Complaint Review: iPro Real Estate - Newport Beach California

Jason Mechura is the owner of iPro Real Estate and can not be trusted.

Regrettably Jason my former employing broker at iPro Real Estate. I abruptly ended my affiliation with Jason and iPro Real Estate in mid 2021 after Jason took advantage of one of my clients listings where I offered him 50% of the commission to manage my listing while I was out of town. I will get into how he concealed material facts to enter into that agreement and breached our contract in a minute. However first I would like to express my concerns by sharing my overall poor experience while I was working at iPro Real Estate. 2013-2021

Before I joined IPro Real Estate I demanded to meet Jason in person. I wanted to make sure he was a local broker and to get a sense of his personality. He seemed uncomfortable meeting me in person in Dana Point CA which was a little strange to me but I didn't see that as a negative at that time.

In the first few years at his company everything seemed fine because I didn't really have much to do with him as everything is online, I'm a self sufficient agent and I do everything on my own at my home office. Ipro Real Estate was simply a place to hang my license, nothing more. That is all I wanted. 

However as time went by Jason started to help himself to my commissions after I closed transactions without permission or even telling me. When my commission did not show up per my direct pay CDA instructions to escrow, I would follow up with Jason to ask him where my commission was and if he had it. Jason would simply reply with statements like "Yes and I appreciate your patience" without any further explanation of why he is holding my commissions without my consent. I would have to chase him each time this happened to get my commission and he would buy himself time saying statements like "I will send it when I'm able" or "I will pay you after another transaction closed and cleared" etc.

Obviously this is not right, professional or ethical in our line of business but there was a lot more going on that I didn't realize at that time.

A few of his other agents would contact me on occasion and complain to me that Jason was not paying them as agreed also. I should have taken this as a red flag and moved on but I was blind and continued minding my own business.

Fast forward to mid 2021 a client of mine who is an attorney offered me listing that was part of a court settlement that she was working on. I was to represent the seller to close her home for the best and highest price to satisfy a judgement. Unfortunately I was going to be out of town during this time as I had other business projects in Northern California. Because I was going to be out of town it was in my clients best interest that I co-list the property with an agent that was locally avaiible and able to efficiently manage the listing while I was out of town.

This is where I went terribly wrong. I reached out to Jason thinking the owner/broker of iPro Real Estate would be an honest professional, and do a great job for one of my best clients while I was out of town. I was sadly mistaken on a huge scale.

I called Jason to go over all the details of the listing and why I needed a local agents help. We also discussed what his roll would be which was basically everything listing agent related after the listing contract was executed. I offered him a generous 50/50 split on the commission on a $800k listing if he would manage, market and close the sale while I was out of town. Jason agreed without hesitation to this (easy money) and we went ahead and entered into a listing agreement with the seller on a 50/50 co-listing basis. All I wanted was Jason to look after my client and get the job done so I could go about my other business project.

There was just one major problem lurking inside Jason's mind. Despite the sole reason I needed to co-list with Jason who portrayed himself as a local and able agent to manage the listing while I was out of town, Jason failed to disclose to me or the seller that he himself was no longer living in California. Basically Jason took this listing knowing that the seller and I needed and expected him to be locally available to meet at the seller's home as needed while I was out of town. However Jason chose to conceal the fact that he was not local anymore and unable to vist the seller or home.

Jason remained silent while all parties executed the contract. However soon as I told Jason that all parties had executed the listing contract, (his commission was secured) Jason was incontrol and started asking me to do his part of our agreement. He told me that he "did not have a lock box in the area currently" and asked me to meet with the seller myself with my lock box and a sign before I left town. Thinking he was being genuine at the time and out of courtesy to him I agreed and delayed my trip by a few days. He also asked me to create the mls listing and upload it to the mls not disclosing that he did not have a CA MLS account.

Once the home was listed on the MLS and Jason seemed capable of moving forward alone, I left on my 12 hr commute to Northern California.

