Anyone closed a deal with Bridgehouse America?

Question

A client received an LOI from this company offering proposals on lease options short and long term.  In Florida.  Has anyone dealt with them and closed successfully?

Rick Stewart · Answer

UPDATE: Mario from Bridgehouse and I talked over the phone this morning. (Aug 11, 2019).  It showed me professionalism that he answered my phone call on a Sunday morning.

Although I do not agree that I was being racist, it has never been my practice nor intention to get into a name calling incident, so that post he found offensive was removed.  I do not believe that he is connected with anyone in Colorado.

His website that is on BBB is www.bridgehouseamerica.com.

That site is no longer active, so I was correct in my statement.

His company has relocated from AZ to CA and is now www.bridgehouseinvestors.com

He verbally agreed to pay me June rent tomorrow (Mon Aug 12, 2019) and stated to send him repairs for damages the tenant caused.

Here is hope that this can be resolved amicably.

I will update this post once I receive the money we are owed.

Rick Stewart · Answer

After 24 days of not hearing from him, he finally replied to our text me after reading my complaint on Better Business Bureau.  (Aug 10, 2019), His initial response was "I thought she moved out 3 weeks ago"...then I told her that she was still in there and if you though she moved out, then why not contact us to tell us she moved out? His response: "I had no idea, I am sorry". (email me....I have copies of all these text messages)

I asked him why he told me 8 times that "they were working on it" and "there would be a court date"...of course no answer.

His text this morning (Aug 11, 2019) was to call me a racist and to never contact him again. My wife's name is Cruzita Avila, daughter of a hispanic field worker born in Mexico. We are 100% not racist.  Look us up on Facebook.

NEVER CONTACT HIM? The tenant that he moved into our house has lived rent free for 3 months and our house is damaged. We have a contract with Bridgehouse that says they will pay for damages. We had to evict her....but now Mario says NEVER CONTACT HIM? smh.

His reason for calling me racist is based on the information I posted on this thread about the warrant for a guy in Colorado with the same name and same phone number. You can read it and judge for yourself how that is a racist comment. There is nothing racist about what I posted.

There is nothing racist about what I posted.

This is his way of getting out of paying us the $4,200 in back rent, plus damages to our house, plus court and attorney fees.

Rick Stewart · Answer

My name is Rick Stewart and If you contact me via social media, I can give you court documents and my attorney's information to verify that after THREE MONTHS of receiving zero rent, we had to forcefully evict (unlawful detainer) the tenant that Mario/Bridgehouse screened and moved in. Tenant moved in April 1, 2019. Mario served 3-day pay or quit on June 1, 2019, but did not follow up with the unlawful detainer, but kept telling us via text, that "he was working on it". Finally, we served the 3-day pay or quit on July 8, 2019, went to mediation Aug 20, 2019, trial Aug 22, 2019.

Despite the contract clearly stating that Bridgehouse would pay us rent regardless of whether tenant pays them, Bridgehouse taking care of all damages to property....we have not received any money from Bridgehouse. Despite Mario claiming that "we are waiting for court date because tenant is contesting"....we had to get the court date and forceful removal in 36 days.

We wondered how did we got a court date and unlawful detainer BEFORE Mario could get a court date when we started our 3-day pay or quit a MONTH AFTER Mario served the tenant?  Because, as our attorney found out through court documents, Mario/Bridgehouse NEVER filed the paperwork to evict the tenant.  If we would not have filed our paperwork, our tenant would still be sitting in our house and not paying rent.

So it is pretty obvious that Mario was lying to us. He never did the court paperwork. Never filed for a court date. He took $5,995 from the tenant and now has went silent. I have not heard from Mario in over 2 months. Nobody ever answers the numbers listed on their website and of course he doesn't answer his cell phone.

This is suprising to us because Mario is very nice on the phone.  A person who comes off as someone you can trust.  He is a very smooth talker....

Again, I have proof of all this and we have a pretty large contact list of others who have been scammed.  I am a high school teacher, not a landlord. We just wanted to sell our house, but now is completely damaged and will need thousands in repairs. We are also out 4 months of rent.Through our internet research, we have found several others who have been scammed and are hoping that we can form a large enough group to file a class action suit.  Better Business Bureau, along with state attorney general office in Colorado, have also been notified by our group.

Rick Stewart · Answer

If you google them, you will find their website URL.  And you will quickly see that they have went out of business.

Jaime Lucero · Answer

We thought this was the answer to our prayers. After serious health issues we had to short sale our home. We found this advertisement for a rent to own home and inquired. At the beginning everything sounded great. We were told the home would be painted, stucco would be repaired, carpets cleaned, flooring in the downstairs put in, and any other issues would be discussed and repaired.  We are big on communication, and communicated very clearly with Mario our expectations, and thought we had a meeting of the minds. The homeowner was not on the same page, and was not expecting all that needed to be done prior to move in. We were set to move in 2/20/2019, but the home was far from ready and had to fight to push the date to 03/01/2019. The home was not cleaned move in ready, and the carpets were not shampooed as promised. When we asked about the shampooed carpets we were told "they were cleaned", total semantics!

As for the flooring downstairs, Mario and us came to an agreement to split the cost of tile flooring. Mario hired a person to lay the tile. We purchased the tile and materials, and paid half of the labor up front. Mario was supposed to pay the other half of labor when job was completed, and reimburse us for his cost we put up front. It took weeks of hearing excuses and lies before we received our money, and of this note weeks later the person who laid the tile has yet to receive final payment for the completed job. That person, the homeowner, and us have all been told for weeks he paid the person via bank wire (sent a bogus receipt picture), the check is in the mail, and it is being sent via Walmart to Walmart, none of which have happened. Mario has stopped taking our calls or responding to text messages. At one point via text message Mario threatened the homeowner to "crush him in court" if he were to seek legal action regarding money owed to the homeowner.

The home is amazing, and the homeowner is easy to work with. Mario, in my opinion scams people out of a large down payment, makes promises he doesn't keep, lies, threatens, and has no business integrity. If we could go back, we would have never worked with this company!