Mr Smith Strikes Again!!

My old neighbor, I'll call him Mr Smith instead of some of the other more appropriate names I could call him, has been wanting to by the western part of my property in the Seattle area for years. And for years we told him no. My wife really disliked and didn't trust him, and for good reason as it turns out. About a year after she passed away, I decided to move closer to some of my children. I relented and said he could buy the land, more as a favor to my other neighbor who really wanted to sell to him. Turns out Mr Smith needed both of our properties to make things work.

But nothing seemed to happen. He made a down payment but could never seem to close the deal. After about a year of this, I had completely remodeled the house and was ready to sell it and the land. I told Mr Smith that I wasn't going to hold the land for him unless he paid my costs for doing so, roughly $1500 per month. He reluctantly agreed.

The first two payments were made and then stopped. His excuse was his accountant messed up. A few more payments were made and stopped again. This time he wanted to renegotiate the deal and have the payments apply to his principal. I told him no, but still no payments. Now he wanted me carry the contract for him as he couldn't get the loan he was promised. He even had his son try to negotiate the deal with me.

I had enough and backed out of the deal, putting my house on the market. Fortunately I had an escape clause in the contract that allowed me to back out of the deal for any reason with no penalty to me. He kept trying to get me to drop that clause too. So I canceled the deal for lack of his payments, etc.

Turns out a new acquaintance of mine is in the same business as Mr Smith. He told me that Mr Smith does this often and that he doesn't understand how he can still be in business. Boy, I was glad I pulled out.

Now jump forward to this month. The house has sold. In doing the title search, it was discovered last week that a lien had been placed on the house and property last month. My Smith had also stopped paying the engineers doing the surveys on the property, so they put a lien on it for the moneys owed. How they can do that without notification is a mystery to me. But it happened and now my agents and I have to clean up that mess, and quickly! Hopefully it won't cost me too much. Thank You Mr Smith!!

WILL I EVER BE RID OF THIS GUY!!!@##@@!!!!