Review of Growin Estate’s Scam Practices — Stay Clear
Growin Estate: The Real Estate Lead Gen Scam You Need to Avoid
If you are a Realtor or licensed Real Estate Agent in Canada or USA you’ve liked been contacted by a Real Estate Lead Generation Company in the past. Their pitch to you varies but general they offer real estate buyer or seller leads in your local or targeted area and in return they require a referral fee for all closed deals.
Enter Growin Estate (GROWIN ESTATE LLC), a company operating out of Florida, USA and registered at 7901 4th St N Ste 300 St. Petersburg, FL 33702 but with the address 1434 150th St, Whitestone, NY 11357–1745 on their documentations. Growin Estate has Florida business licence number L22000412122. Their website is https://growinestate.com/ and the company is owned and operated by Syeda Siddiqa (aka Seyda Siddiqua) (Born December 1986) (1434 150th St, Ste 1 Whitestone, NY 11357 according to corp filings) and Aqeel Siddiqui (Born 1968 ) (155 Meyer Ave, Valley Stream, NY 11580 according to corp filings) but you won’t be dealing with these two individuals you will deal with their sales team that have the most generic names and will make you think “Are all of these names real or made up?!” Forget that, are the leads even real?
Update: Growin Estate also runs Edge Properties or EdgeProperties.com which claims to auto be a lead generation platform and virtual assistant services for real estate teams seeking an internal sales team. They operated Hypevortex (Hypervortex.com) aka. Growingestate Referrals which also claims the same services but for mortgage agents and lenders.
My Experience with Their Shady Practices
Here's how your journey starts:
You’ll get a cold call from one of their sales representative pitching their service real estate lead generation services. They send you leads and you must close them. Simple. Or is it?
As with everything, it’s not, you first need to decide on which tier or package you wish to have. That’s right the arrangement is not, they send you leads and a referral is paid when you close the lead. That wouldn’t work as the leads you produce aren’t of high quality. You need to inject cash in your operation to continue paying phones and their sales team.
Growin Estate has 3 packages a basic tier at $349USD/year, a Standard tier at $599USD/year or the Premium tier at $1,499USD/year. The packages don’t matter all that much but what they promise with the middle tier (Standard tied) package is ISA-Verified (ISA refers to Internal Sales Agent) leads. This means someone from their team, an actual human has spoke to the lead. Although I’m starting to think AI may of done a better job than the actual humans at Growin Estate. They also state that you will get live call transfers meaning hot leads that are the phone are patch through to you in order to help convert the lead better. I opted for this middle “standard” package as the basic only offered “AI” verified lead, whatever that means. Oh yea, the referral fee paid to them also goes down the higher your yearly fee. But, don’t worry as you likely won’t close any of the leads (more on this later)…
This company employs customer representatives to call and work the leads that they’ve captured online. This is where the issues and the scam like practices start to show. I signed up August 20th 2024 to the Standard Package and as of time of writing in January 2025 I am yet to receive a live transfer of a buyer or seller lead.
In the first 5 months I have received 10 leads by email. Here’s what one would look like:
Great, they are sending you leads! Nothing to complain about right?
A Deep Dive Into Their Deceptive Tactics
Well, if it wasn’t for the fact that most people either hang up as soon as you say why you are calling. Some will tell you that they never agreed to the phone call appointment, other will inform you that they were simply pressured into taking the call even though they are not in the market to buy or sell and have expressed that to the Growin Estate internal sales agent that had called them.
The general consensus when speaking to these leads (when I could get them on the phone) was that they had been pressured into taking the appointment for the call. Apologizing on behalf of the Growin Estate internal sales agent for their behavior I’d say wouldn’t start me off on the best footing with this “would be prospect”.
Trustpilot, more like Bustpilot! — Can You Believe the Reviews?
But they have many positive reviews such as those on TrustPilot.com, they are certainly not a scam and must be a legit company right? Well, for $3.5 a review you too can be a legit company in this online world. Expensive? Not at all they currently have 209 total reviews on Trustpilot, assuming they were all fake reviews (they are not, they have some real ones that are from actual past clients, yes negative ones of course) that would be an investment of $731.50 USD. Less than 1 sale of their so called Premium “Best Selling” plan. However, keeping on top of negative reviews is a struggle when you keep on be a scam on the web and actively trying to continue with the practice. Of all reviews on Trustpilot (209 at time of writing) 19% are 1 star reviews.
What are the recurring issues brought up by these past clients?
Looking through these 1 star reviews there’s several recurring themes including unqualified leads, false promises, refund difficulties, deceptive practices, poor customer service, repeated attempts to upsell, inconsistent business practices and contractual ambiguity.
