Complaint Review: Richard Reality Group Inc - Carlsbad California

Bill Richard was the realtor representing the sellers in a home our family was buying.  The transaction was moving along fine until our inspector discovered possible asbestos on the ductwork and exhaust pipes.  Mr. Richard belittled our concerns when we asked for a professional testing service to verify if it was in fact asbestos.  He essentially told us to just buy the house as is, threatening and insulting us every step of the way.  

We were not willing to move into a home with possible asbestos and we felt as if the sellers and Mr. Richard were hiding something by preventing us from performing the proper tests.  We were about to cancel the contract when Mr. Richard and his clients decided to allow an extension on our inspection period to test the suspected material and the sellers and Mr. Richard said; "if it turns out to be asbestos we will have it removed prior to close".  We had a lab test the material and it was even worse that we thought.

 It turned out to be friable asbestos surrounding all of the ductwork and the exhaust pipes for the heater and water heater.  It was 'barely encapsulated' and friable, which means it's about to break into the atmosphere and is, in fact the toxic particles that cause lung cancer.  We shared our report with Mr. Richard and his clients.  Mr. Richard proceeded to call the licensed testing service and contest the results reported by the PhD who performed the test.  

Mr. Richard then told us since we never tested the air quality it's not really a concern and told us to just deal with it.  We asked them to perform on their prior commitment to remove the asbestos prior to closing.  Mr. Richard continued to argue and again belittle our concerns and question the validity of the testing.  A suitable alternative would have been for Mr. Richard to have another test conducted to confirm our results if he was concerned, but he only wanted to question and argue the results.  

We told him and the sellers that we were unwilling to move into a home with asbestos in it, especially friable asbestos.  We submitted a signed repair request to Mr. Richard and the sellers asking them to agree to remediate the asbestos as previously promised.  They replied by selecting the option to NOT agree with our repair request, instead they offered a nominal credit at closing that would only cover about 20% of the repairs.  We decided at that point to cancel the contract before the end of our inspection period.

 We submitted our cancelation to Mr. Richard due to their refusal to remediate the asbestos.  Mr. Richard proceeded to get very nasty and began sending very angry and belligerent emails to our realtor.  He first insisted they were going to keep our (very sizable) deposit, which we proceeded to remind him that we were in the inspection period and they failed to perform.  Mr. Richard sent about 4 emails in the span of a couple of hours, one after another, first he demanded our deposit, then he begged us to make this work, he was all over the place in his emails and our realtor didn't even get a chance to reply and another pleading or insulting email would come in.

 In his last email of that day he attached our repair request that we had previously signed, however the document was now changed and they then agreed to complete the remediation.  This was all invalid since we had previously canceled and given the erratic behavior and threatening tone in Mr. Richard's emails we knew our decision to cancel was the right one.  It turns out Mr. Richard and his clients forged our repair request by changing it after we signed.  When we told him that document is invalid he continued to try and keep us in contract and has still not instructed escrow to return our deposit.  

This has forced us to incur significant legal fees to pursue our deposit.  We were well within our rights to cancel prior to the inspection contingencies being removed; we confirmed this with three different attorneys (two of which specialize in real estate law).  Mr. Richard and his clients have decided they would rather hold up our deposit in spite than do the right thing and release the deposit as they are legally obligated to do.

Mr. Richard has stated in emails that since his client/ the seller in this transaction is a lawyer he was only following his direction and has constantly tried to throw his client under the bus.  After discussing this matter with the authorities and investigating the statute we believe that both Mr. Richard and his clients are equally responsible for the illegal actions during this transaction, per Penal Code 470PC and they can all serve up to 3 years in jail for forgery by changing a document after we singed and trying to pass it off as genuine.

Next steps:

We have since had to file a CalBRE complaint against Mr. Richard for forgery and fraud and they are investigating.

We have filed a federal forgery claim with the FTC and they are investigating this matter.

We have filed a criminal police report into Mr. Richard and the seller’s actions.

We are filing a complaint with the state bar against the seller who is also a lawyer.

We now have to proceed with mediation and/ or civil litigation to retrieve our deposit.

If anyone were about to enter into a contract with Mr. Richard my advice would be to submit a minimal deposit and have your attorney review all documents he's sent.  Also ask that escrow keep you informed of any documents Mr. Richard submits without your knowledge, as another concern we had during this was that he was submitting documents we didn’t sign.  We will update this review as we receive updates on the various criminal and civil proceedings.