Complaint Review: Lyon Homes

My husband Bill & I bought a Lyon Home and got swindled out of 250 thousand dollars. The mortgage division of Lyon Homes told us to take 250 thousand dollars out of the equity of our current home and put it as a down payment on a new home in one of their master planned communities. We werent always track home people but the design looked like it would be better than liberty station in San Diego. Now we are upside down on our primary residence and the new home, we cant sell the old home and without selling the old home we cannot afford the newly bilt one, we cant sell the new home because we cant get a loan for it and the houses in the new development are not selling and are also upside down. My family is broken apart and I am personally bankrupt. When we asked for the money back they told us that we signed a contract and that there was nothing we can do. Obviously we were sold a bill of goods by Lyon. I guess our option is to bankrupt or to try and sue but I think there is a long line.

Lyon conned me into taking 250 thousand dollars out of the equity in my home to buy one of their homes in their San Diego Master Plan Community and now I am completely upside down in my home. Lyon has told me to not worry about the money and to just move on with my life and wait for the property values to come back in the San Diego community. Bill & I are beyond frustrated and worried about what Lyon has done to us. I feel a feeling of helplessness and feel like the only thing I can do right now is to post this in order to protect anyone else that may be thinking about a mortgage or home with Lyon in the future. I simply dont know what else we can do! I truly do believe in Karma so I wasnt sure if I should write this but I dont want anyone else to get sold a bill of goods by Lyon. I hope this will help so they cant do what they did to me to anyone else.

I am not just another client or an investor that Lyon cheated money from I was a long time employee of Lyon and I thought a good friend of the owners. I should have seen it coming after the long list of people that I watched Lyon swindle, cheat, take advantage of, deceive, double-cross, steal, lei, betray and sell a bill of goods to.

When I met one of their mortgage brokers for the first time he reminded me of a used car salesman. The youngster was a skinny little grommet working out of the trailer that was on the site in San Diego. I have no idea how this kid was working here or able to even calculate math or the bill at a restaurant. The kid had story after story and had the persona of a real scammer. Not even his own mother took him serious but we did since the other employees told us too. Stupid on us! No thanks to anything this kid did the mortgage industry was booming and finally he was making money for the first time in his life and of course he wasnt saving any of it! It seems like my money went straight to this kid so he could go buy a new corvette, and get private tables at all the downtown night clubs. It became the new American way to bank. Spend it

The kid and his buddies storys were bad- instead of saving his profits he spent it ALL and made as many exotic loans along the way as possible.

I should have known then that the Lyon mortgage division was just a cesspool for scum bags because the second the division started making money Lyon moved the employees from the onsite trailer to a new building and transferred all of the income to a separate bank account and newly formed corporation so the other employees of Lyon would never see a penny of the profit. (I know this because I was in the accounting division and the company had a profit sharing plan and a medical bill plan. I now am unemployed)

Lyon of course hired as many college dropouts as they could to advise all the poor souls who bought in the community how to finance their homes. They even threw parties at San Diego popular nightclubs to create excitement. Like a Donald Trump exclusive VIP list. Bottom-line they created fake demand, hype and velvet ropes to get large deposits and to move the homes. The deposits were what keep the company alive to continue the projects without the deposits the lender would not release more funds. Some buyers didnt have 250 thousand dollars and you could buy other houses for zero down at the time. So the team of scumbags really had to sell the bill of goods! When things started to slow down Lyon had to start settling for monthly payments.

I personally watched Lyon con and pilfer money from anyone they crossed and they always got away with it until now! Just think of all the people that moved from Arizona to San Diego with their wives and children to seek the California lifestyle and ended up losing their 250 thousand dollar deposits. What Lyon did to all those families was even more disgusting than the bill of goods that they sold to me.

The mortgage industry was booming and so did the new Lyon company that was formed in San Diego for all their communities nationwide.

The second that the new company began making money Lyon started looking for more and more ways to make money.

Lyon hired young shoe salesman and paid them as little as they could so the managers could make all the money while they did most of the work that they were originally hired to do.

Meanwhile my home was becoming upside down and we were on our way to becoming dead broke. If you think is repulsive so far it gets even worse. All the horrible things Lyon was doing to the people was keeping the owners of the company up at night. They all started acting awfully paranoid. They bought surveillance equipment for all over the offices and changed the phone number.

After watching Lyon deprive, Commit Larsen and lie to all those people I should have known better than to trust them. After they promised me an employee discount, Lyon conned me into taking 250 thousand dollars from the equity in my home to put down on a new home in the community which essentially meant that I invested in the company to make it look better on paper. They sold me a bill of goods that I would be with the company forever and that we would all be rich. Looking back on what Lyon did to everyone else he made promises to I cannot believe I was so dumb.

Then just like you thought the story would go at the peak of the market everything exploded. Overnight Lyon Homes in San Diego and the company that the owners had built was toast. Lyon would have been fine except for the greed of the people running the mortgage company. The mortgage guys saw themselves as the next Donald Trumps and was trying to make Lyon into the next Bank Of America. To do this they had to use our money to get their own banking lines. In order to show as much money as possible on paper, Lyon was cash flowing all the bills from previous with future profits of the other company. The instant that the mortgage industry went sideways there were no more profits. I was in the AP department and when Lyon owed millions of dollars to vendors and subcontractors the second that there was no more profits the company was finished.

The people on the mortgage side thought that they would always be on top and they never gave any thought to the future, protecting the employees or the main company. The second that the market changed they immediately could not pay the employees and everyone lost their job due to greed. I should have been smarter and seen what was coming but I just never thought that the owners of Lyon would do it to me. Lyon stopped paying the employees and vendors. The mortgage guys claimed that all the money was gone when it was time to payback the main parent company. They tried to point the blame at anyone and everyone around them but everyone knew the truth. The mortgage company rapped and pillaged all of our cash and kept it for their greedy selves and their partying.

Today the Lyon mortgage guys have sold their bill of goods to another company. Lyon now has so many law suits out against them. They owes so much money to so many people. I know I will be last in line. I wonder if this post will cure all the problems and ruined lives that Lyon created. I know am not going to ever get my money back! My house is upside down and my family is in shambles. In the end I can only blame myself for trusting the bill of goods that the Lyon mortgage boys sold me. The only thing I can do now is help stop someone else from making the same mistakes.

Sincerely,