Don’t do business with Freedom Hawk Equity! – Part I

I can finally discuss this. This is the sordid tale of trying to sell our house in Texas to Freedom Hawk Equity, LLC.

A bit of background.

Several years ago, after marrying the wife, we consolidated households. I got rid of most of my stuff and moved in with her. I had to sell my house and I didn’t want to have to mess with a realtor, showing the house, and all the other hassles of selling a home. Opendoor was taking off at the time, and the market was good for selling a home.

Opendoor buys your house, does the repairs and “flips” the house for a profit. After I got the house cleared out, I sent photos to Opendoor, they sent someone out to look over the property, they made an offer, and I accepted. We closed on the house and everything went smoothly. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Fast forward to this year. The wife and I were preparing to leave Texas permanently. She wanted to do something similar to what I did so she contacted Opendoor. They didn’t make a offer to her liking, so she contacted several other similar services, but still didn’t get an offer she liked.

In the meantime we were working on cleaning out the house, getting everything else boxed up to move and preparing to vacate. We had an estate sale and got rid of many things but not as much as we needed to do. So, we did a second sale.

At the end of the day, May 15, a man and his wife knocked on the front door. He introduced himself as Edward Mendez, with Freedom Hawk Equity. He said he wanted to look at the house and if they liked it he was prepared to make an offer. The wife was having some mobility issues after doing the sale all day so I showed him around while his wife stayed and talked with the wife.

We had some toolchests and furniture in the garage as part of the sale. Mr. Mendez said he’d pay us for the toolchests and furniture even if we didn’t take the offer on the house. I helped him put the stuff in his vehicle. We went in and he presented the offer to the wife. It was a good offer and the wife liked it. He had a contract ready to go. He then scratched out the amount of the offer and wrote in a new number, adding the amount he was going to pay for the toolboxes and furniture to it.

The wife signed the contract and we figured everything was good. They said they’d be able to close within 14 days, as per the contract, which was great because that would be just before we left Texas.

Over the next few weeks we didn’t get much from Mr. Mendez. The only time we heard from him was if we made the effort to contact him first. He would only text us and each time all he’d say was that everything was fine.

The day got closer and still nothing. I was going to leave several days before the wife so I could drive our car, with the dogs, to our new home and be able to meet the moving van when it arrived. On Monday, we still hadn’t heard anything from Mr. Mendez. We wanted to make sure we’d be able to close.

Tuesday rolled around, the last day the wife would be in town and Mr. Mendez didn’t show up to close on the house. This was the first sign that there was a problem.

Things got worse from there.

Tune in tomorrow for the next part of the saga.

If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum