Ground Floor Finance Reviews (%countItem)
Ground Floor Finance Rating
Address: 600 Peachtree St NE STE 810, Atlanta, Georgia, United States, 30308-2219
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This company is shady as they come. They don't communicate with borrowers then delete your posts on public forums when you question why they're not communicating with you.
I decided to try out GroundFloor based upon a recommendation from an investment group. I invested small amounts in several properties starting 6 months ago. They were all 12 month loans. Nevertheless already 11 projects have completed early. Repayments were on time and ROI was at or above expected return. Communication is very good. I get notifications of all transactions, loans being funded, and projects being completed. I currently have almost 100 loans in my portfolio. Based on GroundFloor performance for me, I will continue to invest in additional properties in larger amounts and look forward to a long relationship.
Their real estate loans are not vetted properly, resulting in way too many financial work outs and disclosures. The owner tried to not pay me a promised bonus for opening an account and I had to deal with his attorney to finally get my bonus. I only invested in a few homes when I started realizing the problems. In my personal account, three out of four were late, one paid out less than promised after Groundfloor settled the issue, and now I obly have one more that is a year behind payment with no end in site because Groundfloor appears to be dragging their legs. I asked for a refund plus earnings many times, just to have the owner of Groundfloor, and all he wants is to be released from all liability in order to pay me off. I refuse to be bought. I plan on continuing my complaints with other agencies as I believe he is mismanaging this business and he treated me with much disrespect. Regardless of how upset a customer is, you have to deal with them in a professional way.
Product_Or_Service: Investment in real estate loans
Refund I want a refund of my last pending investment plus interest for every month. I also want a refund for the previous forclosed on home with interest. He paid me less than invested.
This user has made demands to receive refunds for investments in GROUNDFLOOR LRO's that, from her perspective, have either not produced satisfactory returns or have not yet been resolved. Her most recent investment for which she is demanding a refund was a $100 investment in a GROUNDFLOOR LRO. Per the terms our LRO Agreement provided to the user, GROUNDFLOOR is under no obligation to return her principal prior to repayment of the underlying loan. Additionally, the LRO Agreement states clearly that GROUNDFLOOR "does not guarantee payment of the limited recourse obligations in the amount or on the time frame expected."
Regarding the user's claim that GROUNDFLOOR did not pay out a promised bonus, the user signed up for an account type (IRA) that was not qualified to receive the sign up bonus demanded by the user. We then took the unusual step of refunding the investments held in that new account so the user could close her account. We recognized the user's frustration with her experience, and were certainly willing to make accommodations. Since then, the user has continually bullied and threatened GROUNDFLOOR to demand more from us, without regard to whether she is legally or contractually entitled to it.
The user's claim that we are "dragging our legs" with respect to recovering investors funds from the defaulted loan underlying her last remaining LRO investment is simply not true. To the contrary, we have spent and will continue to spend all appropriate time and resources resolving it on behalf of the investors similarly situated with her. Her claims that GROUNDFLOOR is mismanaging its business are not based on the facts, but her own limited interpretation of how her individual account has performed. The facts show GROUNDFLOOR has delivered superior returns for the vast majority of its investors. Her claim that GROUNDFLOOR wants to be released from all liability is also false, as we are confident we do not have any liability.
Finally, we feel we have treated this user extremely fairly and professionally, as noted in the offers we have made and steps we have taken to resolve her dissatisfaction since she signed up for GROUNDFLOOR.
The business owner admitted that much of the information was fabricated because he claimed "a new person" wrote the answer. He admitted that I had a claim for the bonus and admitted that he called me a "monster". He also admitted that they fought me with their attorney over it. They now are attempting me to waive my rights to file complaints or reports about them in exchange for getting my long overdue defaulted funds returned. They are very unprofessional and I am reporting them to other governmental agencies for fraud and filing false consumer reports.
Even though this case was closed, Ms. continues to rebut GROUNDFLOOR'S responses to her complaints. Below is GROUNDFLOOR'S response to Ms. most recent rebuttal.
GROUNDFLOOR'S CEO, in no way, shape or form admitted that anything was fabricated, nor was anything stated thus far fabricated in any way. Per our last response, GROUNDFLOOR took a highly unusual and rare step of refunding Ms. investments for which she demanded a bonus should be applied. Additionally, we have not admitted to things stated in Ms. complaint and offered to settle the matter with her by refunding her investment (as she requested), and asked, as is customary, to put these unfounded complaints to rest. Finally, to clarify again, GROUNDFLOOR is under no obligation to return Ms. principal prior to the borrower's repayment. In other words, when the loan in question repays, GROUNDFLOOR will repay the investor. There is no guarantee of any timing on that repayment. This is made clear in GROUNDFLOOR'S investor agreement.
