Piedmont Capital - San Francisco, California

Leigh C.

I worked directly with Charlie Sosa, Senior loan officer to help me transition (1031) from a 4 unit property in Oakland to two other properties. The process started out great with Charlie being willing to explain things in depth even multiple times if I requested. Once we actually got into the deals that's when everything became an absolute mess. It turns out he either doesn't know what he's talking about or just cares about his commission (he called title to request info on how much he was getting. Tacky!). I'm going to say a bit a both. When one does a 1031 the absolute most important detail is the date of when the 45 day window of looking for a replacement property is up. I had told him this date many times for months. Once my 45 day window is up he lets me know the property we been working on (paid for inspection and appraisal) wasn't going to work without significant amount of additional cash into the deal. Mind you, I had told him from the jump over and over again until I was blue in the face that we had to set up all purchases to not bring additional cash out of pocket. He essentially wanted me to use all my families in case of emergency savings fund because he had made mistakes on his calculations. It gets better! Just wait. After he tells me all this he says but you can just identify another less expensive property. I couldn't believe he didn't even know my 45 days were up. I had to remind him twice that my 45 days were up. I eventually just stopped answering his phone calls and emails because I was so angry at how incompetent he ended up being. This is only one example of the many many mistakes he made. He also screwed up termite report/payment, initial checking account with lender, and he made the transaction terrible difficult on my real estate agent, title company, and not to mention the super nice seller (and seller agent) that had hoped the deal would go through. It's amazing how one lender not doing his job intelligently can make things so horrible for so many people. Shouldn't a lender know how to create something similar to a settlement statement and anticipate/estimate what all things will cost? Title had requested from him multiple times the cost of appraisals or other loan fees. He just didn't know. It was such a simple question. How much will appraisal be? He'd say I'll get back to you and then we'd never get a number. Out of nowhere there were these unexpected cost that he just somehow didn't know about even though every commercial deal has this so why was it such a surprise? I don't do commercial loans all day long so I had no idea how this works. Correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't this his job! To explain all the costs of a loan. Basically I was able to purchase one property instead of two. Then he has the gull to say we'll you did good though you got a nicer property as though the goal was never to get two properties. If anybody out there wants anymore info feel free to message me. Save yourself the horrible experience go to a completely different company. If the Senior loan officer is this bad I can't even imagine what the regular loan officers are doing.