BuyOwner.com / Acquisition
Reviews and Complaints

I am a Realtor in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. I had a client who has his home listed with me, and he previously had it listed with BuyOwner.com (also known as MLS Realty). Long story short - they didn't bring him any buyers and he had to move out of state soon so he called me. We got an offer on his home and the title company ran a title search to check for any outstanding liens. Guess what? 'MLS Realty' had placed a lien on my clients home and he had no idea why. Neither did I! So I called BuyOwner and asked why there was a lien on my client's home and the rep I talked to said 'Ooops we forgot to remove it' - even though they had already been paid in full by my client appx. $2500 for doing nothing. I asked why they place liens on Seller's homes and they told me they do this on every home they list, regardless of whether they are paid up front. This makes no sense to me. It was a huge hassle to get the lien removed and my client said that they had never mentioned to him that a lien would be placed on his home - no doubt it was buried in the fine print. I am a Realtor - I don't get paid upfront. I only get paid when I sell your home - so why does this company do it differently? Beware of any discount brokerages because there is a reason they are discounted. The saying that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is, rings true here. I've heard of may other people finding themselves in similar predicaments with BuyOwner lately too. There are reports on complaintsboard that say the company is being investigated and I certainly hope so.

Though I have been critical of Buy Owner in the past, I can now honestly say that my issues with the company were based on misunderstandings between myself and the individual salesperson involved with my transaction. I am at this point, totally satisfied with Buy Owner and its services. Buy Owner, has been a reputable company for many years, and has matched up home sellers with countless home buyers across the country. They have proven to be an honorable company with all those happy customers, and an honorable company with me as well. It is extremely beneficial for sellers like myself, to realize that it is an advertising service designed to connect you with buyers, while saving you from paying a hefty Realtor's comission. It is not a Realty. I know a lot of us out there cringe at the thought of paying these high comissions for something we can do ourselves - show our homes to interested buyers. Buy Owner facilitates this for you. To take full advantage of what Buy Owner has to offer though, you should determine how they can best help you market your home, and pick your marketing plan accordingly.

As with any business transaction, it is of the utmost importance that you read what you sign, and that you pick a package that you are ultimately comfortable with. With all this said, it is also of note, that the market right now is quite slow, and no matter how you choose to sell your home, it may sit for longer than in better times. For all the prospective buyers out there, you should really check out the homes on BuyOwner.com. You can probably strike a really great deal, since the sellers aren't shelling out a huge comission. This way, they can pass the savings on to you. Best of luck to everyone.

In reading the letters that were sent in to you I would like to comment and make a suggestion for these sellers. I am an out of town buyer and used Buy Owner twice with great success to purchase both properties. My complaint is with the people selling on this site. First of all I would like to have seen more pictures of the properties I bought before jumping on a plane and flying out of state to see if I really wanted them. I also did not like having to weed through a lot of outlandishly priced homes before finding sellers I could deal with to make it worth my while flying to see them. I might also add that in both purchases that I made the sellers both came down over $50,000.00 to consummate the deal. If the sellers on this site want more action I would suggest that they show as much of the property as possible and get more realistic on their prices!

I've been reading all of these letters being sent in about how Buy Owner didn't do their part of the bargain and live up to their company's word. After going over all of these diffent home seller, who are selling their home on their own, I have a comment for you, the sellers. I am an out of town buyer and have used Buy Owner twice, with great success. My complaint is with some of the sellers on the site. I came across many properties that seemed to have fit into criteria I was looking for, but when you went to thier personal page they had either provided few pictures or the seller had the home priced so ridiculously high above what was feasibly financed, and alot of times both problems were present. I am going to be much more intereseted in hopping onto a plane to fly out of state to tour this property if alot of these sellers had displayed more of the home, especially with the virtual tours they have that make it seem as if you are in the room of the home themselves. I did not like having weed through the outlandish prices and minimal representation of the homes just to before I could find sellers who were serious about selling thier homes to deal with to make it worth my time flying in to meet with them to make a deal. I might also add that I made he sellers both come down over $50,000 to consummate the deal. If these sellers complaining on this site want more action, then I would suggest that they show as much of their property as possible and get more realistic on their prices.

I fell for their crap. I have not seen any billboards, along the I-95 corridor from Ft. Lauderdale to Daytona. I was told there was many and I was also told that Buy Owner would advertise on TV. I think I have seen one or two TV ads when I record the old NYPD Blue's from 2:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.

I will be filing a formal complaint with the Florida state attorneys office. What the victims of Buy Owner really need to do is to file a class action law-suit. They probably don't have any money, but good legal counsel, should be able to find this out.

Since, Buy Owner crosses state lines with it's crap, it may be subject to FCC action or even FBI action for fraud.

If you are reading this then you must be researching the BuyOwner.com business. If so, I can help. DON'T DO IT! TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY! Here are a list of my complaints:

1. Their salesman will boast of BuyOwner's accomplishments without providing proof. Ours in the Louisville, KY market told us that 6 homes in our immediate area sold using their company. He told me only 26% of the homes that use BO have to resort to a realty company. Unfortunately, the only homes selling in my subdivision used realty companies.

2. He claimed that their website works like a match making company. They have thousands of prospective buyers that they will match us up with. He said he already had 150 people searching for a home like ours. In addition, we can keep count of the number of views we have on our home through the website. Although nearly 200 hundred people have claimed to viewed our home, not one has contacted us. Funny, huh?

3. Our home will be advertised in the the local newspaper. Actually their company is advertised and they relate that to advertising our home. Nice twist.

4. Our home will have a beautiful color spread in the BuyOwner magazine. I have never seen this magazine. Even at places like WalMart that have numerous other home magazines, BuyOwner has never been there. Does it really exist?

In a nutshell:

BuyOwner will come out and give you a beautifully packaged marketing plan filled with lies and deceit. Either is simply does not exist or just doesn't work. There are numerous other avenues you can take for thousands less that are more effective. You can buy an nice For Sale By Owner sign and even create your own website showcasing your home. BuyOwner does nothing but deliver you a sign for your yard and post your house on their website that nobody seems to use. If you think I am an isolated case then research the web and you will see that I am not an isolated case. Florida already has a class action lawsuit against them. Their complaints mirror mine. Please don't through away your money. Contact other BO customers in your area and see how they feel.

Whatever you do, do not use BuyOwner.com, especially in South Florida. They blitz the airwaves with those ridiculous commercials, and you falsely believe that this is a legitimate company. IT IS NOT. In today's Real Estate market, which is sadly almost at it's worst, home sellers are feeling particularly vulnerable, and are easy prey for BuyOwner. They falsely claim that you will save money by signing up with them, when in reality, they will scam you out of thousands of dollars that you will never get back. It is a trick. Please don't be fooled. Ask them about their sales statistics. They won't give you any. Gee I wonder why?!

Let me break it down for you: Buy Owner essentially sells you a trumped up advertising package of redundant photos and virtual tours that no one will ever see. All of those "hits" they claim you will get, won't happen. The few people that do browse your profile are just lookyloos, and other BuyOwner desperate sellers, checking on the competetion. No serious home buyers go to BuyOwner.com, only sellers like you. Think about it, all of those ads you see on TV are aimed at you, the seller, and not the important BUYERS. You never see them saying, "Come to our website to buy your home." It is always "Sell your home with BuyOwner." By the way, those "sellers" in the their commercials are actors. It's all really a big, giant scam aimed at you, to line their pockets with your money. Yes, if your foolish enough to sign their contract, you will quickly realize that they will get all the money upfront, or else put a lean on your house. Folks, they are truly bad news. Just take my advice, and either use a legitimate Realtor, or a legitimate FSBO company who will only charge you a couple hundred bucks to list your house with plenty of pics. When BuyOwner asks you for thousands of dollars for a bogus service, you have to know something is wrong there. Run in the other direction. In fact, do not invite these people into your homes in the first place. You will regret it immediately.

I have been with www.buyowner.com for over 3 months. To this date i have had 653 hits and 153 tours. Not one person has called me yet. I also think this is a big scam.

Buy Owner is the shadiest, most unscrupulous company that I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with in my entire life. They will take your money upfront, and will never sell your house. They lie, cheat, and steal. All of that advertising they claim to do is completely misleading. In fact, it is only directed at you the seller. THEY DO NOT TARGET BUYERS AT ALL. The people who troll their website, are mainly all of the sellers checking on their, and other people's properties to see the competition, and realtors who want to list your property. It is definitely a SCAM. Everyone is right when they say," Run away from them!" They need to be put out of business. It is a fraudulent company, and they're the only ones making a profit, like in a giant pyramid scheme. It's as if the whole website profile thing, is just incidental. It's merely an excuse for them to take your money. The only problem, is that what they're selling is bogus. It truly does not work! Please do not repeat the mistakes of people on this site. For the love of everything good in this world, DO NOT USE BUY OWNER! SAVE YOUR MONEY. INVEST IT. BUY A GIFT FOR SOMEONE. HELP OUT YOUR PARENTS. GIVE TO THE POOR, A HOSPITAL, NEEDY CHILDREN, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, BURN IT... JUST PLEASE DO ANYTHING BESIDES GIVING YOUR MONEY TO THESE THIEVES.

If you really want to sell your home by yourself, there are several, relatively inexpensive ways to do it. Unlike Buy Owner, they won't rob you blind. There are quite a number of flat fee listing services online, that will list your property on the mls, which is really important if you're a motivated seller. This will literally cost you a couple hundred dollars, compared to the thousands you'll throw away with Buy Owner. As a general rule, if someone wants you to pay thousands of dollars upfront, offering you no guarantees, no refunds, and absolutely no statistics on their selling capabilities, run in the other direction. There are other For Sale By Owner sites that do not operate like Buy Owner, and do not charge those ridiculous prices, for those insane advertising packages. Trust me, it's all B.S.

Buy Owner pads their profile packages with truly unnecessary amounts of photos, and virtual tours, that no one will ever see. That's how they try to justify their crazy prices. They try to get you to purchase as many photos as they can, all the while telling you how important it is for people to see every inch of your property. Go to any well respected Realty sites on the web, and see that they do not have 80 pictures of one house, with 20 virtual tours. No one in their right mind would sit through all that. If a buyer likes what they see, they'll know after the first few pics, and will schedule an appointment to view the property in person.

To get you to pay thousands of dollars, for these overblown, puffed up packages, is just plain wrong. In today's market, if you can't sell your home legitimately by yourself, with the aid of a REPUTABLE listing service, yard signs, newspapers, free sites etc., then it actually might be time to call in a Realtor. At least you won't feel like a total fool like me, who spent SERIOUS money with Buy Owner, cancelled three days later, but could not get a refund. Now I am listed with a Realtor who is IN NO WAY AFFILIATED with Buy Owner, and will have to pay them as well. But think about it, at least they only get paid, if and when they sell my house. They have real incentive to work hard for you to actually sell your property. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Buy Owner has their own realty company conspicuously called MLS realty (NOT RELATED TO THE REAL MLS LISTING SERVICE- DON'T BE FOOLED) that will make you sign something like a year listing, and will take a huge commission on top of what you already paid to Buy Owner, once you realize that your house isn't selling. Therefore you must not sign up with them, even if you feel trapped. I was smart enough not to fall into this net, but I've heard horror stories of others who have. It would be like throwing good money after bad.

Basically, don't even invite these people into your homes. You'll regret it immediately. BUY OWNER is BAD NEWS.

It has been nearly 2 years now, and we are providing this comprehensive account of our experience with BuyOwner (www.buyowner.com) a real estate advertising service for purposes of consumer awareness.

We hope it will save others from our experience.

Summary of Our BuyOwner Experience:
> BuyOwner charged us $2649 on 7/8/2005 for their real-estate advertising service.

