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Report: #729791

Complaint Review: Definitive Home Staging - Chicago Illinois

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  • Reported By: Geoff — Chicago United States of America
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  • Definitive Home Staging 330 W. Diversey Pkwy. Suite 1006 Chicago, Illinois United States of America

Definitive Home Staging Definitive Spaces LLC, Ian Lowrey Crooked Designer, False Financial Promises, Home Staging Scam and Exaggeration, Renovation Hustle Chicago, Illinois

*Author of original report: Home Staging Owner Now Making Odd Threats

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Stretch your legs, you will want to RUN and not walk away from this Definitive Home Staging and it's own, Ian J Lowery!

A great summary of the kind of man you might sadly run across can be had by reading his website and the false promises he makes. This homestager, Lowery, claims that if you hire him to rearrange you furniture banks are going to huge loans based on 'what your house might be worth' at some future time.

Home Staging is what property owners use as a presentation tool when they are looking to sell or to get furnished rental units leased. There are many good and known companies in Chicago who offer services. Of the seven others I talked to, none know who this Ian Lowery is. Let that be a warning sign for you, I wish I'd found that out in time.

Read this website quote: Banks are now offering buyers renovation loan options that are calculated by the home's potential value, not it's current value.

http://definitivehomestaging.net/id2.html

Wow! This is part of his scam to sell his service of simply cleaning your home and reordering furniture in an awkward way (one time) at a huge fee! He makes assurances that this will help the bank give you more money for renovations. It is a foot in the door gimmick for him to try and hustle up more business. After checking with other homestagers (after being burned) I find this is some smoke and mirrors gimmick on the part of Definitive Home Staging. It is not common practice to tell a client the bank must surely give more money due to a superficial redecorating job! This launches into the second phase of the attempted con which this Ian Lowery attempts to pull.

What Ian Lowery does not tell you are lists of banks he works with who give these loans nor that the loan is an FHA loan. When you want to use the type of loan you need to find a 203K consultant and that there are fees and other hidden costs. You have to seek out this loan on your own and it turns out the cleaning and 'staging' service will do nothing to aid your getting any kind of loan.

So... Ian then mentions that he is really a 'designer'. The real value is in remodeling and it turns out that Mt Lowery is your man. He goes from being the man who cleaned your living space to a full on 'designer'. That means he wants to play interior decorator by tearing down walls and ripping up the area. He is not an architect nor does his company employ one.

I was smart enough to stop and look into matters at this point. Take what I learned to heart and stay away! When the same initial promise of getting more money from the banks and adding more value was made a second time, for higher costs with these design services, it was a red flag.

This company of Lowery's Definitive Spaces LLC which owns the home staging business is big trouble. Seems that Definitive Spaces LLC was running around with a builder and supplier in the suburbs that Lowery was on the dole with. That builder recently went bankrupt under Chapter 7!

So Lowery moved his focus into the city. Seems however that Definitive Spaces LLC and Ian Lowery have both been sued in court recently. I guess his design services are not much better then his home cleaning and home staging ones are! That was enough for me- I pulled the plug.

I was shocked to learn, but this confirmed what I feared, that the business address for Definitive Spaces LLC and Ian Lowery and his Definitive Home Staging are all out of some rented apartment! Not even a proper commercial business space; he is running this show out of a spare bedroom.

I had to pay another home staging company to do the work right. They did, thankfully, and they did not try to sell me additional remodeling services.

Seems the only truths about Lowery were the place he went to school and his name. Lies that he can secure loans for you when you hire him on with his services, his past business partners now being bankrupt, lawsuits against him and his company, and just plain poor workmanship make me glad I distanced myself from this man and this companies.

Don't fall into the trap I did! Keep away!

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 05/16/2011 07:59 AM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/definitive-home-staging/chicago-illinois-60657/definitive-home-staging-definitive-spaces-llc-ian-lowrey-crooked-designer-false-financia-729791. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
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#1 Author of original report

Home Staging Owner Now Making Odd Threats

AUTHOR: G Smith - (United States of America)

POSTED: Monday, June 11, 2012

Nice to know I may have helped out more then a few people when I complained of the awful time I had with the business. I never thought I would have to write something one again about it.

I have received some hollow threats recently from the self professed premier home stager to Chicago. As I said before, I was happy when I chose someone who knew how to do the
job right, he couldnt. I would never use this clown's service again.

I have not used this man since and obviously had no need to be in touch with him and his very lousy business. I was pleased that he seemed to have stopped calling and
emailing me a long time back as well.

I got a few emails I didn't recognize from a business I did not know and then flagged those as spam. I got another one soon after, that I read, and I found it was from Lowery.
It was nothing but a bunch of direct and vague threats that I needed to take down what I wrote about my awful experience using him and about the unhappy end to his former partners and his legal woes. The sort of email that ended with him saying 'or else' in a few ways. 

The business he was using to email, from what the email was signed with, was one I never heard of and one I never used. I looked at it's website and figured out what was taking place. 

For some reason he changed the name of Definitive Home Staging to IJL Designing. All of what was on the Definitive Home Staging website when I unwisely used him was still
here on this newly named site. I warned others about this and it is the same even now, just with some new name in place of the old.

http://ijldesignandhomestaging.com/id24.html

Like I say, I don't know this new name but you can see the address and the phone number are not changed from my run in with him.

From the linked page:

IJL Design & Home Staging - 330 W.
Diversey Pkwy. Suite 1006 - Chicago, IL - Ph: 312.515.4642
Copyright IJL Design & Home Staging. All Rights Reserved.

I did use this business it seemed. The guy in charge for whatever thinking just redid the name he calls it to something new. I still don't understand what he thinks he can get
by threatening me to remove my review of what awful work he did. I was mad when I wrote that review and I was right to be upset. 

There is still the 203(K) nonsense that was the final straw for me. That is now on this new site of his. What is written at this new website does not appear to be a single word
different then what I remember was there on his other site. That other site he was running to promote his business is now gone from the web. I tried to pull it up and there is nothing there.

I am not removing any of what I wrote and I hope even more people read it. The truth does not change. I don't trust this Ian Lowrey and his making threats toward me only makes me just think less of him as a man. I don't have any good to think of him as a business person at this point. 

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