When Charlotte Brown first walked through the Winter Haven house she bought in 2021, she told WFTV Action 9 investigator Jeff Deal she loved the space, the floor plan, and the quiet woods behind it.
She thought she’d found the perfect place to raise a family.
Now, that same house is occupied by a man she says she doesn’t really know, who has never bought the property, isn’t paying rent, and won’t leave.
And if things don’t change soon, Brown told Deal she fears she could lose the home altogether to foreclosure.
From Dream Home To Financial Pressure
In Deal’s video report for WFTV Channel 9, he explains that Brown’s life shifted quickly after her fiancé developed serious health problems.
She became his full-time caregiver, and as she told Deal, their finances started to take a hit.
To avoid falling further behind on the mortgage and HOA dues, Brown listed the Winter Haven home for sale in 2023.
She told Deal that the timing actually looked good.
With home prices up, she saw a chance to sell, pay off what they owed, and reset financially.
That’s when an interested buyer appeared: Obed Torres, a real estate agent from California, according to Deal’s report.
On paper, that should have been the solution to her problems.
Instead, Brown says, it opened the door to something she now calls “deceitful” and “hurtful.”
When The ‘Buyer’ Asked For The Keys
Deal reports that, according to Brown, a company working with Torres on the potential purchase asked for the house keys.
The explanation she says she was given sounded harmless enough: they wanted to get the carpets cleaned before Torres moved in.
Anyone who has ever sold a house can see how that might sound normal.
A serious buyer wants to freshen up the place, get it move-in ready, and speed the transition.
But as Deal lays out in the TV segment, that’s where everything started going wrong.
Brown told Deal that Torres changed title companies more than once and that the sale never actually closed.
No deed transfer.
No money at the closing table.
No completed real estate transaction.
Yet by the spring of 2024, Deal reports, Torres moved into the house anyway.
From Brown’s perspective, he crossed an invisible line the day he went from “prospective buyer” to “uninvited occupant.”
She summed it up to Deal in three words: “It’s terrible… it’s deceitful, it’s hurtful.”
And it’s hard to argue with that emotional reaction when someone is living in a house you still legally own and you’re not seeing a dime.
Court Fights, Missed Hearings, And A Stalled Process
Once Torres moved in, Brown turned to the legal system.
Deal explains that she first filed a report with the sheriff’s office, asking investigators to look into what was happening at her home.
She also tried to use the civil courts to remove Torres.
Twice.
According to Deal’s report, Brown filed court documents on two separate occasions seeking to have Torres removed from the property.
But she admits she didn’t fully understand the legal process.
She told Deal she missed some hearings, and because of those missed court dates, her cases were dismissed.
Those missed hearings turned out to be a big deal.
While Brown was juggling caregiving, money stress, and confusing paperwork, Torres continued living in the house.
In one of the cases, Deal says Torres wrote a letter to the judge.
In that letter, according to Deal’s summary, Torres claimed he was still trying to buy the house and that he believed his actions were taken in good faith.
In the second case, Deal reports that Torres went even further in his defense.
He told the court that the property had been “abandoned and left vacant” by Brown and accused her of causing him “significant duress and uncertainty.”
That framing matters.
If a property is genuinely abandoned, the legal picture looks very different than if an active homeowner is trying to sell and still paying what she can.
From what Deal reports, attorney Mark Lippman strongly rejects the idea that Brown abandoned anything.
A Year Rent-Free, Foreclosure On The Horizon
Deal notes that at one point in 2024, text messages between Torres and a real estate agent suggested Torres had agreed to move out.
But that never turned into a permanent solution.
Instead, Deal reports that as recently as April, Torres was asking a judge for more time, citing his own health issues as a reason for an extension.
While all of that was unfolding in court, life at the house continued.
When the Action 9 team went to the Winter Haven property in September and again in November, Deal says they heard dogs barking inside.
He left a message on the doorbell camera both times, identifying himself as Jeff Deal with Channel 9 News.
Torres never responded to him, according to the report.
Neighbors, Deal adds, told Action 9 they’ve seen Torres and his family staying at the house as recently as the week before the story aired.
Meanwhile, Brown’s financial situation kept getting worse.
Deal reports that she couldn’t afford to pay both the rent where she lives now and the mortgage plus HOA on the Winter Haven house.
Her mortgage company has now filed for foreclosure, putting a firm time limit on how long she has to clear things up.
When Deal asked her on camera whether she was afraid she could lose the property, Brown answered without hesitation: “Absolutely. Absolutely.”
It’s a brutal double bind.
She can’t live there, she can’t collect rent there, and she’s still at risk of losing it all anyway.
Attorney Calls Squatter Defense ‘Garbage’
For the story, Deal asked local attorney Mark Lippman to review the case and give his professional take.
Lippman, after seeing how Torres has reportedly stayed in the home rent-free for more than a year, agreed to represent Brown at no charge.
In Deal’s report, Lippman doesn’t mince words.
He calls Torres’s claim that the property was abandoned “garbage” and says the assertion that Brown walked away from the house is simply incorrect.
Lippman also points to recent changes in Florida law.
As Deal explains, squatting laws in the state were strengthened last year, making it easier in some cases to treat this kind of occupation as a criminal issue, not just a civil one.
According to Lippman’s comments in the segment, if Brown and her attorney can show that Torres is in fact squatting — rather than a legitimate tenant or buyer with a valid agreement — he could potentially be arrested.
Lippman tells Deal that squatting is now a criminal offense in Florida, and he says, “we are looking at that as well.”
That’s a significant shift.
For years, homeowners in many states have complained that squatters have more practical leverage than the people holding the title.
Florida’s tougher law could make Brown’s case a test of how far those new tools reach when someone eased into a house through a failed sale rather than a classic break-in.
Lessons For Other Homeowners
Toward the end of his report, Deal asks a question that a lot of viewers are probably thinking: how do you keep this from happening to you?
Lippman gives two simple but important pieces of advice.
First, he tells Deal that sellers should avoid handing over keys or full access to a property before the sale has actually closed.
That means no “early move-ins,” no unsupervised “cleaning access” for a would-be buyer, and no assuming that a deal is done until the documents are signed and the money changes hands.
It might feel old-fashioned or overly cautious, but Brown’s experience shows the risk of trusting the process too much.
Second, Lippman stresses, through Deal’s report, the importance of appearing at every single court hearing if you’re trying to remove someone from your property.
Cases can be dismissed on technical grounds, including simply not showing up.
Once that happens, the person inside your house may gain even more time by filing new responses and seeking more extensions.
From a broader perspective, Deal’s story highlights a scary reality of the current housing market.
When prices are high, distressed owners are often desperate to sell, and opportunistic people can step into that desperation and blur the line between “buyer” and “squatter.”
Most real estate transactions are honest and straightforward, but it only takes one bad actor – or one misunderstood process – to put a family’s largest asset at risk.
Brown’s case also shows how quickly things snowball once courts, health crises, and money problems all pile up at once.
She told Deal she bought that Winter Haven house dreaming of a place to build a future.
Today, she’s just hoping to get it back long enough to sell it before the bank takes it first.
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The article Home seller claims would-be buyer simply moved in without buying the house first appeared on Survival World.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, John developed a love for the great outdoors early on. With years of experience as a wilderness guide, he’s navigated rugged terrains and unpredictable weather patterns. John is also an avid hunter and fisherman who believes in sustainable living. His focus on practical survival skills, from building shelters to purifying water, reflects his passion for preparedness. When he’s not out in the wild, you can find him sharing his knowledge through writing, hoping to inspire others to embrace self-reliance.
