Arkansas AG Files Suit Against Developer For Loan Default On Land Parcels Sold To Consumers Using Installment Land Sales Contracts

In Northwest Arkansas, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reports:

• [L]ast week, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel sued [developer Wayne] Watkins and some of his business associates, saying they had violated the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Watkins, the suit read, had “engaged in a concerted scheme to knowingly deceive both consumer purchasers and banks to keep his financial house of cards from tumbling.”

According to the story:

• [Watkins] sold hundreds of parcels of land, often financing the deals himself. Buyers signed installment land-sales contracts and were promised deeds once they made the last payment. Until then, the land remained in Watkins’ name.

• Many of Watkins’ customers lost their money and the land they thought they were buying when he defaulted on $ 2.6 million in loans he obtained by using the land he was selling as collateral. Because Watkins did not record the contracts at the courthouses in Sharp or Fulton counties, there was nothing showing lenders that buyers had a legal interest in the land.

***

• Foreclosure records and other documents show that Watkins’ land sometimes had one or more bank liens that buyers never knew about because they did not conduct title searches on the property. At least one buyer told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that Watkins’ salesmen discouraged him from having a title search.

For more, see Land-sales firms see image take hit.

Go here and go here for stories on how easy some found it in getting screwed over in these lease/option, "rent to own" and contract for deed, and installment sale contract real estate deals. rent to own lease purchase option scams yellowstone