After I unpacked and settled in at my Nor Cal project, I checked in to see how it was going with Jason and the seller. In just a couple days Jason had managed to upset the seller by sending her inappropriate and impolite text messages. Per the text messages, what appeared to escalated the situation was when Jason called the seller Darlin and she was not impressed and told him not to call her Darlin. Jason's pride was obviosly hurt and he never bothered apologize or tried to make things right between them. He just continued to be rude to her and let tension between them escalate out of control to the point of no return.

I called Jason to find out what was going on and he seemed very angry at the seller. We got into a heated conversation and he admitted he was no longer living in California and managing the listing from Texas. When I asked him how he was going to complete the local sale tasks from Texas he told me he will "find" local agent to do those tasks. (This was not disclosed nor would it have been agreeable by me or the seller)... This is when I realized Jason had taken advantage of me by intentionally concealing material facts that would have otherwise altered my decision to list this property with him.

At this point it was too late. Multiple offers were submitted and instead of negotiating the offers for the seller per our agreement, Jason emailed the offers to me and the seller and told her that I will be in touch with her to discuss them. I had no option but to negotiate and put the transaction together myself from my phone in a remote location with spotty reception. Jason straight out failed to honor our agreement.

Seller was becoming increasingly upset with Jasons professionalisim and sent a very emotional email complaint to both attorneys involved copying Jason and I about her unacceptable experience working with "iPro Real Estate" and Jason's unprofessional text comments. Jason as usual remained silent excepting me to put out these fires while he was waching the show from his Texas computer.

Again I contacted Jason and asked him to resolve his issues with the seller so he could close the transaction per our agreement and I wouldn't have to come home and take over. He was really mad at this point and told me that he was not going to apologize to the seller for being rude and that "she needed to get over it and toughen up". He also stated that he didn't care if the current escrow closed or not.

This is when enough was enough. The attorney suggested I better return and take control as the listing was heading south. I stepped in and replied to the sellers email complaint. I copied all including the attorneys and Jason stating that Jason will no longer be a point of contact and I will working with seller moving forward. I let Jason know that I was heading home to take care of this mess. At this point the seller was unresponsive and the sale was sure to fail if I did not step in.

I had to abandon my project in Northern California to return to Orange County, another wasted 12 hr return commute and complete all of Jason's roll in our agreement. Jason had no objection to that and showed no care about my sacrifices with my business plans or the fact that the seller was not responding and turning the apprasier away.

Upon my return to Orange County, I managed put the failing transaction back together and closed the sale without any help from Jason. This took several in person meetings with the seller, Appraier, and helping the seller with requests for repairs, seller disclosures etc. Basically everything Jason had agreed to do himself per our agreement.

Just prior to close, I reached out to Jason and asked him to adjust the commission split back to our regular 94%(agent) 6%(broker) split based on everything that went wrong and the sacrifices I had to make in order to close the deal. Dispite Jason doing next to nothing in regards to our agreement he declined to adjust the commission instructions stating I was not sincere. My attorney/client who witnessed Jason's unacceptable conduct throughout the entire transaction also tried to mitigate the commission dispute but Jason ignored her email and escrow was obligated to pay him 50%.

I left his company after close which was obviously long overdue, and I did a little research on Jason and Ipro Real Estate. It turns out there are a couple court cases naming Jason and iPro Real Estate as defendants. I talked to one of the Plantiffs on a case who happens to be his former office admin. She had to file a small claims suit because Jason failed to pay her per their agreement. She now holds a Jugment against Jason but so far Jason has managed to avoid her collection efforts.

Summery:

1) Jason intentionally concealed a material fact in order to enter into an agreement to secure a higher than normal commission split. Had Jason disclosed that he was living in Texas and unavailable to locally manage my listing while I was out of town I would never had offered this co-listing opportunity to him and simply co-listed with another local agent.

2) Jason breached our contact by not honering our agreement or completing the real estate related tasks he agreed to do.

3) Not only did Jason make out with 1/2 my commission that he did not earn per our agreement, Jason has caused me other financial losses including wasted travel/time costs, and my now delayed project in Northern California (delayed rental income).