ACE Family’s Austin & Catherine McBroom claim they were scammed amid home foreclosure

Family vloggers Austin and Catherine McBroom of the ACE Family have addressed rumors that they’re facing foreclosure on their house, claiming that they were scammed by contractors.

The ACE Family is a hugely popular family vlog channel, run by parents Austin and Catherine McBroom who upload videos about their lives for their 19 million subscribers.

In July 2021, there were reports that the couple were being evicted from their Los Angeles mansion as a result of missed payments, but Austin later responded that “Ain’t nobody getting evicted, ain’t nobody moving.”

Now, the couple has addressed the situation in an hour-long YouTube video titled ‘Our House Story,’ with Catherine explaining that the contractor they used was not a licensed contractor, and was actually using someone else’s contracting license, which they were unaware of for two years.

She went on to say that “because of that he was able to get everyone on his team to basically screw us,” including the architect and the realtor. The pair added that they went into escrow without getting the certificate of occupancy, although said they were promised they would be getting it imminently. However, they revealed that they were never given it.

Catherine said that when you don’t have a certificate of occupancy, you don’t have gas in your house because it’s illegal, and as a result they’ve “never had gas” while living there.

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The first thing that made them realize they had been “screwed” was the front door, which after three weeks, started to warp in the heat of the sun because it was actually made of plywood and not mahogany as they’d planned. She also showed videos of the house leaking water through the ceiling, along with a series of other issues with the property.

In response to accusations that they weren’t paying their bills, Catherine explained: “I have to say this. If it was true that we weren’t paying our bills — this is like the narrative people want to give it — if it was true that we didn’t pay our bills, why the freak would I spent $40-50,000 on my gardening and get all this gardening done just a couple months ago and literally show it to you guys on our channel?”

She said that although she tried to “move forward and be positive” after getting scammed, when she found out their house was under foreclosure through someone asking her about it on Instagram, she “literally f**king lost it.”

They explained their lack of certificate of occupancy meant they struggled to get loans, and that was why they went under foreclosure, after which it was picked up by “tea channels.” The couple slammed people joking about the situation, with Austin saying it was “outrageous” that people were laughing about it.

The lender went on to buy the house for $10 million, though the couple say that the property was deemed to be worth $16.5 million in an appraisal a few months prior.

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In response to the question of what they plan to do next, Catherine explained: “As far as us suing anybody, like we should be suing these people, but yeah, time and energy, like I’m just so over it, I just wanna move on. Yeah, we lost millions of dollars in this house, but we just got a new house.”

They added that going forward they plan to be more private about where they live and the house they live in, although they are still planning on showing their audience the new property in their vlogs.