> In our opinion, they used extremely aggressive and arguably deceptive sales practices (dramatically overstating the service’s effectiveness)

> The Sales Person carefully avoided any mention of BuyOwner’s infamous “No Refund” policy.

> During the setup of our ad on the BuyOwner website, we began to notice the quality was below our expectation.

> We noticed that the 360 view, still picture quality, factual information, flyer generation amongst other things (read details below) were unsatisfactory.

> We had hundreds of views of our home, but we had 0 visitors to our home and only 1 call.

> During the 3+ weeks we used BuyOwner, we made numerous follow-up calls (logged below) and emails to voice our complaints about quality, but BuyOwner was non-responsive to our requests.

> When it became obvious BuyOwner was not going to respond, we attempted to cancel and negotiate a partial refund.

> BuyOwner quickly canceled our ad, but made no attempt to reimburse us even a portion of our paid monies.

> We were then forced to advertise ourselves (using a custom website, open houses, etc.)

> Within 3 weeks using our own advertising (custom website, custom flyers, custom signage, open houses ~ no Realtor was involved), we had over 40 visitors and 2 offers.

> We sold our home entirely ON OUR OWN, with NO assistance from BuyOwner, even though they kept our money and cancelled our ad.

We believe BuyOwner provided unsatisfactory service (again, see below for many details) not commensurate with what they charge.

We further feel we have had to invest significant money and effort to overcome BuyOwner’s deficiencies. We used the service for less than 3 weeks before initiating our dispute.

During our dispute, we made every reasonable attempt to negotiate a refund that would allow BuyOwner to be reimbursed for “sunken costs” (i.e. photography). Though we genuinely tried to resolve this in an equitable manner, BuyOwner’s Irving, TX office was non-responsive to our complaints (addressing none of them) and to our request for a negotiated settlement.

In numerous discussions, they insisted on retaining the full-payment and have threatened legal action should we proceed with this dispute. The best way I can characterize them is: they behaved like a company who knew they'd done something wrong.

Conclusion: You are better off advertising yourself than using BuyOwner.

Read below for further details.

A detailed list of deficiencies with BuyOwner’s service:

A Note Regarding BuyOwner’s Cancellation Policy

BuyOwner stipulates they have a strict “no refund” policy (please see this document in the included BuyOwner Materials).

In our case:
1. We were NOT made aware of this policy at ANYTIME prior to or during the sale (e.g. their sales person deliberately didn’t mention or point out the fine print).

2. We believe this could be a calculated sales tactic, designed to deliberately beguile and deceive homeowners into accepting and paying (up front) for BuyOwner services without any recourse should they be dissatisfied with said services.
Note: Unlike BuyOwner, most Realtors do not charge for non-performance (e.g. they do not collect their commission or charge for MLS advertising exposure.)

3. The refund policy was similarly unavailable on the BuyOwner website.

4. We only received said “policy” approximately 4 days following the posting date on our credit card when we received the “A Better Way to Sell Your Home” manual.

“Hundreds of Views” but NOT 1 interested buyer?

- Not ONE buyer whom has allegedly viewed home at www.buyowner.com has resulted in a qualified showing.

- ALL 50+ buyers who have physically been shown our home have been the result of word of mouth, realtors, our open houses, and custom marketing we invested in (www.creeksideway.com), custom flyers (due to BuyOwner flyer formatting issue), development of custom front-yard signage.

BuyOwner Flyer Quality

- The BuyOwner flyer (produced from their website) PDF lacks critical information about our property (like square footage) and it is not editable.

- The BuyOwner flyer does not format correctly (for example, we had a sentence running into our pictures). This formatting problem caused the flyer to appear unprofessional to prospective buyers. There is no ability to correct this and we were forced to create our own custom flyer.

Photography

- The 360 degree photos BuyOwner commissioned were unsatisfactory:

- The BuyOwner photographer seemed in a “big rush” to get in and out. Since photographic representation of a home is a critical aspect of selling the home, we feel this service was unsatisfactory.

- The resulting images were washed out and lacked clarity. We twice attempted twice to reschedule the 360 degree photo shoot to correct these problems. BuyOwner was non-responsive.

