could not move in on that day. Surely Sparer did not have the guts to show up - all we could get out of him on the phone that he was there before and the place looked ready. We had to stay in the hotel that night (and another 3 nights)

We met with Sparer the next day and, as a compensation for our hotel expenses, he promissed to bring the apartment to tenantable contition within 3 days and offered us to stay in the apartment for free for 7 days (i.e. we will start paying on February 1st, but move in on January 23rd).

With the movers bringing our furniture on the 24th we thought it was a good idea to give Sparer a second chance and avoid the hastles of looking for a new place in a rush. Sparer also had many thousands of dollars of our money as deposit and first month rent at that time, which we thought would be a hastle to get out of him. Now, this was a stupid decision indeed!

Even though we did move in on the 23rd - it took us almost two weeks to get ridd of the construction dirt inside (Sparer did hire the cleaners to clean up the mess once, but anyone in involved in construction will tell you that after a major work you need to clean a place at least a few times).

Sparer never finished the place completely. For example, every - i mean every! - window started to leaked when it rained, plumbing was terrible (including minor, but very disturbing things like wrong size connectors for washer/dryer that did not allow us to do laundry for two weeks, almost no water flow in the kitchen, etc), we had electrical problems, there were holes below the entry door that sucked dust and the door in the garage did not fit properly, the apartment was not wired for phone iside, the cable company did not want to install the cable as they found out that some wiring was illegally done, etc.

What's even worth, Sparer started a major construction project in both the unit below and the unit above (he mentioned at the time of the lease that the unit below was close to completion, but in reality it still had probably a year to go as Sparer started raising the porch below and there were rumors floating around that he could be digging into the hill next to our apartment to create extra parking space). All this involved banging, sawing, cement trucks, scrap metal, bricks, dirt and dust....

One would imagine that such work will be done fast... of course not! The work was done in the most unorthodox hours without any respect for our privacy. For misterious reasons, many times the construction workers will come after 4pm and stay as late as 8pm and will work almost every Saturday (which sometimes raised my concerns if the whole endeavour was a legal one).

Not only the whole place looked like a dumpster with dust and debris around the house, but we had a terrible problem with noise and vibrations in the mornings, afternoons and many times evenings (including the weekends). Neither I nor my wife could find piece after work in that place. All other tenants were also very unhappy with Sparer and were glad to see us taking a stand against the crook.

The remainder of the story is typical. We offered Sparer to rescind the lease, which he refused to do. We hired a law firm that threatened Sparer with a lawsuit and this finally scared him enough to let us out of there. We found a more sane place and moved out. While Sparer signed the amendment stating that all our deposit will be returned to us, he kept a part of it as a compensation for "unpaid rent".

It is also worth noting, that the check he sent as a return of the part of my deposit was so unprofessionally written (half - typed, half hand written with both black and blue ink) that even Sparer's bank refused to accept it (I had to spend two! hours talking to the head of the Bev Hills Washington Mutual branch, who was great!!!, and she had to personally talk to Sparer on the phone to verify that the check was not counterfeit - all this just to cash a check, which by now should be a routing task in a Western society).

I have all the documents to prove the rent was paid in full and in the most timely manner. So I am currently in the process of filing a law suit against Bernard Sparer and his American Real Estate to get the remainder of my deposit back together with the legal fees.

In the meantime, here's my piece of advice. Be careful when dealing with Bernard Sparer / American Real Estate. One way or another, he will try to take advantage of you and you will end up wasting your money, and more importantly, time and nerves on this crook. There is alot of nicer places and more honest landlords in Los Angeles that you might be willing to deal with. Hope this helps.

E
Los Angeles, California
U.S.A.