Couple Describe Night Of Terror In New Home After Zillow Failed To Notify Security Company Of Sale

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On their second day in their new home in Tucson, Casey and Nabilah Hannon hid in a locked bathroom as they counted the minutes waiting for police to arrive after someone forced entry into the home.

But it was not burglars who made the active-duty military couple fear for their lives on Nov. 3. Instead, it was employees of a security company who were never told by Zillow that the home in a neighborhood near Desert View High School had been sold days earlier.

In fact, those employees had been monitoring the inside of the residence via two security cameras which the couple simply believed were connected to the house’s private alarm system which they had not had time to activate.

“It was the scariest night of our lives,” Nabilah Hannon said Sunday.

The couple took part in an exclusive interview with Arizona Daily Independent to recall the 18 minutes of terror they spent waiting for Tucson Police to respond to their 911 call.  Yet even when officers were on scene, it would take the Hannons nearly 90 frantic minutes to satisfy everyone that the couple were the rightful owners of the $255,000 home, not criminals.

According to Nabilah, the couple signed documents to purchase the Tucson house from Zillow on Oct. 25. At the time, they were in Alaska where they have been stationed.

The purchase was officially recorded by Zillow on Oct. 28 as the couple made their way to Tucson where they have been assigned to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

On Nov. 2, the Hannons spent their first night in the house even though most of their household belongings were still enroute.

It was there understanding that they were moving into “a nice neighborhood,” Nabilah said. The horror, according to Casey Hannon, started around 9:30 p.m. the next night as they relaxed in the home which had been vacant for some time.

“There were very loud, forceful bangs on the front door,” Casey recounted. “We could also hear someone trying to force open the door.”

Fearing a home invasion, and with no kitchen knives or tools at hand, the couple retreated to a bathroom where they locked themselves in while Casey called 911. When they heard the locked front door open, Nabilah called her mother, thinking they might be hurt or even killed.

A police dispatcher eventually patched Casey’s call to one of the officers who responded to the home. The officer asked the couple to come outside.

“We didn’t know what was happening, whether it was truly safe, so we told the officer he needed to come inside, which he did,” Casey said.

But the trauma for the Hannons did not end with the officers’ arrival. Instead, the couple learned the two motion-activated cameras inside the house had been operational all along and that security company employees had been monitoring still images captured by the cameras.

Those employees were the ones who banged on the door and eventually got the front door open, intent on removing who they thought were squatters.  After all, the Zillow website did not reflect the house as sold.

Because the couple had been in the house less than 48 hours, the only proof they had of owning the home was their real estate documents. And the Realtor who helped them buy the house from Zillow was out of the country.

When contacted by Arizona Daily Independent, the Realtor declined to comment and referred all inquiries to Zillow.

In total it took nearly two hours from the first bang until the couple was finally alone in their house, albeit quite shaken. The Hannons were complimentary of how the TPD officers handled the matter, and they say the security company employees “kept apologizing to us for what happened.”

The security company was not named by the Hannons as there is no indication the employees did anything wrong in how they handled a perceived squatting situation at a residence their customer, Zillow, had marked as empty.

Instead, the couple blames Zillow for the night of terror that ruined their first homebuying experience and continues to cause them restless nights. They have since purchased a firearm and hope the incident does not become a permanent blemish on their life in Tucson, somewhere they were excited to move.

A Zillow spokesperson, meanwhile, provided Arizona Daily Independent the following statement about the Hannons’ experience:

“We aim to deliver a positive experience for everyone who buys a home from Zillow. In this case, we unfortunately fell far short of our standards when our security vendors conducted a routine wellness check erroneously believing the home was empty,” the statement reads. “We deeply regret the situation, and we will be reaching out to the homeowners to help make it right.”

A recent article by Pan Kwan Yuk for Financial Times shows the CEO of Seattle-based Zillow admitted last week that the company’s Zillow Offers house-flipping unit is being shut. The unit has been burdened by an over-inventory of residential properties, some of which industry experts say the company also overpaid for.

“Fundamentally, we have been unable to predict the future pricing of homes to a level of accuracy that makes this a safe business to be in,’ Zillow CEO Rich Burton is quoted in the Financial Times article. Company officials also cited a lack of available workers to quickly repair and prep the homes for resale.

The company is believed to own nearly 300 homes in Arizona, the majority of which are now priced to sell at less than what Zillow Offers paid.