Some users noted that the company voided refund guarantees if negative reviews were posted. Many users complained about the company denying or delaying refunds, despite advertised money-back guarantees.
Oh no, perhaps I shouldn’t be writing this review. Does this mean I won’t get my refund as advertised?
Areas where it’s harder to hide the negative reviews and actual client testimonials are on websites liked Reddit and Social media sites.
These patterns suggest clear systemic issues with the company’s business practices and customer care.
Caught in the Act: Legal Troubles for Growin Estate
You should be aware that Growin Estate has a history of this type of aggressive or pressured sales tactics. They’ve even been brought to court in March 2024 in the Rosser vs Growin Estate LLC case. They were operating freely without a care for State Laws like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) where it was alleged by the defendant that she had received unsolicited text messages from Growin Estate despite registering her number on the National Do Not Call Registry. These messages offered client referral services, causing her various inconveniences, including privacy violations and loss of phone functionality. The defendant, Growin Estate LLC, failed to respond or appear in court, leading to a default judgment process. Growin was found liable for two TCPA violations, as the text messages were unsolicited and sent to a registered number on the National Do Not Call Registry. Rosser was awarded $1,000 in statutory damages ($500 per violation).
Compliance Department Shenanigans — Refund Runaround
Phony names? Perhaps, I mean I’ve received so many emails from a variety of different “people” from their general “support@growinestate.com”. How many? I honestly couldn’t tell you who the sales person that called me was but in writing I’ve received correspondence from Tom Carry, Mark Lee, Hannah Collins, Frank Alberto, Kendall Reed, Rick Davis, Sam Wilson, Trevor Andrew, Paul Hawkins, David Norris and Anna Olson. Yes, all popular generic first and last names where you won’t be able to find an actual workers profile on the web.
What about the refund policy?
Did I get my refund as advertised? Of course not, but I think we all knew this was all too good to be true.
As mentioned I signed up to Growin Estate on August 20th 2024 and by October 9th 2024 I could tell form the interaction with the leads and their team that this was going to be a waste of time and that most leads they would send would be unreachable and not interested in buying or selling a property. I emailed their team on that day to let them know that I wanted to get a refund as the leads were not as advertised. On October 22nd 2024 I emailed again asking for them to refund the fee ($698.78 Canadian in my case). Note they say they require 60 days notice from your sign up date to qualify for the refund which my requests obviously did. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll be refunded.
Here is the typical response you will receive from their team. “Let’s get on the phone and talk about it” Which means: “let’s get on the phone so you can tell me you are not satisfied and want a refund as per advertised so I can can tell you not worry that although the leads aren’t of quality that I can send you more just like that” Safe to say Sam was not the man. Actually Sam wasn’t the one who called me, unsure who did but there as no refund provided.
Come January 13th 2025 following more bad and unhappy leads I sent another email to Growin Estate asking to speak to someone to get the refund initiated once again. I got on the phone with them on January 15th 2025 informed them as I had done in the past that the leads weren’t of quality and that all was not as advertised. The person on the phone wanted to of course send me more shit leads in an effort not to have to refund my payment. I followed up again with them on January 20th 2025 asking where the refund was. Surprise, they give me this run around that by the 21st of January I’d get an “update”.
The 21st of January 2025 came and went. Of course, I sent an email “Hi, any update on this?” Their response, more run around and now claiming its with their “Compliance Department” (side note, these folks make up departments often to have the allure of a Fortune 500 company, it’s kind of amusing in a way, one must find amusement in all of this).
Well, I got a reply back from Anna Olson, the “Compliance Executive”…
The Big Takeaway: Say No to Yearly Retainers for Leads
Where’s my refund? Big surprise here, no refund!
She mentions that of the leads we sent you, you were able to speak with one and because you connected with that one individual and provided information to this person that I cannot issue a refund. Yes, if one of the leads was an actual human that you spoke to than that voids your refund options. Never mind that the other leads were combatant on the phone or simply not reachable. Never mind that I’ve asked for a refund back in October (twice). These folks are relentless, in her last email to me she even adds “Additionally, if you could give us some time, we are actively in the process of generating new leads and are confident that we will soon be able to provide you with high-quality prospects in the near future. We truly value your partnership and are committed to delivering leads that meet your expectations.” they are still looking to send me leads. It’s hard to make this shit up.
Safe to say, don’t waste your time with Growin Estate and this probably extends to most online lead generation companies. Unless, their model is we send you the leads and if you close them we ask for a referral fee. Most won’t agree to this they’ll want you on a monthly or yearly retained on top of requesting a percentage of the closed deals (if you eventually do one that is).
