Audit finds lax management, scattered conflicts at Miami-Dade’s Guardianship Program

By Douglas Hanks

BEFORE: Express Homes bought this Kendale Lakes home on Southwest 138th Place from the Guardianship Program for $430,000 in January 2022. The Multiple Listing Service shows the house was not listed. Once Express Homes rehabbed the four-bedroom house, a listing did show up in May ahead of the property’s $695,000 sale that summer. Google Street View

A county-funded charity failed to pursue the best deals in selling homes of incapacitated people under its supervision, relying on a small circle of investors, appraisers and real estate agents to handle sales that often weren’t offered on the open market, according to an audit released Wednesday. Two of the three charity employees assigned to help manage property sales left their jobs after investigators pointed out deals that seemed to benefit them personally. 

The Inspector General report on the Guardianship Program of Dade County (GPDC) described poor recording keeping, indifference to internal rules and inconsistent practices in the relatively infrequent instances when a person under the charity’s care also had a home to sell. The non-profit, funded by Florida and Miami-Dade county, was responsible for 2,800 incapacitated people during the nearly six years covered by the audit, a time period when 60 homes were sold, according to the report.

With a budget of about $6 million a year, the Guardianship Program steps in to manage a person’s financial affairs and healthcare after a judge deems them incapacitated but can’t find a family member or friend to serve as a guardian for them. Investigators found that when an incapacitated person — known as a ward — required a home sale, the Guardianship Program’s tiny real estate staff often didn’t follow internal procedures that would help get as high a price as possible, such as circulating it widely to would-be investors or listing it as for sale on Realtor websites. 

The audit “revealed questionable transactions and it exposed deficiencies in GPDC’s internal controls, particularly in its failure to follow its existing policies and procedures, which would have prevented, or detected and corrected many of the issues identified in this audit,” the report said.

The report also recommends minor changes to fix the Guardianship Program’s real estate problems, such as sticking to a checklist of best practices and listing properties for sale, and urged the charity to continue to taking on cases where incapacitated people have homes to sell. 

Investigators began looking into the Guardianship Program after a 2023 investigation by WLRN raised questions about whether the charity was getting fair-market value on property sales because multiple properties went to a small pool of buyers. One of those buyers was a real estate investor who is also married to Victoria Méndez, then the city attorney for Miami. Méndez and her family denied any impropriety and those transactions were not cited in the Inspector General report. 

The media coverage prompted Miami-Dade to suspend funding for the Guardianship Program until the charity agreed to stop taking cases of incapacitated people who had homes to sale.

At the time, administrators of the charity emphasized the property sales were a tiny portion of the court-supervised work it did for wards. They also said that by the time someone is incapacitated enough to need a court-appointed guardian, their home often is in deplorable condition, limiting the pool of willing buyers. 

In a July 11 letter to Felix Jimenez, Miami-Dade’s inspector general, the Guardianship Program expanded on that point, noting that a quick sale can be vital after a ward has let home insurance lapse and a distressed property can be at risk of code violations and liens that would create even more of a financial mess. 

“If a hurricane or fire were to happen while waiting for additional offers on the MLS, the Ward would bear the entirety of that loss,” the letter read.

“GPDC is under extreme pressure to manage the Wards’ properties, many of which are in very poor condition.” 

The audit found the Guardianship Program relied on an email list to offer properties up for real estate agents and appraisers interested in doing work for the charity. Paperwork was spotty showing how often the charity utilized the email list, but records revealed a small circle of professionals tapped for the work. Three appraisers performed 84% of the appraisals reviewed by investigators, and three real estate agents handled half of the sales when properties weren’t sold directly to investors. 

Along with a poorly supervised sales operation, investigators identified two questionable deals that led to the departure of Guardianship Program employees.

One sale from 2015 involved a home that wasn’t placed on the Multiple Listing Service, a database of homes for sale that real estate agents can access and which populates real estate websites, such as realtor.com and Redfin. Investigators found an investment company purchased the home for $125,000, then sold it weeks later for $149,000 to the girlfriend of the Guardianship Program property coordinator who helped manage the sale. The couple ended up living there. The original buyer, MAIA Investments, was owned by the father of a real estate appraiser who frequently got hired by the Guardianship Program employee on other deals, according to the report. 

Investigators described the sale to the employee’s girlfriend as a “clear” violation of state rules governing financial conflicts with court-appointed guardians. Guardianship Program administrators said they weren’t aware of the unnamed employee’s connection to the property and said the employee resigned after investigators revealed their findings. In a rebuttal, the Guardianship Program said records show it was a charity lawyer who reviewed the three bids for the property and authorized the sale to a buyer who later sold it to the employee’s girlfriend. 

Another unnamed property coordinator in the three-person real estate staff also left after investigators pointed out a partner in a property-management company he ran on the side had purchased an unlisted Guardianship Program home in 2019, submitting the highest of three bids.

While investigators fault the Guardianship Program for failing to follow its own best-practices for selling real estate, the report also described the charity as performing “an essential function” and having “a dedicated staff who work hard to ensure the wards are well taken care of, are visited by case managers, and receive benefits they are entitled to.”

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Audit finds lax management, scattered conflicts at Miami-Dade’s Guardianship Program