Anybody here ever bought old farmhouse and fixed it up?

[Dargo]

Well, I finally got off the fence. And......I said "forget it!".


I finally had it with too many of the relatives wanting "just one more thing" and I had one too many comment like "you're stealing it from us". The final straw was when they had their attorney call me the morning I was going to actually close on the house and pay for it and tell me that the sellers wanted another $1800 because of some additional expenses they had.

I hate to be a jerk about it, but after months and months of working on things we had a deal. A deal that their attorney told me was a firm deal and for me to go ahead and buy homeowner's insurance and buy the title insurance and get my attorney to draw up all the papers and do the closing. It was after I did all of that that they raised the price on me; figuring I'd go ahead and hand over more. As someone mentioned earlier, I needed to treat this like a business deal and not like dealing with relatives. So, that's what I did and they cost me over a grand. Since they cost me the money and then refused to honor their agreement, I just had my attorney go place a lien on the home for my expenses they cost me. I'm wiping my hands and finished with this deal. If they ever plan on selling it they'll have to pay me the money they cost me for the closing costs, insurance and title expenses. Assuming that they may fight that, my attorney has already deposed their attorney and he admitted that he called me on the seller's behalf and told me the deal was done and to spend the money I needed to spend to complete the transaction that day.

So, that's the end of this adventure...

 

[studor]

Take comfort in the fact that to the casual observer, there are no jerk like activities noted on your part. I would say remarkable restraint

 

[EddieWalker]

I think you made the right decission. It was a tough situation to be in and it seemed the more you got into it, the worse it got.

Eddie

 

[CurlyDave]

For the rest of your life the family is going criticize you over that lien.

Every time they tell the story, the extra $1800 will never be mentioned, but the lien will be prominent in their version. Just be prepared.

Sounds to me like you really didn't need to get mixed up with these folks.

 

[Dargo]

For the rest of your life the family is going criticize you over that lien.

Every time they tell the story, the extra $1800 will never be mentioned, but the lien will be prominent in their version. Just be prepared.

Sounds to me like you really didn't need to get mixed up with these folks.

And I'm totally okay with that. It is all now a matter of record in the legal system. I tried every way possible to help put things together for family until I came to the sad realization that certain family members are literally nothing but flat out liars and thieves. Nothing will change that and nothing I could do would ever satisfy them. They are a very sad and sorry bunch who have only "made" money when somebody died and left them something or they managed to take somebody for something.

It never dawned on me that they "expected" me to always host all family gatherings and pay for everything as I have in the past. I just thought it was my pleasure to host the gatherings when asked and I never thought about asking any of them to pay for any of the food etc. I realized aspect when one of them said, as I finally refused to keep paying more for this place, that they now assume that I'll ruin their holidays from now on by not hosting them and paying for everything. I'd honestly never really thought about it, but it does change things when you realize what their attitudes have been. I suppose it all boils down to the fact that we all have some people we are better off not associating with in life. Fortunately these people only represent a very small portion of our combined families.

It is just disappointing that I had to find out what sort of people they were when they felt that, since I 'have more than them', I should pay them more than anyone else would if I want to buy something from them. I suppose that I'm just different because I've always felt that it's only right to sell something for less to friends or relatives, not more. I guess the bottom line is that I can live with what I've done concerning this matter without any regrets for my actions. Interestingly enough, this same group of family members have a court trial starting the 7th of next month in regards to another property issue. Apparently they 'sold' some other property they'd divided up into three different sections a couple of years ago. The problem was that they never got the land divided nor sought approval for the subdivision of the land until after they sold it. Our local planning commission refused to approve their proposed division and nullified the sale. However, because they felt that they lost time in the matter, they kept the earnest down payments from the people who thought they were buying land. I guess the court system will decide if they are entitled to keep the down payments for their "intention" of selling the property.

 

[BungeeII]

Many people will pray for a sign that leads to do something, or to walk away from it. You had a dozen signs that said "turn and run" and you still persisted. Consider that $1k as lost tackle for not cutting bait sooner and move on. No good can come from placing that lien on there.