Time’s Up! MV Realty Ordered to Lift Its Claims From Thousands of Property Records

The party’s over! States are now rushing to ban listing agreements that tie deed holders to particular brokerages to sell their homes in the future. One big reason for this appears to be their residents’ complaints about a certain “MV Realty” company. Several states are acting on MV Realty agreements as you read this. The company has contracts with tens of thousands of deed holders across the country.

Take Florida, Where Former Big Brother Star Amanda Zachman Founded the Company

More than nine thousand Florida homeowners signed 40-year listing contracts with MV Realty. Florida lawyer Matt Weidner reported the scammy deal to the state’s attorney general. And Florida recently acted to stop it.  

As Lew Sichelman writes,

Not only has the outfit been put out of business, but it has agreed to terminate its Florida contracts with deceived homeowners. “It took forever, but now after all these years and all this litigation, consumers are finally seeing relief,” attorney Matt Weidner told me.

Now, MV Realty is not allowed to enforce its Florida contracts, which a judge called unconscionable. The company is past a deadline for releasing all the claims and liens it has recorded against these deed holders.

What Was So Bad About These Listing Agreements?

The company would offer a relatively small cash payment up front to people willing to sign a Homeowner’s Benefit Agreement. These deed holders were promising to use MV Realty as their brokerage in the future.

The people signing these agreements didn’t have to sell if they didn’t want to. But if they did, they’d have to use MV Realty as their broker. So, what’s so bad about that?

Here are the catches:

• MV Realty calls people on the national Do-Not-Call Registry, pestering them with robocalls.
• The document MV Realty records with the county acts as a lien on the home, spanning a whopping 40 years.
• MV Realty fines people who wriggle out of the contracts. Those who ignore fines may find liens on the titles.  

• If the homeowner ever wants to cancel, or goes into foreclosure, the brokerage is still entitled, under the agreement, to 3% of the home’s value. (For a home worth $200K, that’s $6K — more than MV Realty generally gives deed holders to sign up.)
• Should the homeowner die, heirs are stuck with the remainder of the 40-year term.  
• When a homeowner gets around to selling and is ready to work with one of MV Realty brokers, MV Realty charges commission. But MV Realty’s brokers won’t use the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Nor will MV Realty negotiate in the best interest of the deed holder. MV Realty plays a broker role only — unlike a real estate agent, who owes fiduciary duties to a client.

In late 2022, the office of the Florida attorney general filed a court action against MV Realty for “deceptive, unfair and unconscionable business practices.” Florida wants MV Realty’s cash-for-listing agreements outlawed, and civil penalties imposed.

The company is “swindling consumers” and taking control of Floridians’ home equity in a way that Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody called “disgraceful.” When signing this agreement, who anticipated that, because of the lien, they couldn’t borrow against their home equity for 40 years!?

Since then, Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation has suspended MV Realty from real estate practice. But protection came slowly, says Matt Weidner, the lawyer representing aggrieved homeowners. The state’s industry players let MV Realty exploit an astounding number of people before having to face consequences. Even up until this point, the company has been issuing “conditional terminations” rather than clearing titles.

Meanwhile, MV Realty has gone bankrupt, and faces lawsuits in at least 11 other states over the harm caused by its tactics.

And Let’s Not Forget Everyone Else Who’s Ticked Off Too

State attorneys general have gone after this company for predatory tactics in state after state: Ohio, California, Michigan, North Carolina, and New Jersey. In Massachusetts, a court nullified MV Realty’s liens.  Colorado banned these agreements as well.

In northern Michigan, the Memorandum of MVR Homeowner Benefit Agreement kept showing up in filings against people’s deeds. Many of these deed holders, depending on their property values, only got a few hundred dollars in return. What a shame that whenever they would need to get to their home equity, a title search would expose the binding memorandum, potentially blocking the loan.

Pennsylvania isn’t pleased. Attorney General Josh Shapiro sued Amanda Zachman. Pennsylvania’s highest levels of law enforcement call MV Realty’s terms a deceptive affront to Pennsylvania’s consumer protection statute.

In Texas, the company is on TV, and not in a good way. MV Realty has used these same documents to tie up Texas deeds. A memorandum is not technically a lien. It can scuttle a sale or re-fi, though, when it turns up in a title search. CBS News searched the public filings and reports the existence of more than 1,200 of these recorded instruments in Texas counties.

One Texas story goes like this. Tanya S. got a solicitation from MV Realty last year. Would she accept $1,000 and agree to sell with MV Realty just in case she ever decided to sell? Why not?, she thought. She had no interest in selling at all, and here was $1,000. Later, though, she faced an emergency and had to refinance her home. But there was one of those legal instruments filed on her deed. The re-fi fell through, so she was compelled to sell her home. That meant she had to go through MV Realty, which was not in any hurry to sell her home. Desperate, she had to get an actual agent. Because of the breach of the memorandum, MV Realty wanted a cut of $11,000 from Tanya’s home sale. Oh, and also their regular 3%.

Texas lawmakers have tried more than once to get new laws enacted to restrict the marketers of cash-for-listing contracts. But these bills failed. And the Texas attorney general has not acted on the issue.

Older adults and financially stretched homeowners are especially likely to sign up, because of the cash incentives. Manipulation of seniors’ deeds is all too common. That’s why ALTA and AARP want their constituents to know that predatory cash-for-listing agreements are unenforceable in most states.

What about your state?