[Plura-list] 'We buy ugly houses' is code for 'we steal vulnerable peoples' homes'

Cory Doctorow doctorow at craphound.com
Thu May 11 15:44:26 EDT 2023 

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/

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Tonight (May 11) at 7PM, I'm in CALGARY for Wordfest with my novel *Red Team Blues*; I'll be hosted by Peter Hemminger at the Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor.

https://wordfest.com/2023/event/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow/

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Today's links

* 'We buy ugly houses' is code for 'we steal vulnerable peoples' homes': The pervasive, predatory sleaze of Homevestor, "the #1 homebuyer in the USA."

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2003, 2013, 2018, 2022

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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🦣 'We buy ugly houses' is code for 'we steal vulnerable peoples' homes'

Home ownership is the American dream: not only do you get a place to live, free from the high-handed dictates of a landlord, but you also get an asset that appreciates, building intergenerational wealth while you sleep - literally.

Of course, you can't have it both ways. If your house is an asset you use to cover falling wages, rising health care costs, spiraling college tuition and paper-thin support for eldercare, then it can't be a place you live. It's gonna be an asset you sell - or at the very least, borrow so heavily against that you are in constant risk of losing it.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the American dream: when America turned its back on organized labor as an engine for creating prosperity and embraced property speculation, it set itself on the road to serfdom - a world where the roof over your head is also your piggy bank, destined to be smashed open to cover the rising costs that an organized labor movement would have fought:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Today, we're hit the end of the road for the post-war (unevenly, racially segregated) shared prosperity that made it seem, briefly, that everyone could get rich by owning a house, living in it, then selling it to everybody else. Now that the game is ending, the winners are cashing in their chips:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

The big con of home ownership is proceeding smartly on schedulee. First, you let the mark win a little, so they go all in on the scam. Then you take it all back. Obama's tolerance of bank sleze after the Great Financial Crisis kicked off the modern era of corporations and grifters stealing Americans' out from under them, forging deeds in robosigning mills:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-breaks-down-93-bln-robo-signing-settlement-2013-02-28

The thefts never stopped. Today on Propublica, by Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan and Mollie Simon bring a horrifying, brilliantly reported account of the rampant, bottomless scams of Homevestors, AKA We Buy Ugly Houses, AKA "the #1 homebuyer in the USA":

https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-ugly-houses

Homevestors - an army of the hedge fund Bayview Asset Management - claims a public mission: to bail out homeowners sitting on unsellable houses with all-cash deals. The company's franchisees - 1,150 of them in 48 states - then sprinkle pixie dust and secret sauce on these "ugly houses" and sell them at a profit.

But Propublica's investigation - which relied on whistleblowers, company veterans, court records and interviews with victims - tells a very different story. The Homevestor they discovered is a predator that steals houses out from under elderly people, disabled people, people struggling with mental illness and other vulnerable people. It's a company whose agents have a powerful, well-polished playbook that stops family members from halting the transfers the company's high-pressure salespeople set in motion.

Propublica reveals homeowners with advanced dementia who signed their shaky signatures to transfers that same their homes sold out from under them for a fraction of their market value. They show how Homevestor targets neighborhoods struck by hurricanes, or whose owners are recently divorced, or sick. One whistleblower tells of how the company uses the surveillance advertising industry to locate elderly people who've broken a hip: "a 60-day countdown to death — and, possibly, a deal." The company's mobile ads are geofenced to target people near hospitals and rehab hospitals, in hopes of finding desperate sellers who need to liquidate homes so that Medicaid will cover their medical expenses.

The sales pitches are relentless. One of Homevestor's targets was a Texas woman whose father had recently been murdered. As she grieved, they blanketed her in pitches to sell her father's house until "checking her mail became a traumatic experience."

Real-estate brokers are bound by strict regulations, but not house flippers like Homevestors. Likewise, salespeople who pitch other high-ticket items, from securities to plane tickets - are required to offer buyers a cooling-off period during which they can reconsider their purchases. By contrast, Homevestors' franchisees are well-versed in "muddying the title" to houses after the contract is signed, filing paperwork that makes it all but impossible for sellers to withdraw from the sale.

This produces a litany of ghastly horror-stories: homeowners who end up living in their trucks after they were pressured into a lowball sales; sellers who end up dying in hospital beds haunted by the trick that cost them their homes. One woman who struggled with hoarding was tricked into selling her house by false claims that the city would evict her because of her hoarding. A widow was tricked into signing away the deed to her late husband's house by the lie that she could do so despite not being on the deed. One seller was tricked into signing a document he believed to be a home equity loan application, only to discover he had sold his house at a huge discount on its market value. An Arizona woman was tricked into selling her dead mother's house through the lie that the house would have to be torn down and the lot redeveloped; the Homevestor franchisee then flipped the house for 5,500% of the sale-price.

