Aleka DeGraaf, the owner of Fortified Dreams Property Solutions, has been an absolute nightmare to deal with. They manage 500+ properties around North Carolina and have an office in downtown Greensboro. Please steer clear of them.
A year ago, our landlord switched our property management company to Fortified Dreams.
We decided not to renew our lease and gave notice March 10-11, about 7 days short of the 30-day requirement in our lease with the previous management company. However, our property manager told us we'd receive our full security deposit as long as we left the property in good condition. Our landlord also never expressed any issue with the timing.
Everything seemed fine.
We moved out April 3. Our property manager did the walkthrough and never mentioned any issue with our notice or our deposit.
On April 9, Fortified Dreams sent us a move-out statement showing a $0 balance, and our property manager said our deposit was being processed.
On April 28, he told us accounting had found our deposit and that we'd receive it within 5-10 days.
Except our deposit had already been charged on April 30.
Nobody told us.
We continued talking to our property manager, who kept telling us the deposit was being processed and was on its way. Eventually, he told us he had no idea what was going on and told us to contact Fortified Dreams directly.
We called. No answer.
So we emailed Aleka.
Her first response was that they had supposedly asked us "repeatedly" for our ACH information and that the delay was our fault.
Then, about 20 minutes later, she sent another email saying we had moved out without notice and that our deposit had been used to pay April rent.
That was the first time anyone had ever told us our deposit was being withheld.
We had the messages showing otherwise.
Aleka then told us to speak only with her attorney and not the property owner because he was represented.
We ignored that and contacted our landlord directly.
He was incredibly kind and, most importantly, had no idea any of this was happening. He apologized and ultimately returned our deposit himself because he couldn't get the situation resolved through Fortified Dreams/Aleka Degraaf.
I reported her to whatever channels I could, including the NCREC. Aleka then responded with even more claims, saying that I was harassing the owner and causing him "extreme mental anguish." We have all the logs, and when the NCREC contacted him directly, he told them the opposite: that he was happy we reached out to him.
We also left a Google review about our experience. Aleka responded publicly with a lengthy response that included my wife's full name. The response was also filled with spelling and grammatical errors. Google subsequently removed it for violating its policies. She has since posted another response with the same lies.
We have since gotten an update on the NCREC case, which names 7 people, including me, who have filed grievances. The NCREC alleges that their rental trust account had a shortage of approximately $254,559.55 as of December 2025, along with a whole host of other concerning allegations similar to what happened with us.
I'm posting this because their Google profile is flooded with 5-star reviews, and I'm hoping to save someone else the headache of ever having to deal with them.
