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For months, Ellis Herman, an 81-year-old World War II veteran, has fought a losing battle against Long Realty Co.

Armed with poster-board signs, he, his daughter Ella Silveira and 17-year-old granddaughter Aubree Booth, have stood for hours each week near the company's offices, telling anyone who will listen that Long agents led them into a bad property deal. Herman said he was pressured into buying the house over just two weeks last February without having it properly inspected, and using a loan that he couldn't afford.

Long real estate agent Pam Treece said it was Herman's choice to proceed without a home inspection and that she and other agents did all they could after the sale to address Herman's complaints.

On Wednesday, the house was repossessed after a foreclosure auction outside Pima County Superior Court. Herman believes this wouldn't have happened had Treece not pushed him so — something she denies. But Herman might have avoided the predicament altogether by taking basic consumer-protection measures.

The story of Herman's purchase and loss of the house at 328 W. 38th St. demonstrates the misfortunes some people are finding in the aftermath of the real estate boom. Experts said the run-up in real estate prices provided temptations for sellers, agents and mortgage brokers to push buyers into homes and loans they couldn't afford. Herman says that's what happened to him, although experts point out that many buyers caused their own problems either because of their hopes for quick riches or because of ignorance.

Herman is one a growing group of consumers upset over real estate deals gone bad. In addition to picketing, he filed a complaint with the Arizona Attorney General's Office but not with the state Department of Real Estate, which handles such cases.

Last year, real estate misrepresentations made the Federal Trade Commission's list of top consumer complaints, with 9,475 filed by consumers with various government agencies and business associations. Real estate did not appear on the FTC's top complaint lists in 2005 or 2006.

In 2007, the FBI also reported that it was working more than triple the number of mortgage fraud cases it did in 2002. The cases included misrepresentations by loan officers, borrowers, appraisers and other parties.

Herman and his daughter say they were not allowed sufficient access to the house before they bought it — a house they later learned had bathroom drains that didn't work, a heater that blew cold air and a stove declared unsafe by the gas company. They also say the loan officer inflated Herman's income on application documents to make the sale go through.

Long agent Treece said her husband — also a Long agent — showed Herman through the house at least once during the inspection period. The mortgage broker has left the state and could not be located.

"We would have never bought this house if we'd known what we know now," Herman said.

But if Herman had been a better consumer, he may not have ended up in the house at all, let alone in foreclosure. He acknowledged that he knew little about property transactions, and didn't understand most of the real estate and loan documents he signed.

He also used an old inspection conducted for a previous potential buyer rather than hiring his own inspector, and raised no major complaints about the property during the inspection period. Sale contracts may be final unless buyers find problems and bring them to the sellers' attention, according to the Arizona Department of Real Estate.

At the height of the real-estate boom, about when Herman bought the house, it wasn't unusual for buyers to be tempted to forgo inspections to make sure they landed deals quickly, or to be pressured out of doing them by sellers, said Brad Tebow, a real estate attorney who teaches at Arizona State University. That had the potential to leave buyers with unpleasant surprises, he said.

"It happens all the time," he said. "If (the sale) didn't happen quickly, you didn't get it."

Herman and Silveira, who was disabled by a mild stroke, and Silveira's daughter came to Tucson in 2006 from Fair Oaks, Calif. They lived in an RV park near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base while they looked for a house.

With about $1,800 in monthly income and limited savings, Herman wanted to stick to lower prices. After contacting Treece in January 2007, Herman was shown a roughly 800-square-foot, more than 60-year-old adobe home along West 38th Street, near Interstate 10 and priced at $127,500.

The house had been on the market about five months, and the price was reduced from $130,500, said the listing agent, Susie DeConcini, in an e-mail forwarded by Jerome King, the agents' designated broker. The house had attracted an offer from one other prospective buyer, Katherine Maas, who said she had trouble finding financing because lenders thought the house was overpriced.

Herman signed a purchase contract on Jan. 23, 2007. About two weeks later, the deal closed. The seller, DeConcini's son, Timothy Hagyard, made more than $63,000 on the sale after paying off a mortgage and transaction costs, according to a settlement statement.

From the moment he started discussing the house with Treece, Herman said she urged him to buy it quickly and told him it wouldn't last. When Herman asked about getting a home inspection, he said, Treece told him he wouldn't need one. He said Treece immediately referred him to Joe Neal, a loan officer at Pinnacle Mortgage, owned by the now-bankrupt First Magnus Financial Corp. Treece started discussing Herman's loan options with Neal over the phone while Herman was in her office, he said.

After the sale, Herman and Silveira said, they noticed problems with the bathroom drains and the heater. The heater was eventually fixed with help from their real estate agent, but fixing the drains could require jack-hammering the foundation, contractor estimates said. Later, after Herman and Silveira became worried there was a gas leak, a Southwest Gas Corp. inspector shut off their stove because it wasn't vented properly, company spokeswoman Libby Howell said.

Herman's mortgage payments, about $920 per month for a fixed-rate loan, were about $100 more than he expected.

When looking through Herman's paperwork, he and Silveira found inconsistencies and missing documents. After contacting Pinnacle Mortgage and Citi Mortgage, the buyer of the loan, they found disclosure documents about the price of the loan left unsigned by Herman. They also tracked down an application document, which was signed, that had inflated income figures for Herman.

Loan officer Neal has left the state, according to former work associates.

Herman said he doesn't remember looking at the document. He said he tried to ask questions about documents, but little was explained to him.

Blaming Long for their difficulties, Herman and Silveira have picketed, distributed fliers and created a Web site accusing the company of misdeeds. King, the designated broker, said he was "surprised and disappointed" by Herman and Silveira's tactics. He said Treece simply tried to help Herman and his family, who were living in a camper when they approached her, looking for a house.

Treece said the market was still strong then, and the house "met their lifestyle." She said she suggested Herman use an older inspection report only because he wanted to save money.

She and DeConcini said they didn't know of the problems Herman and Silveira said they found. Hagyard, the previous owner, declined to comment. King, the designated broker, said Treece did her part to help Herman by having Hagyard pay $2,700 in closing costs for Herman along with a premium for a home warranty plan.

After the sale, Treece said she helped pay for service calls for Herman's heater. King also stayed in contact with Herman and Silveira for months afterward, and at one time offered $3,500 to Herman for repairs, much of it coming from Treece and DeConcini.

"Even though we don't have liability in our mind, we're sympathetic," King said. "We really want to help."

The Arizona Department of Real Estate Web site lists no complaints against either agent involved in the deal.

Now that the house has been repossessed, Herman and Silveira say they're not sure where they'll live.

Herman said Treece should have done a better job looking out for his interests, and Neal shouldn't have approved a loan that was too expensive for him.

"If I was guilty of anything, I'm guilty and ignorant, or whatever you want to call it, of trusting people," Herman said.

See a video of Ellis Herman and his daughter describing the problems they ran into after moving into their now-foreclosed house.

**Editor's note: If you sent an e-mail to reporter Christie Smythe between Sunday night and Monday morning, please resend. She was unable to receive her e-mails during that time. Thank you.