I am an Australian woman who bought a few investment properties in the USA- Phoenix, Orlando and Las Vegas.
I bought a 3 bedroom modern house in Phoenix AZ for $55,000. I employed a tradesman to do a few general repairs on the house. He then recommended I buy 3 foreclosure properties in the same area in Phoenix. He said he could do all the repairs for $12,000 and they would rent for $1200-$1400 each. I bought the properties for about $122,000 and paid him an initial sum of $6000 to purchase material. Over the course of several months I continuously relented to his requests for more money as he claimed the repairs were more serious than first imagined. He told me that the properties had been broken into and had various house parts stolen and damaged. I paid close to $20,000 altogether and made continual requests for receipts, invoices, proof of purchases and photos of work completed but he never provided any of these.
He then asked me if he could act as a property manager for the property 1st property I had bought, after there was a change of tenants. I agreed to pay him a monthly fee of $75 to look after all the maintenance issues with the property and make sure the tenant was happy. He was also paid $900 to tidy up the property before the new tenants moved in. Although this guy has no license to be a property manager in Phoenix, he went ahead and signed a lease between himself and the tenant in my property. Then I had a friend from Nevada who was visiting Phoenix personally inspect the properties to discover that basically no work had been done whatsoever.
The tenant at ended up moving out because all the maintenance issues the tradesman was supposed to fix were causing problems. For example I bought a brand new AC unit for the house which he was supposed to install but evidently didn’t have a clue what he was doing so he hooked it up and it cools but doesn’t heat.
The tradesman does have a registered business and owns a big house and has assets. I guess he was counting on the fact that I live in Australia and am far away. I did contact a few lawyers in Phoenix who said they would charge around between $5000-$8000 to pursue the matter. For that amount it doesn't even seem worthwhile as it could potentially be more money down the drain.
I have considered taking a 'holiday' to AZ to pursue the matter in court myself. I work from a computer so there would be no loss of income by having to travel abroad. Any advise about what I should do would be greatly appreciated.