Canary-v-Travaille

10/3/2024

This website features an active lawsuit between Bryan Canary and his partner -- buyers of Real Property in Monterey County California --- and Tracy Travaille -- a "third party transaction coordinator" who was engaged by the Seller's Agent for transaction coordination services for he and his seller.

Travaille has been sued for her involvement in a situation involving $250,000 in misrepresentation fraud.

Travaille's website indicates she's been a Licensed Broker since 2005. Travaille has her own company called Travaille Transactions, but it's not registered as a real estate brokerage. Her website markets her as a "licensed non-competing broker".

Travaille engages with real estate agents who are representing buyers and sellers -on a per transaction basis -- she is hired to support real estate transaction processing for that agent's client for a cut of the commissions. She thinks of herself as offering "adminstrative services".

Travaille's website indicates she's been doing this type of third party transaction coordination work since 2010, and that she's handled over 15,000 transactions in her career.

With that declaration of experience, any Seller or Buyer told she was engaging in their transaction on either side of the table would assume she knew transaction processing, disclosure law, and representation statement presentation timing requirements like the back of her hand.

Yet what she's engaged in here is nothing short of bizarre...

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If a seller knew their roof leaked in winter, and he had put that in writing and given it to his Agent and Broker for buyer understanding before ever listing the home, would you think the prospective buyer(s) should get that written notice BEFORE or AFTER they make an offer to purchase the home ?

According to Travaille, and numerous other licensed California Real Estate Professionals with decades of experience, such a statement was not due to the Buyers until AFTER an offer was made and a contract was formed --- against all logic and reason a human can bear...

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What was she thinking? What were they thinking? Were any of them thinking at all?

Who was taking care of "my brother"? Where was "my brother's keeper" when we needed them most?

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There are ONLY 3 explanations for this, and it's NOT #1...

1) Canary and his partner do not understand representation law

2) Travaille doesn't know representation law and she's been committing acts of Constructive Fraud for over a decade. If that's the case, Travaille could have been involved in 10's of MILLIONS of $'s in representation fraud facilitation in over 15,000 transactions AND explanations are needed about the training all agents and brokers in California have been getting for decades if she claims proper representation law is NOT part of Agent and Broker Training. It's impossible to estimate the financial, mental, and emotional damage she's contributed to with her actions.

3) Travaille knows representation law. She committed Actual Fraud. It's impossible to estimate the financial, emotional, and mental damages she's been involved in intentionally facilitating in 15,000 transactions...

Travaille's Website starts off by suggesting she offers "administrative services" to real estate agents, but then it goes into details that make it clear she's offering Transaction Coordination Services, and that's the positions she's hiring for as well.

Agents who buy her services think of her as a "transaction coordinator", too, and that is a far different role than an admin.

And guess what? The CA Statutes don't support "transaction coordination services" by a third party or "administrative services" for handling contract documents at all...

Travaille's "marketing blur" between being a broker, and the initial gist of her advertised services and the services she's actually offering has a lot to do with this lawsuit and the reason she was directly sued for $250,000 in damages that can be laid to blame on patently fraudulent suggestions of process as well as patently fraudulent procedural handling of this transaction.

The Plaintiffs in this case are suing the Seller into smithereens.

However, the Plaintiffs feel the Seller had some extenuating personal circumstances which were taken advantage of by a lot of Professionals who led him to do things in his worst interests.

The Plaintiffs feel Travaille's inclusion in his transaction as an "illegal admin" under guise that "third party Transaction Coordination" was legal -- and the acts she committed during the transaction are what "allowed for" the highly unjust benefits the Seller attempted to reap -- and it's that grasp for injustice that is now boomeranging back on all of them in full force now.