GROUNDFLOOR has gone above and beyond to treat Ms. fairly (as we do all investors), and as noted by the examples above and those stated in past Revdex.com response regarding this matter, have done everything in our power to make good on Ms. frustrations.
What follows are my opinions and best recollections.
The site does not accurately reflect the balances. The site once stated they would debit my account or debited my account 10,000 dollars that I had "pledged" for an IPO, when the IPO paperwork stated specifically that this was "Non-Binding". After this, I disconnected my brokerage account from Groundfloor and began to ask for cash back as it came due.
They have delayed refunding my cash inexcusably long and for no reasonable explanation. There is now over a one month delay in refunding me the cash that is sitting there interest free in their possession. They did not even respond to my last email and there have been several.
The balance has been wrong and they admitted this, but have not corrected it, or if they have corrected it, then there is actually over 15,000 dollars in cash that they have been withholding.
An "A" investment is now in default.
This outfit seems to be completely inept, at best.
Refund All cash sitting in my account for the past month should be overnight delivered by check to my house. An apology would be nice.
Balance check received.
I invested a small amount of money just to see how this would work out, I invested in a project that was scheduled to pay out in 12 months, the pay out actually took 36 months to be received and I received no return on my investment. My account was credited the initial amount of my investment but I was only allowed to withdraw 60% of it, the other 40% is frozen and can only be used in another investment with Groundfloor. This is an extremely shady company, they should be avoided at all costs.
As an investor, my experience has been less than stellar. I've found the quality of the loans to be lacking.
I've placed small investments in a diverse mix of 36 different loans via groundfloor. Of the 23 that have been paid back or refunded, I've managed a mere 3% total return due to some loans paying back with zero interest, and one paying back at a 80% loss of capital. Of the 13 remaining outstanding loans, two are expected to produce zero percent returns (after the money has been tied up for 3 years), and two others are over a year past due with the likelihood of capital loss.
Summary: It was a fun experiment and an interesting concept. But after three years of having money tied up in Groundfloor loans, I will be lucky to manage a 4% overall return over a 4 year period. Not planning to continue investing.
We are sorry to hear that you are disappointed in your experience with GROUNDFLOOR. You have been an investor with us from the early days of GROUNDFLOOR, and we appreciate that you have grown with us as we have matured our investment platform, lending operations, and our ability to offer a much higher diversification of real estate investment opportunities for our investors. We've also made significant improvement in our underwriting and asset management performance over the past two years, as reported by our most recent diversification analysis, the results of which are currently posted on our blog. GROUNDFLOOR's historical record speaks for itself with only 1.59% of loans repaid to date suffering a principal loss, so your experience is not typical. All investments come with risk, and we cannot guarantee returns. However, we do hope that you will keep considering GROUNDFLOOR as a valuable alternative investment option.
Company refuses to provide me information regarding default loan
I made an investment in a loan that went to default, after three months I believe the company is not doing enough to recover the invested money, therefore I consulted a lawyer of how to recover my money, he asked me to get information regarding the loan. I requested Groundfloor through phone and email several times to get a copy of the property lien, service notice presumably filed by the lawyer and all paperwork related to the lawsuit, the company did not respond to any of my requests. I demand the company to provide me with the documentation necessary to understand what stage is it in the process to recover my money invested. My next step will be to proceed and put a complaint with the FDIC. This information should be available upon request by law. Not providing the information is against the law and I think I have a pretty strong case against Groundfloor.
I demand a copy of the property lien, all documentation filed by the attorney and reasonable updates of where the recovery efforts stand. Ignoring your clients wont take you anywhere.
The customer emailed our help desk on 7/03/2018 requesting certain information regarding a specific loan we originated. The customer was provided with the requested documents on 7/13/2018. The customer is receiving regular updates regarding this loan through his online account dashboard. That information is up to date.
Groundfloor is responsible for recovering the defaulted loan in question, and that includes exercising our legal remedies against borrowers. To protect the interests of all of our customers, we are not required, nor will we, disseminate sensitive information about our legal position in recovering certain loans. To do so will put other customers at risk.