The company vigorously denies these claims. They say that most people who do business with Homevestors are happy with the outcome; in support of this claim, they cite internal surveys of their own customers that produce a 96% approval rating.

When confronted with the specifics, the company blamed rogue franchisees. But Propublica obtained training materials and other internal documents that show that the problem is widespread and endemic to Homevestors' business. Propublica discovered that at least eight franchisees who engaged in conduct the company said it "didn't tolerate" had been awarded prizes by the company for their business acumen.

Franchisees are on the hook for massive recurring fees and face constant pressure from corporate auditors to close sales. To make those sales, franchisees turn to Homevana's training materials, which are rife with predatory tactics. One document counsels franchisees that "pain is always a form of motivation." What kind of pain? Lost jobs, looming foreclosure or a child in need of surgery.

A former franchisee explained how this is put into practice in the field: he encountered a seller who needed to sell quickly so he could join his dying mother who had just entered a hospice 1,400 miles away. The seller didn't want to sell the house; they wanted to "get to Colorado to see their dying mother."

These same training materials warn franchisees that they must not deal with sellers who are "subject to a guardianship or has a mental capacity that is diminished to the point that the person does not understand the value of the property," but Propublica's investigation discovered "a pattern of disregard" for this rule. For example, there was the 2020 incident in which a 78-year-old Atlanta man sold his house to a Homevestors franchisee for half its sale price. The seller was later shown to be "unable to write a sentence or name the year, season, date or month."

The company tried to pin the blame for all this on bad eggs among its franchisees. But Propublica found that some of the company's most egregious offenders were celebrated and tolerated before and after they were convicted of felonies related to their conduct on behalf of the company. For example, Hi-Land Properties is a five-time winner of Homevestors' National Franchise of the Year prize. The owner was praised by the CEO as "loyal, hardworking franchisee who has well represented our national brand, best practices and values."

This same franchisee had "filed two dozen breach of contract lawsuits since 2016 and clouded titles on more than 300 properties by recording notices of a sales contract." Hi-Land "sued an elderly man so incapacitated by illness he couldn’t leave his house."

Another franchisee, Patriot Holdings, uses the courts aggressively to stop families of vulnerable people from canceling deals their relatives signed. Patriot Holdings' co-owner, Cory Evans, eventually pleaded guilty to to two felonies, attempted grand theft of real property. He had to drop his lawsuits against buyers, and make restitution.

According to Homevestors' internal policies, Patriot's franchise should have been canceled. But Homevestors allowed Patriot to stay in business after Cory Evans took his name off the business, leaving his brothers and other partners to run it. Nominally, Cory Evans was out of the picture, but well after that date, internal Homevestors included Evans in an award it gave to Patriot, commemorating its sales (Homevestors claims this was an error).

Propublica's reporters sought comment from Homevestors and its franchisees about this story. The company hired "a former FBI spokesperson who specializes in 'crisis and special situations' and 'reputation management' and funnelled future questions through him."

Internally, company leadership scrambled to control the news. The company convened a webinar in April with all 1,150 franchisees to lay out its strategy. Company CEO David Hicks explained the company's plan to "bury" the Propublica article with "'strategic ad buys on social and web pages' and 'SEO content to minimize visibility.'"

https://www.propublica.org/article/homevestors-aims-to-bury-propublica-reporting

Franchisees were warned not to click links to the story because they "might improve its internet search ranking."

Even as the company sought to "bury" the story and stonewalled Propublica, they cleaned house, instituting new procedures and taking action against franchisees identified in Propublica's article. "Clouding titles" is now prohibited. Suing sellers for breach of contract is "discouraged." Deals with seniors "should always involve family, attorneys or other guardians."

During the webinar, franchisees "pushed back on the changes, claiming they could hurt business."

If you've had experience with hard-sell house-flippers, Propublica wants to know: "If you’ve had experience with a company or buyer promising fast cash for homes, our reporting team wants to hear about it."


