Thread: Please read. Advice needed.

I apologize in advance for this being semi long, but I am honestly seeking assistance with a very frustrating situation and am not sure where to find such assistance so maybe someone on here can point me in the right direction. Please do read to the end. Here goes…

My husband is military and stationed here in Louisiana. He owns a home in Arizona that is co-owned by his ex wife. They have two mortgages on this home, both of which are rather large. Until this past summer, there were renters occupying the home and paying the first mortgage. My husband and his ex were (and still are) each paying their half of the second mortgage.

My husband was deployed in late May so I was left to handle his business for him until he returned in Sept.

The ex lives in the same area where the home is located and the renters used her as a contact person. She informed us in early June that the renters were leaving with very little notice (less than one month). She stated that she would be using the last month’s rent that they had paid to give them their deposit back. After they left, she mentioned how badly they had left the home and how she was going to have to hire someone to have it professionally cleaned because it was “that bad”. She asked me to send her money for this and I questioned why she had refunded the deposit if the renters had damaged the property. She then told me that they had not paid the full amount of the last month’s rent ($900) and that she had not refunded t hem that money. I then told her to use what they did give her ($500 or so) to clean up the home. She said she would.

With no renters to pay the first mortgage and it not being financially possible for us or her to pay it alone, we all agreed selling the house would be best. She said she was hiring a real estate agent who worked for Move On Real Estate group and that he had an attorney who worked with him specializing in short sales. She wanted us to give her $250 to pay for the real estate fees up front. I told her we would pay our portion after the home sold seeing as how she had not been honest with us up to this point. There were numerous other things (most involving money) that she had also been dishonest about.

She said she had hired the agent and t hat he had informed her it would be beneficial for her to have the utilities turned on at the house for showing purposes. She asked us for more money because she said she had to pay all the deposits and connection fees up front. I expressed that we did not agree to having the utilities turned on that we would not be reimbursing her for these costs.

She sent me some paperwork to sign (since I had power of attorney while my husband was deployed) which was a “Release and Disclosure” Statement. I read over it, signed it, and sent it back to her to give the agent as requested. She informed me an offer had been made on the house and everything was being submitted to the mortgage company. I contacted her a couple of weeks later and she said no word yet, that they were still waiting on the mortgage company.

A month or so went by with no word from anyone. I attempted to contact the real estate agent. He would not answer or return my calls and emails to him went unanswered. The ex sent me an email telling me that the agent told her I had tried to contact him but that he was not allowed to talk to me about anything since the home was only owned by her and my husband. I didn’t quite understand this since the agent obviously thought it was ok for me to sign the paperwork he sent but he can’t discuss anything with me? I informed my husband and he attempted to call the agent as well. No return phone call. He also emailed the agent who did respond to him but only stated that they were submitting short sale offers to the mortgage company and the agent’s signature stated he worked for Eagle First Realty. This of course, caught my attention as we were told he worked for Move On.

After I noticed the difference in company names, I started going over things again. All the emails back and forth to the ex wife, the paperwork they sent for me to sign, and etc. That’s when I noticed that the Release and Disclosure info had two other real estate company’s names on them (Liberty One on one of the documents and Move On on the other). I also noticed that the one from Move On had another reatlor’s name printed on it. I attempted to contact that realtor and got no response. I then did a google search for real estate documents and one of the first results that came up was a PDF form that had the exact document the ex had sent us. It was like someone had just gone online, printed it out, and mailed it to us or something.

I informed my husband who called the mortgage company and they verified that no short sales had been submitted and they had not been contacted by any real estate companies regarding possible sale of the property.

Since the ex and the supposed realtor would not answer/return calls, the only method for contacting them was email. We emailed them all this info asking what the deal was and the ex responding saying there must be some confusion. Around this same time, she sent us copies of the utility bills where she had the utilities turned on at the property and not only did they show the connection fees were not paid up front, but they also showed usage that would occur if someone was residing in the home. I confronted her about this via email and she refused to discuss it. I told her my husband was going to contact an attorney on base where he was currently deployed to and then she really stopped talking.

Since then the only info we have been able to get is that a short sale offer was finally submitted to the mortgage company but it’s not done yet. It was the mortgage company who told us that. The realtor and the ex won’t tell us anything or communicate with us at all basically other than when the realtor told us not to contact the mortgage company saying we would “slow things down”.

We have asked for copies of the listing agreement where the house was listed for sale, but they won’t give us any. We also don’t understand how they could have submitted paperwork for possibly selling the house when my husband (a co-owner of the property) never signed anything agreeing to this.

The ex is the only one with keys to the property and we are states away. I’m not sure what we can do as far as trying to hire another realtor ourselves to get the home sold or what since we don’t have access to the property. The first mortgage payment has not been made since June but we have not received any foreclosure information. However, my husband’s credit score is falling with the delinquent account hanging out there.

What can we do? What should we do? Thanks for reading.