First and foremost, we are deeply sorry that this situation happened to HousingAnywhere customers, who trusted us in finding their new homes. It is our regret to say that this incident also shocked us as well, as Co-liCo has been using our platform for successful bookings since 2021 as a legally registered and operating rental company and in regular contact with HousingAnywhere without a significant signal to suggest otherwise. While this should not have happened in the first place and no words can fully recover our customer's distressed situation, we believe the least thing we can do is to transparently keep our customers updated and take action on what HousingAnywhere can do, hoping to ease the distress our customers are going through as much as possible. Please keep an eye on this posting as continuous updates will be made as the investigation proceeds.
Overview
In the early morning of Saturday 29th of October, HousingAnywhere and hundreds of HousingAnywhere customers who booked a place to stay at Co-living Service GmbH & Co. KG (also known as Co-liCo), got struck by a message sent by someone who claimed to be 'Co-liCo’s new owner and managing director', that their bookings will be postponed for an indefinite period of time due to the change of the company’s management. Following that message, Co-liCo stopped any form of communications neither with HousingAnywhere nor with the customer who booked their place to be their new home. Co-liCo also closed down their website, suggesting that they have no intention to resolve nor explain the situation via open communications.
The HousingAnywhere team got immediately alerted by this event as some of the customers were to move in on the very day and many more got highly distressed by the potential loss of their new homes and the payments made in advance. Unfortunately, our repeated attempts using multiple channels and networks have not yet been successful in establishing any contact with the management or any representative of Co-liCo.
At this moment, we are actively pursuing legal actions, including filing an official petition for bankruptcy against Co-liCo as we have reason to believe the company has turned insolvent and is unable to pay its debts. We are in touch with local law enforcement in an attempt to clarify this situation as soon and as thoroughly as possible. The decision will be made in the respectable court, which we will update here as soon as we proceed. If Co-liCo is declared bankrupt, an independent insolvency administrator will be appointed by the court to research whether and to what extent the company can repay security deposits owed to tenants of Co-liCo. The administrator will also research whether any fraud or embezzlement took place within Co-liCo.
While the investigation is still ongoing, the lack of willingness of Co-liCO to communicate while continuing to dishonour their commitments to you and HousingAnywhere is not acceptable.
First of all, we advise you to file a police report with the local police office. We are looking into sharing a list of possible legal representation for your reference, in case you feel you need to seek legal advice. In any case, if you have any information about Co-liCo and/or this situation that you wish to share, for example, the proof of deposit payment, police reports, etc, and you feel comfortable sharing them with us, please do so via support@housinganywhere.com as your input will be highly valuable to speed up our investigation against Co-liCO.
In the meantime, we hope the below information can give our customers a bit more clarity:
Please contact us via support@housinganywhere.com, if you have further questions and/or information.