Complaint Review: Home Partners of America - Texas

IMPORTANT PLEASE READ ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE WITH HOME PARTNERS OF AMERICA -  Thier promotional marketing to consumers says, - Home Partners provides responsible households a transparent path to homeownership through its Lease with a Right to Purchase Program This "program" a nationwide company offers consumers to partner with them for the  purchase of a house to hold under a lease to purchase contract  allowing up to three to five years for the purchase. During the rental period they collect rent that exceeds the market by 130-150% - and require an upfront deposit of 2 months of the rental payments. They also provide a maintence agreement and have a management company Pathlight Properties who is supposed to handle any landlord responsibilites per property code in your state just as any other landlord is required to do. In theory it appears to be a great program utilized as a stepping stone for families to obtain a home that couldnt obtain financing for one reason or another at that time. You go through an approval process for the program via a call center and your provide financial documentation and credit documentation through internet and phone communication similar what a mortgage lender would do. Once they approve you, you find a dedicated home, they purchase it, you sign a lease, send the deposit and move in. At that point Home Partners of America has nothing to do with you as thier customer and shifts communication and responsibility to another department of thiers who is the property management division. They will not take any more phone calls from you as the consumer, they will not problem solve or listen to any complaints, they will pass the buck at all times over the property managment company and avoid any further contact with you as the now "tentant" even though they are the landlord.   This turned into a nightmare and caused my family dammage in many areas of our lives. 

During the rental period you are like any other tentant/landlord agreement and should follow the property code of your state - which would be to provide habitable housing to thier tentant.  The property I moved into was a new construction home never occupied before that had a septic system and a well for the primary water source to the home. A few months after we moved in I started having issues with the water containing a horrible odor, no water pressure and large amounts of sediment coming out in the sinks. In fact the water was causing me skin infections and eventually we could no longer use the water to take baths in, cook with, and most certainly we could never drink it. ON MANY occasions I called thier maintenece department - they would not show up on scheduled appointments days and weeks in a roll causing me to miss work for the entire day waiting for someone to do something about it. They finally sent out 3 companies to look at the water and every single one of them stated how horrible the water was yet they wanted to get more bids and drag out having to fix anything. I took the water to the local health department and it tested positive for total colliform and amounts of tetrahydrofuran exceeding the allowable limit almost double. They still did not fix the issue - this resulted in me having to live in ahotel for 30 days in hopes they would fix the water yet they still kept having different people call me and different people give them estimates. They did not care that there was a single mom, a child, and a dog without shelter and was getting sick from living in the home. I had no choice but to move out of the house - drive further to get my son to school, caused a huge amount of stress on my son who became depressed and also made my german shepard sick. 

I have incurred so many expenses due to the negligance of Home Partners of America and thier management company, I moved out almost 8 months ago and they are still holding my deposit just under $5000. My experience was disappointing and dammaging both monetary and to my families over all well being.

I would not refer ANYONE to this program EVER