Just Business or Ethics Violations?

You be the Judge:

Parties:

Dottie - Condo owner, 100% disabled, 54 yr old female, average consumer e.g. not an investor, intelligent but not real estate "savvy"

Doug & Erica - Husband & wife team, Doug is an investor/wholesaler, Erica is his partner who is also an investor but also holds FL RE license

Circumstances:

Last February, Dottie found herself struggling with mortgage payments. After missing a 2nd mortgage payment, a "WE BUY HOUSES" ad caught Dottie's attention and she made an appointment. Doug met Dottie at her condo for the initial consultation at which time Doug assured Dottie he would ‘treat her like family'.

Doug and Realtor wife Erica explained to Dottie that she would have to (1) sign a Power of Attorney giving the couple full control, and (2) vacate the condo so that they could short sale the mortgage. Dottie signed the POA and moved out.

At this point, Dottie mistakenly believed she was out from under this condo and moves on with her life.

It takes about a month for the mortgage company to catch up with Dottie's change of address and Dottie starts to receive late notices along with warnings regarding foreclosure.

Upon contacting Erica, Dottie learns that Erica placed a tenant in the condo and has been collecting rent. When Dottie questioned where the rent money was going, Erica explained that she needed the rent money to cover her overhead of marketing the condo for sale. Dottie insisted the rent money be applied to the mortgage payments; Erica refused pointing out that she had POA and somehow convinces Dottie to sign over the deed.

Dottie was served the foreclosure summons last week.

After receiving one of my foreclosure brochures, Dottie called me to ask if there was anything I could do - she didn't want her condo to be foreclosed.

She explained the above circumstances this is what I found:

•· the deed has not been recorded and the condo is still in Dottie's name

•· The condo is indeed upside down and of course much worse now than last Spring (value declines, 9 additional months of interest, late charges, attorney fees, etc.)

•· the condo was submitted to the MLS only 2 weeks ago - no prior listings

Any specifics regarding the tenant is unknown - the relationship to Doug & Erica, rental amount, awareness of the pending foreclosure, etc.

My advice to Dottie was simple: gather all the documents, put them in chronological order and take the next few days to write a journal of the events she had with Doug & Erica.

With those records, I offered to arrange a free consultation with a real estate attorney or at the very least, with legal aid. I offered to meet with her & the attorney.

Dottie asked me what my fee would be for helping her out with this situation. I told her my fee would be this: I would draft a letter containing the facts of the circumstances, specifically the involvement of Realtor Erica, then, Dottie would sign the letter and it would be forwarded to the Florida Association of Realtors and/or the Department of Professional Regulation.

My opinion is that there are several blatant violations of the Realtor Code of Ethics as well as issues as to misappropriation of funds (rent), neglect as to the fiduciary relationship between client & Realtor and so on.

What do you think? Is this merely a short saler/investor conducting business or did this Realtor cross the line?