Original Complaint view

Amended Complaint view

Admit Document view

(see legal Docs menu for more)

Travaille's involvement in the transaction led the Seller and Buyers to believe the seller was not required to answer all questions on the statutory documents -- and that the seller could deliver statutory disclosure documents with representation statements of property condition AFTER contract formation. As "bizarre" as this sounds, that's the belief she and her engagement as a "seasoned professional" operating as an "illegal admin" instilled.
Travaille's involvement in the transaction led the Seller and Buyers to believe the seller could deliver statutory disclosure documents in a patently incomplete manner, with answers to key yes/no questions about mold and property flooding simply blank. As "bizarre" as this sounds, that's the belief she and her engagement as a seasoned professional instilled.
Travaille's involvement in the transaction led the Seller and Buyers to believe that delivering the seller's statutory disclosure documents in a patently incomplete manner, with key signatures from the Seller's Agent and Seller missing was okay. As "bizarre" as this sounds, that's the belief she and her engagement as a seasoned professional instilled.
Travaille's involvement in the transaction led the Seller and Buyers to believe that the seller could legally and legitimately demand the Buyers remove their condition contingency without fully completed statutory disclosure documents. I mean, "Who cares if the seller didn't answer the questions about mold and property flooding?" right?
Travaille's involvement in the transaction led the Seller and Buyers to believe that she could close a transaction for a Broker, without fully completed statutory disclosure documents. (without anyone knowing at that time she was truly an "illegal admin" in the disguise of a real estate professional)

To be clear, the Buyers weren't onboard with believing anything she was doing was legal, but they were without any basis to understand if it wasn't when it started to unwind. How she and those she was working with had been getting away with it for years or decades was a large pill to swallow. It took just under three years to get a grasp of that.

And then it got worse...

1. 1. 1. Research done for this lawsuit revealed Travaille was NOT following California disclosure law at all, and there's no reason to think she followed it in her 15,000 transactions prior, either.
    2. Research done for this lawsuit revealed Travaille may have led the Seller, the Buyers and many Agents and Brokers to believe that should could actually engage as a "third party transaction coordinator" in their transactions, when nothing about having a "brokers license" in California seems to give her that right. Broker Law is clear in CA and nothing in it indicates a Broker can engage in a transactions without an explicit representation agreement directly with a buyer or seller OR a "broker-agent" agreement to act as an agent for another broker, which is not what was created when she engaged with an agent for transaction processing support on a transaction by transaction basis.
    3. Research done for this lawsuit revealed Travaille has started scaling her company and her transaction coordination business. She now is offering the services of non-licensed employees that are living in other states for purposes of handling California Real Estate Transactions and related documents. WOW...
    4. Travaille has hired Attorneys, who clearly have no sound background in Real Estate Brokerage processes. First, they mis-identified the role she played in the transaction as a "neutral third party", which she was not. Then, via her Attorneys, Travaille stated that neither she nor the Seller's Agent owed the Buyers/Plaintiffs any "fiduciary duties" -- and this is where it gets really gnarly really fast -- because all any buyers had in 2021 for any assurances of service were based on promises of "fiduciary duties" -- because at that time buyers had no contract for services with anyone. That is a problem that was rectified in the fall of 2024, after 100 years of malfeasance, and just prior to this publishing, but one that has cost BILLIONS in losses to Buyers who never knew how snowed in they had been.

( larger image of attorney dialogue below )

Legal Reform is Due....

What we are going to present in this website and via this lawsuit should trigger legislation in 50 states that forces each state to clarify their rules and expectations for administrative services and transaction coordination services. If that happens, we're willing to bet all states outlaw third party transaction coordinators and most won't even allow in house transaction coordinators. If a Salesperson can't handle the transaction with their Supervising Broker, they need not be a salesperson. The Corporate Brokerages will cry foul until the cows come home, but who cares...

HOWEVER, nothing will trigger rule and requirement changes in any state unless the people push for it, because many of those in government and law doing the state oversight work are cheating for the Corporate Brokers in ways most still can not fathom today.

The goal of this website and this lawsuit is not to "build in more mystery" than is needed nor to "create a mystery" that needs to be solved, unlike what is transpiring in some of the related websites.