- Our images didn’t appear to match the functionality of other BuyOwner listings (e.g. some other BuyOwner.com listings appear to have better quality 360s than ours).

- Six still photographs were taken, but their quality was never confirmed with us prior to posting on our ad. Once posted to our ad, the BuyOwner pictures lacked sufficient detail.

BuyOwner Website

- The BuyOwner.com website has generated only 1 call since July 7th, 2005, (call was on July 10th) or approximately 3 weeks of advertising at the time of this writing.

- The 1 person who called, did call through the 1-800 number, but was not pre-qualified (as promised during the BuyOwner sales pitch)
Ability to access the BuyOwner.com website [as a seller] required 2 calls to customer service (though during the BuyOwner sales pitch we were made to believe we would be contacted immediately following the sale).

- BuyOwner.com “visitor” statistics are misleading and potentially fraudulent:

- BuyOwner does not capture unique hits to your ad. In other words, their statistics record each “view” of your home regardless of if it's the same person viewing the page over and over. This artificially inflates the statistics and deceives the seller.

- BuyOwner’s statistics also include the seller’s viewing of their own page. In our case, this artificially inflated our “view” statistics by at least 20-25% and is likewise deceiving to the seller.

- No other detailed traffic statistics are provided for consumer; therefore it is impossible to discern if these statistics are “inflated” by BuyOwner or even genuine. (This would seem consistent with most BuyOwner complaints: hundreds of views, but no calls).

- There is no method to advertise “open houses” online (as promised during the BuyOwner sales pitch).

- There was inadequate factual information on website regarding our home (e.g. compare the information from BuyOwner to that on MLS).

- There is little to no ability for the customer to modify their listing information (beyond price, email address and some 30 word captions under the pictures).

- BuyOwner.com provides no step-wise process (or even basic information) on how a potential buyer should proceed if they want to make an offer.
Directing open house visitors to BuyOwner has caused confusion because there is *no* information for them on how to make an offer.

- Determining how to educate buyers on the “buying process” is left entirely to the home owner to sort out (though this “buyer education” was part of the sales pitch).

- As a result of BuyOwner’s web deficiencies, we were forced to setup our own website (www.creeksideway.com) to ensure sufficient detail.

Customer Service

- We were never contacted by BuyOwner (unless we called them) after they “closed the sale” (though this was promised during the BuyOwner sales pitch).

- As mentioned above, we ask for and were promised a 2nd [Virtual Tour] photo shoot (to correct the washed out problems in our 1st shoot). This was never performed (as promised by the BuyOwner customer service in Las Colinas, TX).

- The sales price of our home (a critically important part of the sale) was merely a guess on the part of the salesperson, but not [professional] substantiated by facts or comps.

- An MLS report was provided by BuyOwner approximately 4 days later, but by then the sales price had been established and printed & distributed on flyers.

Directional Signage

- The BuyOwner-provided yard signs are small and arguably unprofessional in appearance when compared with the competition (Re/Max, Keller Williams).

- As a result, we are being forced to invest in our own “custom-made” yard signs.
BuyOwner provided no specific “Open House” signs (only directional signs were provided. We were forced to purchase our own.

Contracts / Forms

- The contract forms provided by BuyOwner are commonly available for FREE from the TREC website (e.g. anyone can download them).

- BuyOwner should not represent “reprinting” FREE documents as an asset of their paid-for service.
The provided contract forms are effectively useless, since they are perforated on the edge with binding holes. This forces the customer to download the same forms to print “clean” copies (for faxing, etc.).

- The BuyOwner’s materials provide little or no direction for filling out required forms (as we were expecting based on the sales pitch).
Texas and most Title companies require certain forms to accompany a completed contract.

- Only one of these forms was provided by BuyOwner:

> Seller’s Disclosure OP-H (provided)
> NOT PROVIDED: Addendum for Property Subject to Mandatory Membership in an Owners' Association 36-3
> NOT PROVIDED: Third Party Financing Condition Addendum 40-1

- We were forced to research and complete each of these our independently.

