Cummings Seeks Information from Vision Property  Management and Fannie Mae about Alleged Harm to Tenants

Washington, D.C. (Jan. 18, 2017) – Today, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent letters to the CEOs of Vision Property Management and Fannie Mae seeking details about the properties Vision and its subsidiaries have purchased from Fannie Mae and offered through rent-to-own and other seller-financed transactions. 

“Recent media reports have detailed financial and physical harms that your business model—which reportedly is structured to churn unsuspecting tenants through ever-deepening money pits—has inflicted on families with limited means,” Cummings wrote to Vision’s CEO.

According to one press report, Vision’s rent-to-own contracts place substantial risks on tenants that traditional property rental or sales contracts do not. The National Consumer Law Center concluded that contracts like those offered by Vision “are built to fail, as sellers make more money by finding a way to cancel the contract so as to churn many successive would-be homeowners through the property.”

According to another press report last month, two children under six years of age in Cummings’ district were found to have dangerous levels of lead in their blood as a result of the lead paint in a home occupied after the children’s guardian entered into a rent-to-own contract with Vision Property Management.

In today’s letter to Vision, Cummings requested detailed information about the homes that Vision and its subsidiaries have offered on rent-to-own contracts or any other type of seller-financed contracts in Baltimore, Maryland, as well as the total number of homes Vision and its subsidiaries have acquired from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or HUD in each state, and the number of such homes Vision has rented or offered on seller-financed contracts with lead hazards or code violations.

In his letter to Fannie Mae, Cummings requested information about the specific steps it has taken, or plans to take, to ensure that the houses it obtains through foreclosure and re-sells will be safe for future residents, particularly children, and free from lead hazards and code violations.

Cummings requested this information and a briefing by Vision and Fannie Mae by February 15, 2017. 

Click here to read the letter to Vision, and click here to read the letter to Fannie Mae.