Complaint Review: Frank Orr Century21 Realty In Heber Springs AR Helped Defraud Us On Property By Refusing To Help Us Recend Contract DueTo Fraud Because They Helped The Seller And slander My Name To Lie To The AREC

Ever think about moving to a beautiful retreat in a charming little town with lots of wildlife, fishing, golfing and the like? Well, we did to. A little place that is known as Heber Springs. But you should be warned, small towns do hold sometimes unpleasent secrets. Don't fear the deer, fear the Realtor you pick if you decide to move there.

 There are many good realtors there but you always have to have the bad. This is about two real estate companies who helped a seller defraud my wife and me which has cost us now almost everything we own three years later.

We fell in love with Heber Springs so we decided to sell our home in Missouri and find one down in Heber. We picked out a realty company which was Frank Orr Realty. The agent we used was Frances Travis, we soon thought of her like family. We asked her if she would be our exclusive agent and she said she would. We told her about our problems in the past a decade earlier and wanted to make sure that it never happend again and she said it would be no problem.

We made several trips before we found the right one, not in Heber Springs but in Quitman. It was to be our dream home. We tried twice to get it. However, unusual things started to happen. We were not being represented and our friend/agent was using our friendship to deceive us. There was a misunderstanding because we were being lied to and to save our friend we paid out $500.00 to save her from being written up by the other realty agent. We were second contingents and we did not know that we had to put down earnest money which is unheard of but legal and we were not allowed to have an inspector view the property for ten business days were over if the first contingents could not come up with the money.

Unknown to us the seller/agent wanted to make things right at the same time we did. Frances Travis did not give us a copy of the offer. When I said I wanted to do the same she told us no. It was not until she lied to the AREC that we found out about the note she withheld from us that would have salvaged this transaction. We never saw or signed it. We were going to pay cash for the house and she denied us of it. We lost our dream home. However... We are just getting started, we had far more worse things coming our way.

Frances continued to show us other homes most of which are what we called burner downers. Then she started getting phone calls from a woman begging her find a buyer for her son because he was getting a divorce. This happened on several showings while we were in the car. Frances then started bringing up a house that we had not even asked to see. She said it was real underpriced.

After two views we decided it would be the best house, to move my mother in with us when it came time. My youngest son would be coming with us to go to college there. I just could not figure, however, why an all brick home would have a wooden deck in front instead of a porch. I asked Frances about it and she said she did not know.

We finally decided to make an offer on the house and it was refused. Then we tried one more time and it was refused. By this time we were back in Missouri doing this from the phone. We finally told Frances to forget it and we were going to move on. About ten minutes later the phone rang again and it was Frances.

The sellers agent had convinced the seller to accept our terms to purchase the house, according to Frances. It was also then Frances Travis told us the woman who was calling her was in fact the sellers mother. Listen folks we now know this to be a breach of fiduciary duty. She should have told us who this woman was or told her to quit calling because the other realty company Crye-Leike was the sellers realty company and his agent was Jake Clowers. Frances did not tell us the sellers were getting a divorce until we had already made an offer. She told us, as we were leaving closing, that it was a close one as the seller was going into foreclosure the next week. We now know that the seller's wife had filed for divorce the year before the house went up for sale when she moved out of the home to another residence.

To make a long story a little shorter... Unknown to us the two realty companies and the inspector were joining forces to put a fraud on us. The inspection report we received was a lie. More lies than truth. The septic system was non-functioning, the master bathtub was cracked and the cement and brick porch had recently been torn off, the footings to the front of the house had been knocked out by the owner which caused structural failure. The front story and a half of the brick wall was fully moving. The flood problems had not been revealed and long effects of water errosion had compromised and disintegrated the seal and major floor joists in the living room.

When the inspection was done our wonderful friend Frances Travis officially became an disclosed dual agent when she took the inspection report, in computer program form, from the inspector and gave it unknowing to us to Jake Clowers of Crye Leike for him and his seller to look over and change the inspection report to reflect what they had put down on the disclosure.

This was verified by Jake Clowers under oath to the AREC that he accepted the report, which is forbidden, and he also admitted Frances passed it to him. This was without our knowlege or permission. Why would Clowers do this? He had bought the property from the previous sellers and then sold it to the new sellers. They were friends. Frances Travis was a good friend or relative of the sellers family. The compromised inspection report was given back to Frances and Frances gave that inspection report to us. The inspector did not contact us throughout and we received a hard copy 22 days later, which was after close.

I found out through a next door neighbor on the street that we bought the house on when he came to meet us in his wheelchair the monday after we closed that there had been a long history of problems on the property for about five years. We also found out that there were other problems that he did not tell us about but we found out some time later that our neighbor invested in real estate property. Guess who his buyers agent was? Jake Clowers of coarse! Our neighbor said he thought of buying the property but there were too many problems with the house and that they were asking too much. His buyer's agent, Clowers, would have to be his eyes and legs for any investment property. So, he would depend on his advice and disclosure.

Listen up people, a sellers agent has a fiduciary duty to the buyer if the disclosure is dishonest and if he knows about the problems with the house,or anything else the seller is dishonest about that could affect the transaction, by the law of agency, has a duty to the buyers before the seller in that instance alone. It is also written in the real estate books santioned by the state. They refused to come forward. They also have a duty to check the house by inspecting it. If he had been honest, being a former owner of the house in question, he would have told us that the septic tank had been hidden under a pile of sheetrock. Clowers also refused to provide the location of the septic tank as was his duty, as well as refusing to tell us the cement porch had just been removed and replaced with a wooden deck.

