Luxury Home Consultants

He seemed nice and earnest at first and sent us some listings for a few weeks and we went to see a couple of them. I can still almost remember liking Bill and my wife & I felt we could trust him. Prices were pretty inflated then, but we finally saw one property that looked like it had a reasonable rental income. There was one glaring issue of concern, however, that a small 3rd unit was added onto a property in a duplex zoning area, and the sellers denied knowing whether it was legal/permitted. As a 3-unit property, the rental income would just barely allow us to qualify for the loan we needed, but since the 3rd unit was "non-conforming" for the duplex zoning classification, we explained to Bill that we could not even qualify for the loan (from our bank of over 10 years with excellent credit). He told us it could be that the property was "grandfathered in" -- in other words permitted or given a variance by the city in years past when the codes may have been different. He encouraged us to apply for the loan through him with a different bank (for which I'm sure he racked up another hefty commission), and use an appraiser he knew, and he'd check with the city regarding the legality of the 3rd unit. Several days later as we were getting down to the wire with the loan application and the sellers, Bill called to let me know that he had "documentation from the city in [his] hand showing the 3rd unit is approved by the city". I trusted him and said great, get a copy of that to me as soon as you can, and in the meantime we went through with the deal and things seemed OK for a few months. Then one of the tenants we inherited when we bought the property stopped paying rent and we had to start an eviction process. We don't really know for sure how we got on the city's radar, but we think that most likely that that long-term tenant knew the 3rd unit might have been "non-conforming" and called the city to have them check into it (just to be evil). So the city looked into it and soon sent us notice of a code violation -- that the 3rd unit was illegal according to their records. I never had received the "document from the city" that Bill told me he had prior to the purchase, and hadn't even remembered to chase after him for it, although we did have the appraisal which said that the city had approved all 3 units. We called Bill to get the document to show the city, but he didn't answer any of our calls & messages with his staff (probably 30 calls over several weeks). So, we asked the appraiser (Robert Barclay...don't worry, we'll copy this as a comment on him as well) what he'd looked at to make that determination (his own appraisal "certification" states that he got his info from a "disinterested source"). Well, turns out he said that Bill Barrett had told him it was legal -- and that was his "disinterested source"!!! So it appeared Bill never had a "document from the city", but just to get his quick commission, told his buddy the appraiser that everything was fine, and the appraiser, to get his quick $500, didn't bother to verify anything -- both of us setting us up for what turned out to be a very expensive and 2 year relentless nightmare trying to get our property in compliance with the city. To make a long story short, the highlights are that we had to end the use of the 3rd unit as a rental, break open a wall, and convert it back into a garage, with multiple contractors and inspectors and countless trips to the unit and the city. We probably spent over 200 hours and $10,000 doing that stuff, not to mention the loss of $500 a month rental income (forever), and a major loss of property value. We did have a Title Attorney (also referred to us by Bill), but he was not involved as the property did not have any lien at the time of purchase, etc, etc. We did not have a "real estate attorney" per se guiding / reviewing the transaction, something I highly recommend to anyone without plenty of experience in this area. Bill never once mentioned any need for one and, admittedly, we didn't even know to ask about such a thing -- we barely had any experience buying real estate...our only other property was the house we kept and rented prior to our last move. Bill, on the other hand repeatedly spoke of how he owned 40+ rental units and has years and years of experience in buying and renting properties. For those wondering, we did sue Bill Barrett and Robert Barclay, but they are both apparently able to spend much more on attorneys than we could and after a few thousand dollars without much progress or any guarantees we'd win back anything from these scam artists, we finally just threw in the towel around August 2009 (which is why we put that as our "service date")

He seemed nice and earnest at first and sent us some listings for a few weeks and we went to see a couple of them. I can still almost remember liking Bill and my wife & I felt we could trust him. Prices were pretty inflated then, but we finally saw one property that looked like it had a reasonable rental income. There was one glaring issue of concern, however, that a small 3rd unit was added onto a property in a duplex zoning area, and the sellers denied knowing whether it was legal/permitted. As a 3-unit property, the rental income would just barely allow us to qualify for the loan we needed, but since the 3rd unit was "non-conforming" for the duplex zoning classification, we explained to Bill that we could not even qualify for the loan (from our bank of over 10 years with excellent credit). He told us it could be that the property was "grandfathered in" -- in other words permitted or given a variance by the city in years past when the codes may have been different. He encouraged us to apply for the loan through him with a different bank (for which I'm sure he racked up another hefty commission), and use an appraiser he knew, and he'd check with the city regarding the legality of the 3rd unit. Several days later as we were getting down to the wire with the loan application and the sellers, Bill called to let me know that he had "documentation from the city in [his] hand showing the 3rd unit is approved by the city". I trusted him and said great, get a copy of that to me as soon as you can, and in the meantime we went through with the deal and things seemed OK for a few months. Then one of the tenants we inherited when we bought the property stopped paying rent and we had to start an eviction process. We don't really know for sure how we got on the city's radar, but we think that most likely that that long-term tenant knew the 3rd unit might have been "non-conforming" and called the city to have them check into it (just to be evil). So the city looked into it and soon sent us notice of a code violation -- that the 3rd unit was illegal according to their records. I never had received the "document from the city" that Bill told me he had prior to the purchase, and hadn't even remembered to chase after him for it, although we did have the appraisal which said that the city had approved all 3 units. We called Bill to get the document to show the city, but he didn't answer any of our calls & messages with his staff (probably 30 calls over several weeks). So, we asked the appraiser (Robert Barclay...don't worry, we'll copy this as a comment on him as well) what he'd looked at to make that determination (his own appraisal "certification" states that he got his info from a "disinterested source"). Well, turns out he said that Bill Barrett had told him it was legal -- and that was his "disinterested source"!!! So it appeared Bill never had a "document from the city", but just to get his quick commission, told his buddy the appraiser that everything was fine, and the appraiser, to get his quick $500, didn't bother to verify anything -- both of us setting us up for what turned out to be a very expensive and 2 year relentless nightmare trying to get our property in compliance with the city. To make a long story short, the highlights are that we had to end the use of the 3rd unit as a rental, break open a wall, and convert it back into a garage, with multiple contractors and inspectors and countless trips to the unit and the city. We probably spent over 200 hours and $10,000 doing that stuff, not to mention the loss of $500 a month rental income (forever), and a major loss of property value. We did have a Title Attorney (also referred to us by Bill), but he was not involved as the property did not have any lien at the time of purchase, etc, etc. We did not have a "real estate attorney" per se guiding / reviewing the transaction, something I highly recommend to anyone without plenty of experience in this area. Bill never once mentioned any need for one and, admittedly, we didn't even know to ask about such a thing -- we barely had any experience buying real estate...our only other property was the house we kept and rented prior to our last move. Bill, on the other hand repeatedly spoke of how he owned 40+ rental units and has years and years of experience in buying and renting properties. For those wondering, we did sue Bill Barrett and Robert Barclay, but they are both apparently able to spend much more on attorneys than we could and after a few thousand dollars without much progress or any guarantees we'd win back anything from these scam artists, we finally just threw in the towel around August 2009 (which is why we put that as our "service date") Also, for those of you who might say, "tough luck, you screwed yourself by not demanding everything in writing up front and buyer beware, etc, etc" we do see that side of the argument, and we certainly learned our lesson. However, we see Angie's List as a forum for this sort of feedback and if nothing else we can warn others about these jerks...they don't deserve the privilege of licensure in their respective fields or the trust of any clients.