Mrs. Forman was hired to advise me how to buy a home and to protect me. She made some serious mistakes and I do not feel that she did her job.
Some of the problems are: Mrs. Forman directed me to provide her with money for an Escrow account but she has been unwilling to tell me where the money went.
I also paid $325 to the mortgage company in 2000 through the agent, Jim Redd. Mrs. Forman put another $325 for appliation fee in the money I owed at closing. She has not returned it to me.
On the matter of title insurance: Mrs. Forman told me she would obtain title insurance for me. AT closing I paid Princeton Assurance $1020 in 2001. I did not receive a title policy until 2003. I need to know when they were paid and how much since this is the company I have asked to pay for City water since the home I purchased was misrepresented as having a legal well and it does not have a legal well. It has a shared well.
Mrs. Forman secured a title policy with a company that is part of the Richard Weidel companies and as I understand it from the website of the Seller's salesperson, the Lawrenceville, NJ division of Richard Weidel, Princeton Assurance is part of those companies. That is a conflict of interest that Mrs. Forman should not have subjected me to.
When I asked Princeton Assurance for a decision about covering the connection to City water because of the misrepresentation by their affiliate, Richard Weidel Corp., a company that has refused to provide me with City water saying it is not their problem, I have been told Princeton Assurance will only speak with Mrs. Forman. I have asked Mrs. Forman to explain this and to understand that this is a serious situation. I paid for a policy and it is a violation of law for Princeton Assurance to discuss my policy with anyone but me without my permission. I have not provided anyone permission to speak with Mrs. Forman but I have asked Mrs. Forman to explain to me what this is about.
I organized a survey with a surveyor and I have asked that the NJ Land Surveyors attempt to figure out what happened with that survey. At closing I did not receive that survey. Mrs. Forman told me that the surveyor did the survey and that was in reference to the surveyor I spoke with and had told to put out markers for a fence. Mrs. Forman advised me he did not put out markers because they were expensive. I gathered from that conversation that she had spoken to the surveyor because he knew to call me which is a request I made of Mrs. Forman. She knew that he had done the survey without markers although I was very unhappy that she had told him not to put them out. She did say she did not tell him this. And further, she did not refer to another surveyor. Our conversation was only about the original surveyor.
At closing the survey was presented with the name of another surveyor, a Mr. Lesslie. I only noticed that the well was not on the survey and Mrs. Forman said underground items do not go on a survey. I had already seen a survey with a well on it in Warren County. Not only was the well on it, it was subsurface. It also showed a cistern and a dry well. Mrs. Forman did not comment further at closing. When I wanted markers put out for the fence, I noticed that the surveyor was Mr. Lesslie and wondered who he was. I have spoken to Mr. Lesslie several times and he has indicated to me he thought I had City water, never knew about well and appears to have little information about items he put on the survey, such as a fence that runs along the bounary where the well is located.
Mrs. Forman did not tell me that surveys are done to protect the Buyer and to find easements, wells and other items that are on the property. The Website of the New Jersey Land Surveyors and Engineers says specifically that. It talks about how surveyors protect the Buyer from misrepresentations by Sellers, etc. I have informed Mrs. Forman that I would like her to provide information about the surveys and if there was more then one survey. I inquired if someone was at the survey with the surveyor and again, Mrs. Forman knows everything although she really did not know much when we last spoke. She knew no one was there. This makes no sense at all. It seems that surveyors normally get permission when they do a survey on private property so someone had to notified that had to do with the Seller. If that someone attended the survey, and that someone was already misrepresenting the well so that I would buy the home, it does seem important to know who this was.
AT closing there were other problems, such as the wrong mortgage agreement, the wrong mortgage percentage, promises to fix these that were not completely fulfilled and as a consequence, contradictory statements from Mrs. Forman and from GMAC. I put down $30k so that I could pay my own taxes. All was set to go as far as the mortgage representative was concerned. Somehow it was all changed when Mrs. Forman got the document. Since she was made aware of my decision to pay my own taxes there is absolutely no reason that we would be at closing, 30 days late, with wrong and incomplete documentation. I can only believe that Mrs. Forman did not care what happened at my closing. That she made no attempt to fix these mistakes and made promises that she did not keep has been extremely difficult to deal with. I bought her a nice present for the closing, still thinking I was working with someone that did have my interests at heart and was my friend. I found out at closing she had not been careful nor interested in my wellbeing with the mortgage company and yet she smiled so nicely and took my expensive present. Then, 16 months laer I began to find out the horror of what happened to my title insurance, the value of my home, her indifference and inability to help by simply providing copies of escrow checks or documents. She has provided very little including a letter she wrote which really burns me.
I went to a friends attorney who I paid $100 for a consultation. My remarks were considered confidential. He found out that Ms. Forman was my attorney and without telling me, called her and I guess discussed my conversation with him. I don't know what was said but Mrs. Forman then wrote me and said she would be helpful at any time and mentioned that I had hired this other attorney. I had not hired that attorneyf or anything other then to look at the well situation. He made it clear to me he did not want to look anything unless I was to pay him $180 an hour. I asked nothing of him. He gave me absolutely no information about Buyers Rights or any other useful information. I had to do all my research on my own, spending months and months trying to figure out how to handle this while Mrs. Forman stalled and stalled and stalled trying to run out the clock so that I could not take action. It has not worked and in fact, because Mrs. Forman has been so unhelpful, it has only made me wonder just what her role was in the issue of a home purchase with an undisclosed illegal well.
Mrs. Forman can respond here if she likes but I would hope she would send me the information that I have asked for and I be most happy to credit her with here cooperation and assistance. If she decides it is simply going to be more of the same, and I take the time, trouble and expense to execute a Webpage (and I have much experience in Web design), I will not remove that from the Internet. The website will be entitled: "Home Buyer's Horror Stories: What not to do if you are buying a home in NJ." I tried to buy 5 homes before I bought this one and Mrs. Forman was involved in 4 of those. She was paid. I spent thousands of dollars on home inspections. I delt with a group of real estate people that did things like tell me I would be arrested if I had a termite inspection after I contracted to buy the home, were upset with me when I did not buy because of water in the floor, colony of bats in the garage, fire damage in the attack, buckets in the ceiling to water, sawdust in the support beams because of insect damage, walls that looked like driftwood when the wallboard was removed, and much to much to go over here. Mrs. Forman sailed through all of this watching me spend money and of course, never wanted to be involved in trying to get Sellers to pay for unnecessary home inspections because of false disclosures. But she was of course so interested in letting me know that the surveyor for my home that I did buy, did not put out markers on the boundary form y fence, because it was "too expensive." I suppose that was the red flag I should have paid attention to and now I am paying a price because I believed in Mrs. Forman instead of my own common sense.
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