Ron Espinoza came recommended to me by Monica Main, who is a real estate guru that supposedly uses Ron as her mortgage broker. I contacted Ron and he said that he could get me a CREATIVE commercial loan for 80% LTV non-recourse, which would have been fantastic if he could actually have done it.
He wanted an upfront non-refundable processing fee in the amount of $1,500 to get started. I paid the fee to get started with the loan process. After spending lots of time getting the proper credit reports that satisfied Ron and doing his job of filling out lots of paperwork (on his forms) with the rent roll information, etc, he introduced another company that I would need to pay in order to move forward.
Now, David Franklin of Fisher Enterprises needed $2,500 in order to get me funding. I reluctantly decided to pay the $2,500 in order to move forward. Well, now all of the paperwork that I spent a few weeks filling out specifically on Ron's forms needed to be moved over to David's forms, and myself and my partners had to do all the work. He said it was illegal for any of them to fill out the forms, which by the way, is the job of a mortgage broker and why they get paid.
After all this paperwork was completed for the second time, I needed an extension from the seller and now a third person, Sean Hays entered the picture who also needed to be paid $3,000 or I would lose the $4,000 upfront fees I had already paid to Ron and David. Now, I'm very worried about this process, but didn't want to lose $4,000 so I went ahead a paid the fee and I'm now in it with $7,000 of upfront fees and nothing has been done.
Sean Hays was suppose to be the mortgage broker who was going to get the funding done. This guy is a complete joke. I had to fill out all the paperwork again (third time) on Sean's paperwork. Again what a mortgage broker gets paid to do. We had conference call after conference call with Sean, my real estate broker, the seller's broker and my partners. We kept waiting and waiting for his secret funding source to order the appraisal, which never happened.
The seller was so nervous with Sean, and I now needed another extension from the seller which made a total of $50,000 non-refundable of mine at risk. I supposedly (I say supposedly because it looked like Sean printed it up on his computer) got an offer for funding a couple months into the process for 65% LTV recourse instead of the 80% LTV non-recourse. Sean's response was that it was for 80% LTV, but we would need the seller to lower the purchase price by $700,000 in order for it to be 80%. I could not BELIEVE what I was hearing. Who on earth legitimately does business like this? At this point is was crystal clear that I was just being scammed, and Sean/Ron were just completely wasting everyone's time.
This was suppose to be a creative loan (whatever that means) which was going to cost 5 points, and all it was is a Fannie Mae loan. I could have gone ANYWHERE and gotten a Fannie loan for 1 point.
Now, I was going to lose my $50,000 earnest money unless I could prove to the seller that the property or myself didn't qualify for the funding. I contacted Sean and asked for a letter on the banks letter head that stated this and no matter how many times I reached out to him, he never returned any of my emails or phone calls. He left me in a horrible position that I was going to lose everything, and didn't seem to care whatsoever.
I demanded my money back, but unfortunately con men/scammers don't have a return policy.
I did get a reputable mortgage broker after all of this (who did his own paperwork and credit check) and got the property closed in about 5 weeks. This new mortgage broker saved my $50,000, but these 3 con men did scam me out of $7,000.
These guys prey off of new investors who haven't been through the loan process before. Now that I've been through the process, there is NO WAY that I would ever give anyone upfront fees or pay 5 points for a Fannie loan. It is absurd!!
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