- There did not appear to be any additional contract support or advice within provided documentation (e.g. how a buyer or seller should fill the contracts out, though this was likewise promised during the BuyOwner sales pitch).

Call History with BuyOwner’s Irving, TX office:

7/5/2005 1:54pm 1:00min From [protected] BuyOwner Office BuyOwner called and left message following our inquiry on their website.
7/5/2005 2:21pm 7:00min To [protected] BuyOwner Office Inquiry for BuyOwner services. Referred us to sales rep Deanna Hall.
7/7/2005 9:52am 1:00min To [protected] Deanna Hall Initial setup for meeting BuyOwner sales representative
7/12/2005 12:37pm 2:00min To [protected] Deanna Hall Left message regarding yard sign sticker and website password.
7/12/2005 1:02pm 2:00min From [protected] Deanna Hall Left message regarding 12:37pm call.
7/12/2005 1:06pm 1:00min To [protected] Deanna Hall Left message regarding dissatisfaction with 360 degree images.
7/13/2005 10:25am 2:00min From [protected] BuyOwner Office Called to discuss Realtor possibly interested in showing the house. Realtor was told by BuyOwner that we may not be interested in working with them. Realtor never returned our message and never showed the home.
7/13/2005 12:21pm 17:00min To [protected] BuyOwner Office Discussed how to access the website (still not provided), dissatisfaction with the 360 images and other [promised] selling information still needed (manual, etc.)
7/13/2005 12:58pm 4:00min From [protected] BuyOwner Office Discussed website access.
7/25/2005 10:04am 7:00min To [protected] BuyOwner Office Spoke with BuyOwner rep (one of the 3, but not Rhonda) regarding our dissatisfaction with the service and possible remedy. Was told that I would have to address this with Rhonda and she would call me back.
7/26/2005 10:13am 1:00min From [protected] BuyOwner Office Incoming call from BuyOwner, but not Rhonda.
7/25/2005 4:00pm 2:00min To [protected] BuyOwner Office Had not heard from Rhonda yet. Left another message regarding my disatisfaction with said service and a request to call me back.
7/26/2005 11:05am 8:00min To [protected] BuyOwner Office Spoke with Rhonda regarding our disbute and possible reimbursement. It was a cordial conversation whereby she informed me any decisions on reimbursement would need to be made "by the president," but certainly the tone of the conversation sounded positive (as if an understanding could be reached).
8/9/2005 11:05am 2:00min To [protected] BuyOwner Office Could not get through to Rhonda. Hung up, tried again below.
8/9/2005 11:07am 8:00min To [protected] BuyOwner Office Spoke with Rhonda regarding reimbursement. BuyOwner's position was decidedly different from our call on 7/26/05. This time, they were inflexible and almost immediately threatened legal action should we not reverse our course of dispute. I informed BuyOwner that if they could 1) address even 1 of our written complaints and 2) produce one compelling piece of evidence that their alleged "services" had been effective, that I would gladly discuss appropriate payment. Rhonda provided no response to my request beyond repeating their "No Refund" policy and reiterating the threat of legal action.

The salesperson from Buyowner.com in Chicago came to our house and specifically told us that if our house was priced right, people would VIEW our home on the website and of those views 2% would call or email us regarding our home. The salesperson promised that our house would sell based on a comparative market analysis. He convinced us that the best way for us to sell our home would be to purchase the $4000.00 plan and pay it over time on our credit card. I asked him several times, how successful is buyowner and he assured me my house would sell. My house is properly priced. I did heavy research on this before establishing a listing price. It has been 5 weeks, with 330 views and one call. I have read other complaints on my3cents.com. They have experienced the same issues as I have. Buyowner.com basically falsely advertised. They had promised me that I would save a lot of money in commission if I went with them and assured me that my house would sell at a reasonable price. When I called to ask for my money back, they refused and weren't effected by the false statements the salesperson made. I ended up LOSING the $4000 because my house never sold. The neighbors across the street also lost a significant amount of money because their house didn't sell through Buyowner.com either. They need to be stopped.