The goal with this website is to try to present facts about "gray matter" in a manner as clear as possible, and then get a default judgement or an admission from Travaille that what she is engaging in is illegal.

With that in mind, here's the crux of the situation and the problem...

Travaille's Website advertises "administrative support" but her employee posting is for a "transaction coorinator" and NONE of that is sanctioned by the CA Brokerage Act even given Travaille has a Brokers License. Read the Memo of Points and Auths for the Opposition to the Demurrer for the FAC for details.

You then ask - "Where is the CA Department of Real Estate" In this?

Captured by Corporate Interests and likely has been for decades

You then say - "Didn't you mean to call the Buyers service providers the Buyers Brokerage and Broker, not the Cooperating Brokerage and Broker? "

This may be out of context now that some of this website has changed, but it's still relevant for understanding.

I respond with - "No. That was the crux of the problem that the massive 2024 class action lawsuit gives the illusion of fixing -- but that fix wasn't in place in 2021. Furthermore, that fix still does NOT stop her and them from doing what they are doing with her today. With that new system in place, she and they can still bamboozle others in inappropriate ways. "

The 2024 class actions will NOT correct this fraud...

Prior to the 2024 changes brought on by the class actions, the Brokers were viewing themselves as "Transaction Brokers". They viewed themselves as if they were running an auction house and everyone that worked towards the sale of the home actually worked for the seller, via them, but few would have had a clue that's how they viewed themselves under the hood.

Thus, the buyer in a real estate transaction was just a "schmo", a "mark", or an "ugly duckling" who wanted to buy a home.

While you may have thought the Buyers Brokers and Agents were "working for Buyers", in fact they were not contractually obligated to Buyers at all. That's the scary thought that gets worse when you realize the corporate brokers had been distancing themselves from their salespeople and their duties for oversight for decades, via regulatory capture of the state bodies intended to keep them all honest. They've tried to get the salespeople and the public to believe it was the state who was responsible for overseeing their salespeople, not the Brokers themselves.

In order to protect buyers in a very misleading system, a simple statute exists in California that mandated a two page document that basically "promised" a buyer they'd be treated fairly. (CA 2079) However, if you read the document, it only appears to even be a promise between the agents and principals, with no explicit statement that it even applies to their Broker managers.

While this may sound like splitting hairs between promises and contracts for service, it becomes a big deal when a buyer is harmed, and then someone wants to take up a "lawfare position" where they attempt to use the Brokerage Structure itself and statutes of limitations to state they owed a buyer "no fiduciary duties" and that a buyer only had 2 years to file suit for a promise of good faith, versus 4 years for a contract of service violation where attorney fees would be due to a prevailing party .

At this point in time we don't feel Travaille has a "prayer in hell" at slipping out of any lawsuit on the excuse of "no fiduciary duties owed" -- and we feel she's just set herself and every brokerage she's done work for for class action lawsuits --- but that is of less interest to us now than simply recovering from a fraudulent situation that was made mountains worse because of the beliefs that she and another senior transaction coordinator for the buyers instilled in a seller with unique needs, who wanted to believe he could cheat with no blowback.

What would you do if you found out that Brokers in your state's real estate industry had established a "profession" where non-licensed people could participate in real estate transaction document handling, that seemingly didn't meet any of the state statutes -- and then you realized it was the state oversight body who was totally absent too?

What would you do if you then came to the conclusion the person offering these services should have 1) known what she was doing was illegal and 2) she was offering services to the brokers that helped them violate state statutes in a way that gave them an out of negligence and left her holding a bag for fraud?

Stating this another way -- the Brokers have outsourced fraud and brainwashing, and this loophole needs to be closed.

This is why we sued her directly.

By doing so, we did something no Attorneys would have ever done for numerous reasons,
and now, she's sitting in a spotlight with seemingly no protection from the overhead at all.