MBH Settlement Group

This review is for Mr. Richard Hayden, managing atty for MBH Settlement's Kingstowne branch. He was the presiding attorney for settlement for the house in June and is the most unprofessional and unethical attorney I have ever come in contact with. In short, my sales contract as had specified some work that had to be done by the sellers in order for the sale to go through-- primarily bringing the deck up to code. On closing day, my realtor, her boss, and I did a walk through and discovered that the specified work was not done. We immediately went to Mr. Hayden after the walk through to alert him. Mr. Hayden immediately called his friend who is a contractor, to go to the house and assess and give a quote. He did not think we had to delay closing, but rather, his friend could complete the work AFTER CLOSING at the established quoted rate from examining the deck in person. We were told the contractor quoted the job to finish the deck at $2500. At this point, the seller's agent immediately went and brought back a cashier's check from her own bank account made to me, which was added to the executed settlement statement's breakdown of funds. We asked three separate times whether Mr. Hayden was going to put the work specified by the contractor for the price of $2500 in writing, and whether the $2500 was enough to cover all of the work and costs needed (otherwise, the seller's agent would have gotten a cashier's check for a different amount). Mr. Hayden assured us that he "triple guarantees" the work and quote of Peter White as his capacity as the presiding attorney, and that the $2500 would cover all the work specified. He did not want to execute another contract for this work, and said it would not be necessary. We (I, my agent, her boss, and sellers agent) took him for his word. Lastly, Mr. Hayden guaranteed that his friend was indeed a licensed contractor-- another fact we took into account while making our decision to go through with the closing on that day. It turns out that Mr. White is not licensed. I can't help but think I was told that to avoid delaying closing. By Wednesday June 22, my agent calls me and tells me the work was only NOT EVEN CLOSE to completed but the contractor was already paid the FULL $2500 by MBH Settlement. For the next two months, Mr. Hayden would refuse to fix his mistake and even actively make it harder for me to reach resolution. I even had to hire attorney, after my realtor was unable to reach resolution with Hayden. For one, Mr. Hayden pulled the contractor off the job after my lawyer got him to agree to come back to finish the job--and it was not communicated to us. When asked why he did it, Mr. Hayden told my lawyer it was because the contractor was not licensed (which evidently wasn't a problem during my closing). Then, we requested a refund of our settlement fees given the high level of unprofessionalism that occurred. We even avoided going to Mr. Hayden's superiors to give him another chance. Weeks went by, and instead Mr. Hayden just racked up my legal fees for me. He said he would refund the money, and never did. He jerked us around. Then he went on vacation. I actually wouldn't be that mad if not for the jerking around, which caused more hours to me added on to my legal fees. Most reasonable people would have wanted to resolve the issue right away when lawyers were involved, but not Hayden. By mid August, I ended up calling MBH's HQ office and spoke to their chief financial officer, Julie Nelson, who was already aware of the situation from my realtor calling her up. She immediately cut me a check and next-dayed it to me. She is the one person at MBH who deserves praise. Avoid MBH just to save yourself the trouble of dealing with unprofessional and unethical attorneys like Mr. Hayden. Until the company can show they truly care about their reputation by getting rid of personnel like him, it is not worth it to work with them.