Buyer walking away at time of sale

[Cory Adams]

This happened to me long ago and is resolved but I wanted to get some advice on how some fellow BP folks would have handled the situation:

I offered a home for sale. The agent listed it is 'direct water front' as it was on a lake and had a boat dock, etc. We gave them the survey very quickly after they made their offer and they also surveyed the property. The survey depicted the big black line of the easement which almost all Florida waterways have for property next to said waterways. The easement is controlled these days by the US Army Corps of Engineers and sometimes a local entity.

Buyers expressed concern that the original entity that created the lake and the properties might be able to somehow fill in the lake and perhaps build more land. I expressed to them that Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha and God would not be able to get something like that done with the USACE being controllers of FL waterways. Not ever.

I had bought another prop on contingency of sale and rented that property to pre-move some of my stuff. On the day of closing we had all of the rest of our furniture on the moving van. Later that day the buyers gave me a notice through their lawyer that they did not want to close and claimed the deposit of $13,000. They cited the false advertising of 'direct water front'. Also their shyster lawyer lived on the lake as well for many years and thought the asking sale price was way to high even though it was inline with current market and sold for more after the dust settled on this.

I hired a lawyer recommended by my agent's broker (first bad move). Note that the common practice of all agents including this buyer's broker was to advertise all properties on the beach and or lakes as 'direct water front'. Nobody in fact owns up to the mean tidal line which is the definition of direct water front but all agents advertise as 'direct water front' < common practice.

The second lawyer I hired said hell yes go after the deposit. I called the buyers and said I would be glad to let you have the deposit back if they would cover my moving expenses and rent on the other property. They said no.

I later sold the property to another buyer for more money. This original buyer had the balls to then ask if they could buy it!!!! I told them even though they did not respect contracts, I did and the sale went through to the second buyer.

I ended up paying lawyers to walk away from it all at the end of the day.

Also the buyer's broker hired a lawyer as well!?! Mind you this is a broker that commonly advertised her beachfront properties as 'direct water front' even though nobody owned up to the mean tidal line.

The best legal advice I had was to claim the deposit as an innocent third party and name the buyer and my agent's company as defendants because my agent did the advertising. My mistake for hiring a broker recommended lawyer who didn't do that originally as it was a bit of conflict of interest for them.

What would you have done?