This particular customer feels he is entitled to information that is attorney client privileged. His position in this regard is contradicted by the terms and conditions of our investor agreement, to which he is a party. Groundfloor has lived to its contractual and legal responsibilities and will continue to do so.
I have one open investment in this company. I was due for a return December 2016. Here we are, Almost July 2018 and still nothing. After repeated inquiries with the company about my investment, all I receive in return is a rehashed "we're doing everything we can" response. Take your money elsewhere!
This company attempted an unauthorized withdraw of $1,000 from my bank account. I did not initiate such a request in any manner.
I had to hurriedly take time out of my work day to contact my bank and execute a Stop-Payment on their attempted transfer. Besides being a stressful situation as well as a hassle, it costs me a $20 fee for the Stop Payment. The very least this company should do is reimburse me for this fee, since they alone created the situation in the first place.
reimbursement of the $20 stop-payment fee that I incurred from my bank to stop their unauthorized attempt to transfer funds from my account
GROUNDFLOOR does not initiate transfers without explicit authorization. During the bank account setup process, there is a step which asks if the user would like to transfer funds immediately once their bank account is linked. The default radio button, if a user makes this selection, is for $100. In order for this customer to transfer $1,000 he would have had to specifically choose $1,000. Our data shows that he made this selection on 5/17/18, and our engineering team has confirmed that he did indeed made this selection and initiated the funds transfer.
Our customer service team spoke with him regarding this complaint and advised him that we could not stop the transfer once it was in progress. They also advised him that he could simply initiate a funds transfer out once the funds had cleared into his GROUNDFLOOR account.
Instead, the customer chose to stop the transfer in progress via his bank. This option, which he chose, had fee implications with his bank.
While it appears that GROUNDFLOOR has done nothing wrong in your situation, we did offer him a $20 credit that he could use to invest on our platform.
(The consumer indicated he/she ACCEPTED the response from the business.)
*** (via conversation with ***) reached out to me and we are working to achieve closure of this incident. I feel that their platform has some fatal user-design flaws that allows users to inadvertently/unknowingly initiate a funds transfer, and they have expressed intention to address these. Also, they have agreed to reimburse the $20 stop payment fee I incurred. Had they responded in a more prompt manner (rather than only after multiple daily attempts of me tracking someone down to actually speak to), we could have avoided this Revdex.com compliant altogether. Nonetheless, it's better late than never, and we seem to be on the path to resolution.
My initial investments with Groundfloor were small. It was a newer concept and a new area of investing for me so I only invested small, regular amounts. This allowed me to test the process with potential of loosing 100% of what I put into the process starting May of 2016.
Since that time, my experience has been positive. My overall rate of return has been slightly higher than projected (11.2% vs 10.9%). Rates could have been higher but I treat this as an isolated, solo, investment so I choose to divide money between 4 levels of risk (as assessed by Groundfloor) between the least and highest levels.
By contrast, having these bits of money in a savings account would currently be pointless.
I also appreciate that they now offer IRA accounts. Although I'm a smaller investor, the desire for a self-directed IRA focused on real estate is something I've wanted for a number of years. Traditionally, this is non-existent for a smaller-value account.
Groundfloor.us has experienced growing pains--loan selection has been above and below what I was looking for at any given time. Since I opened my account, I've seen the communication patterns improve; updates have become more consistent and descriptive. In my opinion, it's been worth it to be part of the growth process with the company.
Too many times in the past I've not invested in opportunities early on. I'm comfortable that getting in early in a measured, disciplined way was, is, and will continue to be an effective choice.
As with any investment, it's about understanding your own risk tolerance, completing effective due diligence and matching what is offered with personal financial goals. Although Groundfloor is an additional, different way to invest (and borrow) money, effective decision processes identify if it's a match for any individual investor and accompanying objectives.
Very disappointed in the overall handling of one of my property investments. The loan went into default, which I understand that investments go south but the lack of communication from Groundfloor is very disappointing. The last update online was they had to settle with the borrower to cut the interest rate of the loan (my return on my money) in half in order to avoid litigation. I understand they are had to take the lesser of two evils but the handling of this doesn't sit well with me. After the maturity date of the loan we went months with the same update of they are negotiating next steps with the borrower. Just very short and vague in communicating with investors. Was just informed 7 months after the loan matured that the borrower ran out of money. As an investor I feel like we should have known the borrower ran out of money instead of being left in the dark. Once/If I get recouped on any portion of my investment I will be pulling all money repaid out of their platform purely due to the lack of communication from them when things went south.