First Home Brokerage in Queens, NY
First Home Brokerage of NY relies very heavily in advertising in minority sections of the newspapers and advertises on minority radio stations. They keep a large minority staff so the customers can relate to the corporation better. They show a potential customer a film of how a house will look after being repaired and they show satisfied customers. They help you clean up your credit. They help you move from a bad neighborhood to a good one. They help you buy a house.
Sounds great! But, they give you a mortgage that, in most cases, you clearly cannot afford. They exaggerate your income to the mortgage bank. They fake documents to get you to qualify for the loan. In some cases, they put money in your bank and fake a Gift Affidavit so the mortgage bank thinks you got a large gift from a relative. In some cases, they even faked pay checks and employment verifications. They add all the repair charges and your fixed up credit charge onto the sale of the price without you realizing it. When you are told your credit will be cleaned up, you really don't know what this means. When the appraisal doesn't come in high enough, they threaten that appraiser and he re-types the appraisal or they get another appraiser. They do a very shoddy job of repairs. In many instances there was structural damage to foundations and basement walls and the repair crew put putty in the crack and painted over it. In 2 cases, the roof caved in within a month of the closing. The appraisal said the roof had a life expectancy of 5-7 more years. In this case, they avoided talking to that irate customer for 5 weeks and they would not have resolved it had it not been that they went to a local TV station.
Post closing, well over 60% of the homes are not repaired yet but at the closing they have to sign a document stating they approved with the completed repairs so they have no recourse to complain. You can never get the lawyers after the closing and if you do, they say "why did you sign that document if the repairs were not completed".
No exaggeration, in their Bronx, NY office, the manager threatens the customer's lives if they do not go ahead with the mortgage process and the closing of the escrow on the house. There have been several instances in which police had to be called to calm things down.
This company has been on the local news 3 times and nothing ever gets done. If someone wants to help these poor trusting people who manage to save a few bucks to buy their dream house, something should be done to close down this business and others like it and I know there are many and this is racial descrimination just as much as if you call someone a bad name. They prey on people that are less knowledgeable than they and it seems no one puts an end to this.