ATLANTA — Georgia’s attorney general claims internal company documents show the real estate company behind 40-year listing agreements at the center of a series of Channel 2 Action News investigations was more interested in collecting penalties than selling homes.
For the first time, Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray talked to someone who actually tried to use MV Realty to sell his house.
Willie Berry lives in one of the fastest gentrifying parts of the city – Sylvan Hills. After 4 months on the market, Berry said he had no offers.
The MV Realty sign out front of Berry’s house caught our attention. So, Gray knocked on the door.
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“If I got to give them 6%, you know, I might as well go ahead and use them, not having to pay twice,” Berry said.
Berry, like so many of the people we have met in our series of investigations, told Gray he did not realize he was signing a 40-year deal with MV Realty.
Channel 2 Action News has reported on MV Realty’s homeowner benefit program where you get a small check now but a big penalty later – 3% of the value of your house if you don’t use them to sell your house.
“Did you expect this house to sell pretty quick?” Gray asked Berry.
“I did. I really did,” Berry said.
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Unlike most of the other people Gray has met, Berry took MV up on their offer to sell his house.
“I don’t feel like they put in the full effort, you know, to make it sale,” Berry said.
That’s no surprise to Georgia’s attorney general.
Attached to Attorney General Chris Carr’s lawsuit against MV Realty is an MV Realty business presentation for investors that the AG claims, “confirms, among other things, that MV Realty did not intend to operate as a residential real estate firm and instead intended to record memorandums on consumers’ homes to cloud the title.”
In the proposal, MV Realty wrote that while it was found as a digital-focused real estate brokerage, it “began transitioning the business into a specialty finance-focused prop-tech company.”
In its SEC filings, one of the investors put in plain English what that means: It listed MV Realty as a banking business, not a real estate company.
Berry took his home off the market last week after it didn’t sell, and he can’t change brokers unless he wants to pay MV Realty that 3% penalty.
“For MV Realty itself, I wouldn’t recommend,” Berry said.
That same internal business presentation shows MV Realty makes more money when they are not the agent on a home.
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