My 92-year-old dad (with my 87-year-old mom) lives in Victoria. Dad is very sharp for his age, but he still gets sucked in by telemarketers. I know he gets bored and has always loved to shoot the breeze with anyone, so he answers the d@mn phone and away we go. The latest shyster to suck him in is some sort of real estate outfit out of Houston. They are promising him $900 up front if he will sign a document saying they get first right to buy his house when it is sold. They sent a notary to the house last week with the paperwork, but he didn't sign. They won't leave the paperwork there for review, and are sending someone from Houston tomorrow or Tuesday at another attempt to get him to sign.

First of all, does anyone know of a company that is doing this? Dad can't tell us a name.

The closest of us kids to Victoria is my brother in Port O' Connor, who does have power of attorney if Dad becomes incapacitated. Problem is, Dad is not incapacitated, he just wants to believe anyone besides his children. I wish my brother could just go camp out at Mom and Dad's house and chase these people off, but he has a job and can't. And we all three have to tread lightly or Dad will shut us out completely.

Trying not to freak out about my Dad signing away his house, but that worst-case scenario is not out of the realm of possibility.

Any info would be greatly appreciated…if you have heard of a Houston company that is doing this, or if there are legal remedies to this kind of senior predation.

They are likely paying him to sign a 10 or 20 year Right of First Refusal on the home. If he signs they will file a Memorandum of Agreement with the County Clerk. Prob not worth it for $900 unless he is hard up for cash.

get their phone number and post on outdoor board with this info

Stan Crowch said:

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They are likely paying him to sign a 10 or 20 year Right of First Refusal on the home. If he signs they will file a Memorandum of Agreement with the County Clerk. Prob not worth it for $900 unless he is hard up for cash.

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That sounds fairly innocuous, but completely unnecessary. They aren't hard up for cash, Dad is unfortunately just a sucker. My sister just said he is going to try to forward an email from this outfit, so perhaps we can get to the bottom of it without the outdoor board. But I will keep them in mind if all else fails!

Would be interested to know what group it is if you get ahold of the email.

The company is MV Realty of Texas, LLC with an address in Delray Beach, FL.

The document is titled a "Homeowner Benefit Agreement" and it is an agreement to give them the listing when my parents decide to sell.

Will probably be difficult to talk Dad out of signing, because in his words, he'll be dead when the house sells, and he won't care if this agreement complicates things for the rest of us.

At least we can determine that he won't be signing the house away, so there's a bright spot.

Would still be interested to know if this is a regular thing in the real estate world…using telemarketers to entice listing agreements like this?

Ah, they are paying for the right to list in the future. There are a couple of real estate groups starting to do this. This the biggest one I know of.

https://www.homeoptions.com/

Thanks for the info!

People that prey on the elderly deserve a special place in Hell and a painful way to get there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/vgxm5b/trying_to_gather_info_on_mv_realty_and_their_hba/

There's a decent Reddit thread going about it. It's an interesting concept for sure. I don't know if I'd do it.

Will look into it…thanks!

MV Realty's agreement term is FORTY YEARS.

Luckily they are now sending someone on Thursday, so we have a few days to talk Dad out of it.

They also put a lien on the house too. There have been many 'investigative reports' from news stations about these guys. Here's a few.

Action 9 investigates (FLA)

WS-TV Reports on Scam (GA)

My sister found the first report you linked, and she sent it to my Dad. He watched it and said he would not answer the door when they come to the house. I think the second one you linked is even more convicting, and have shared that one as well.

Not going to breathe easy until we get this finally put to bed, but progress has been made. We have to tread so carefully with him or he will cut off communication with us. Doesn't want to be made to feel like he can't make good decisions, but honestly, he can't when it comes to these slick telemarketers.

Really appreciate all of the responses, and hope that we have given him enough info for him to make the right decision. He really keeps us on our toes!

Man it would be a shame if a bunch of folks filed complaints with TREC regarding these practices.

https://www.trec.texas.gov/public/how-file-complaint

This and I assume other companies are doing this all over the country. I had not heard about it happening in Texas. Thank you for posting!

Disconnect his house phone. Change his cell phone number. This will slow things down. Yes 911 still works from a cell phone.

We had to do all these things for the 6 over 80 people in our lives. Once they get targeted as a senior who is gullible, many more scams will follow.

Sounds a lot like my dad. He's always been a talker and a sucker for a "good deal". Now that he's getting older, he's been hit for scams a number of times. Problem is, a lot of times he knows it's a scam and still does it. No doubt his info is being sold through their networks as an easy target.

aggiedata said:

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Disconnect his house phone. Change his cell phone number. This will slow things down. Yes 911 still works from a cell phone.

We had to do all these things for the 6 over 80 people in our lives. Once they get targeted as a senior who is gullible, many more scams will follow.

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He has no more land line, thankfully. He gets ticked off at every phone/TV/internet provider and keeps switching, so at one point he decided they didn't need a land line anymore. Before that it would ring off the wall all day long. The problem with switching his cell phone number is that I would worry he might lose contact with the few friends he still has living that he talks to on a regular basis. One of them is over 100 and blind, so assuring the phone number switch happened is not easy. I think our next fix will be a spam blocker app. But it won't fix the contacts he makes from his end when he sees something on the world wide web that promises him easy money. We do go through his email and unsubscribe him from sites when we get the chance. Thank goodness interest rates ticked up, or he would probably want to refi his mortgage AGAIN. That made for lots of phone calls from finance company vultures…

Parenting parents is tough!

We had the same issues. It's still worth changing. Nobody knows phone numbers anymore. You got to do work getting his contacts update. Still easier than having to try to get back $5,000 from a fraud check they sent someone saying they were the IRS and had arrest warrants for them. Makes me so angry

Change the number. No forwarding message.

I can't help on this one, but just wanted to say that I sympathize with your situation. My dad is 73 and does the same crap. I've told him to just assume that anyone that reaches out to him is a scammer, no matter what sob story they tell or how much interest they show in him. He says OK. Then I randomly find messages in his phone where he's agreed to send money to somebody posing as a woman that needs money for her cancer treatment or some other BS story. It's maddening that someone that is/used to be so smart can do such stupid things.

Offer your dad $900 to not sign. You'll get it back soon enough.