The Deed To The Brooklyn Bridge
There’s nothing like ignoring your own advice.
About a month ago I found a little cabin in the Adirondacks listed FSBO on Craigslist, and I met the owner and had a home inspector come out to look at it. It was a nice piece of land, and the best looking hole in the ground you’ve ever seen — great septic system, basement, foundation, plumbing, electrical, you name it. It needed a roof and siding, some replacement windows, and some chimney pointing. I decided I’d do a gambrel roof and add 500 square feet and a bedroom with a half bath in the process.
You might remember when both Pam Reynolds and I cautioned our readers about FSBO properties, and about the other world owners who eschew the services of licensed professionals often inhabit. But this was too great to turn down. According to Zillow and my contractor, this place was going to make me enough money in 10 years to pay off my student loans — and that was a conservative estimate. And who wants to add commissions to the cost of a rock-bottom property? That’s window money, siding money, bathroom-renovation money.
When you make an offer with real estate agents, you sign a standard contract and put down some hand money. Not brain surgery, right? This guy was even comfortable with owner financing the place, as it wasn’t in any shape to be mortgaged by a bank — not yet anyway.
The first contract I got from the owner’s country lawyer a) made no provision for the hand money he nevertheless expected me to send (essentially I was supposed to send $500 to a guy I met on the internet, with no contract to fall back on if he was a cheat or a flake), and b) contained a clause saying that the entire amount of the mortgage would become due upon the seller’s death.
The seller was 83 years old.
So, basically, I could have put a lot of time and money into the property, and if I didn’t get the note paid off before he hopped his last train, his son would be able to foreclose on the dumb city boy from Massachusetts. But I trusted this guy, so I blamed his incompetent lawyer (the guy didn’t listen very well, and didn’t use email), and hired my own to sort it out.
Apparently that was unfriendly of me.
We went back and forth for a while — my lawyer proposed addenda to the contract, like a clause that said that if the place burned down, the seller couldn’t pocket the insurance and hold me to the contract. His lawyer told my lawyer his addenda were unnecessary and refused to add them, and then told me that it is customary for the buyer to pay to have the note prepared. That’s another $500, on top of the sizable down I had raked together, and it sounded like I was getting taken for a ride. That’s like applying for a credit card and drawing up the agreement yourself. It’s nuts, and calling it “standard practice” was a lie.
So, on Sunday, I got an email (from the 83-year-old, not the incompetent lawyer) saying I was wasting his time and money on legal bills. I faxed him the erroneous contracts, and he sent me another email titled “No Deal” — he didn’t want to sell it after all.
Then he re-listed it on Craigslist, leaving me to wonder if I’m the first of many to blow a few hundred bucks on this mirage, or one in an already long line of suckers.
The $400 I paid to my lawyer was hardly a waste — it kept me from making a deal I probably would have had reason to regret at some point, one way or another. But it’s a disappointment. And it’s the last FSBO I touch, ever.
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