Once our neighbor told us of this we went the same day to Frank Orr Century 21 and told Frances, she said they owed us for anything not disclosed. How nice, as she is the one who compromised the inspection report with Jake Clowers. Now I know why she acted scared. Frank Orr came in and said they would have a meeting with Jake, we were not invited. The next day Franks verdict was that they were going to take a wait and see approach. Which meant do nothing. Why would he when they were involved?

We were still friends with Frances because we had not known what was happening to us. She came to the house on many occasions as we told her about our suffering, our money flying out the door, the repairs we were having to make, my wife's tears , our anger, yet she would never comment. We continued to go out to eat with her and her family. We would buy, they would buy. We bought her daughters presents, etc. We found out later that she was there to inform Frank Orr of our every move and our every thought, and our status of our finances.

When we finally started piecing things together we contacted the AREC. Let me tell you they were worthless in our case. In our opinion, they are there to give a false sense of security to the real estate buyers. If something goes wrong they immediately protect the realtor. Know this that the realtors are allowed to come in with their attorneys because the AREC is supposed to be your representation.  This did not happen for us. The AREC in no way represented us in this case. They did defend the realtors. Rick Stanley with the AREC told us in our attorneys office that a realtor could lie to us, mistreat us, misrepresent, ect., get away with it unless we could prove a crime had been committed. That is an outright lie. Rick Stanley never called one of our witnesses, not one.

The AREC believed Frank Orr who provided liars to bear false witness against me. Frank Orr slandered my name with the help of a Deputy from Texas that we had had trouble with who was also a neighbor and a jailer when we had bought a property in Texas almost a decade ago. He lived 2 doors from us and never met us in nearly 4 years.

His cousin, and her husband, with the help of their attorney and, once again, a corrupt inspector defrauded us by selling property they did not own part of, a home with a septic, hand- made brick by brick cracked in three places with no permanent lid at ground level, bad electrical, a propane hotwater heater vented into the attic so with one spark we could blow up in the house, leaking roof, missing land needed to exist with septic, undisclosed leach lines, plumbing cut off from septic to flow directly under the house, house had been moved from another location and not tied down, undisclosed lien on house, etc. This was all approved by a FHA Inspector in Texas and sold to us without being disclosed by this deputy's family. Thompson also lived in our home as a boy. He later became a deputy about a year after we moved in. He was as big a problem as the former sellers while we tried to mind our own business on our property. He appointed himself to be the county spokesman and told the commission I was conspiracy minded and a trouble maker, yet I had commited no crimes. He did this on his County Sheriff's Department Letterhead. He did send copies of letters I had sent the sheriff and district attorney pleading for help for my family and my children. They denied it to us when neighbors were coming onto our property with front end loaders tearing down our fences, which was recorded, refused to protect us while this deputy harrassed us from our parking pad, refused to help when the former owners would harrass from across the street and threatened harm including waving a gun around, etc. My school age children had to witness this on a daily basis. To top things off the survey had been altered by the county surveyor because the new property next to us had it's house built halfway in the closed road. It was worthless. We still have the proof that  we were right. The end result was the house was worth $0.00 dollars which we still have that document. We asked Frances to protect us from this happening again. Instead she, not only allowed it, but participated.

Frank Orr tried to show the Commission that we caused trouble everywere we went which is another lie. He claimed he had witnesses he did not have because we went and asked them. He told the AREC that he had been keeping files on us from a year before we bought to a year after we bought. This is a man who is supposed to be a professional.

Crye-Leike has fought tooth and nail, has drawn out the due process as long as they possibly can. They make demands then cancel the demands, then make more demands. So far I am out way over $100,000. If you need the gold coat treatment then Frank is your man. Oh, about Frances, she seems to have been rewarded for her deeds. She became for a term, the President of the Heber Springs Board of Realtors. Isn't that nice after what she did and then could lord herself over honest realtors. I almost forgot one of the most important things. All realtors involved denied to the AREC that there was a delayed occupancy addendum. Good old Frances changed the time on the document to show we had final inspection in the middle of the afternoon when, in fact, we viewed the property around lunchtime to try to shore up their lie that the addendum was not used following closing to suggest we took possession of the property before the breach of contract was discovered. In fact, we were in a motel room for the duration of the addendum when the breach of contract was discovered.  We were also denied our right to have a final inspection until after close which is another breach of fiduciary duty but you know she had to protect her friends, or family. They also forgot we have receipts of our three week stay at the motel.

Our reward for our fight is we are broke, will not be able to take care of my mother as we promised her or help our children invest in their future. We have lost our car, our retirement investments, our savings, our household belongings including furniture and related estate items, etc., all because we were denied our rights to rescind the fraudulent contract. This is the perfect crime and you will see this happen more and more. The people need to form advocacy groups to end this perfect crime and increase liability limits, and extend the statute of limitations. An example is where inspectors are accountable from one year now to five years, or no limit on fraud. Make it where the criminal realtor and seller have to pay restitution no matter how long it has been.

The crooked realtor has the law on their side because it is not enforced enough in Arkansas. And brother do you need deep pockets for an attorney here because some will take you for all you are worth. I hope we will help prevent fraud from happening to you or your friends, and buyer beware in Arkansas. Thank you for listening, Tom

PS What I have said today I can back up with receipts, documents, photographs, and real estate law, and under oath statements from the AREC.