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🦣 Hey look at this

* Andreessen Horowitz's State of Crypto report: Narrative over numbers https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/andreessen-horowitzs-state-of-crypto

* The McMansion as Harbinger of the American Apocalypse https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/bad-manors-wagner

* Goodbye, Dooce https://waxy.org/2023/05/goodbye-dooce/

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🦣 This day in history

#20yrsago Lying, plagiarising NYT writer outed, ousted https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/national/times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html

#20yrsago COGECO’s Terms of Service: Assholes or idiots? https://memex.craphound.com/2003/05/11/cogecos-terms-of-service-assholes-or-idiots/

#10yrsago My Re:publica talk: “It’s not a fax machine connected to a waffle iron” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWqx_1tDyqE

#10yrsago What makes a project remixable? https://mako.cc/academic/hill_monroy-remixing_dilemma-DRAFT.pdf

#10yrsago Bike lanes led to 49% increase in retail sales https://web.archive.org/web/20130315222708/https://www.americabikes.org/nyc_study_finds_protected_bicycle_lanes_boost_local_business

#5yrsago FanFlick Editor: an entry in EFF’s Catalog of Missing Devices https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/fanflick-editor-entry-catalog-missing-devices-eff-supporter

#5yrsago Here are the official lyrics to the Mr Softee jingle https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/mister-softee-jingle-has-lyrics-who-knew

#5yrsago Bite-Sized Linux: a zine collecting awesome *nix tutorial webtoons https://wizardzines.gumroad.com/l/ltywT

#5yrsago West Virginia Senator laughed at the idea that hating on teachers would bite him in the ass – then he lost his job https://theintercept.com/2018/05/11/west-virginia-primary-teacher-strikes/

#5yrsago Pentagon sucks up to Trump by censoring mentions of climate change in its global risks assessment https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/05/10/pentagon-revised-obama-era-report-to-remove-risks-from-climate-change/

#5yrsago Teens are cyberbullying themselves as a form of self-harm https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/04/21/604073315/when-teens-cyberbully-themselves

#5yrsago Indigenous Canadians sue the Canadian government over decades of secret, involuntary, inhumane medical experiments https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/11/canada-indigenous-people-medical-experiments-lawsuit

#5yrsago Individual FBI agents can be sued for blackmailing potential informants with no-fly list threats https://www.techdirt.com/2018/05/11/court-fbi-agents-can-be-held-accountable-tossing-immigrants-no-fly-list-because-they-refused-to-be-informants/

#1yrago The (billionaires') case against billionaires https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/11/a-dent-in-the-universe/#eminently-guillotineable

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🦣 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. ON SUBMISSION

* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. ON SUBMISSION

Latest podcast: How To Make a Child-Safe TikTok https://craphound.com/news/2023/04/17/how-to-make-a-child-safe-tiktok/

Upcoming appearances:

* Wordfest (Calgary), May 11
https://wordfest.com/2023/event/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow/

* Gaithersburg Book Festival, May 20
https://www.gaithersburgbookfestival.org/featured_author/cory-doctorow/

* Public Knowledge Emerging Tech keynote (DC), May 22
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* WEPFest with Ron Diebert, Dave Bidini and Nancy Olivieri (Toronto), May 23
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* HowTheLightGetsIn (Hay), May 28
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* HowTheLightGetsIn (Hay), May 29
https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-danger-and-desire-of-the-frontier-12246

* Red Team Blues event with Tim Harford (Oxford), May 29
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* Red Team Blues event with Christian Reilly (Nottingham), May 30
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* Red Team Blues event with Ian Forrester (Manchester), May 31
https://www.waterstones.com/events/in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow/manchester-deansgate

* UCL Peter Kirstein Lecture, Jun 1 (London):
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* Cymera Festival, Jun 3 (Edinburgh)
https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-events/2023/4/4/connection-interrupted-with-nina-allan-cory-doctorow-and-ian-mcdonald

* Red Team Blues with Martha Lane Fox at the British Library, Jun 5 (London):
https://www.bl.uk/events/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-techno-thriller

* Re:publica keynote, Jun 7 (Berlin)
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp23-keynote-von-cory-doctorow-rebecca-giblin-kreative-arbeitsmaerkte-und-monopole

Recent appearances:

* Slurry With The Turd On Top (Jordan, Jesse, Go!)
https://maximumfun.org/episodes/jordan-jesse-go/slurry-with-the-turd-on-top-with-cory-doctorow/

* The Mark Thompson Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs_eK8IC-5M

* Enshittification Part 1: Why Every Platform Goes Bad (On the Media)
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/enshittification-part-1-where-did-it-all-go-wrong-on-the-media

Latest books:

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* The Internet Con: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech, Verso, September 2023

* The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The excerpt from *Red Team Blues* in this edition is all rights reserved.

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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