Its commissioned sales.

There are lots of things you can do long before you sue them.You can file a complaint with the Washington State Real Estate Commission... http://www.dol.wa.gov/business/realestate/complaint.htmlYou can file a claim with their bonding company.You can open a file on RipOffReport about them... http://www.ripoffreport.comThat's just for starters, but if you want to sue them for non-performance you should contact an attorney in the Seattle area to get the bell rolling.Don't let this drive you out of owning rentals.

( Small town and the buyer has a mutual friend of mine is where I found out the $ amount ) And of course the buyer is through listing agent which cuts out him splitting commissions.

It is outside of the city and metropolitan planning commission area and as far as we know, there are no restrictions on the land.

But if it sells for less than 95% of that value, you get no commission.

After all commissions, and fees, they netted $140,000.  

It gives you an additional stream of income (commissions) on every deal. 

Op should sell and pay $30,000 in commissions ( or counting discounted price because it has renters in it.) so he can start over in an area he knows nothing about, to avoid $3,000 a year in negative cashflow?

Where is your real estate commission cost?

This isn't rocket science, I've done several in 2 and 3 lots, one was 7 with existing structures, a bit more complicated.May I mention, these situations do come up and that studying the basics of RE can make you money in solving these matters.What you're needing is a "Minor-Subdivision" generally these are much easier to approve by a zoning commission as you probably aren't changing the classification or use.You will need to begin with the existing legal description, it will probably be described in "meets and bounds" rather than by the lot and block, guessing it's rural with a barn and critters.Guess it would be rather long to describe the entire process, but to start with, you (at least I)  didn't need a survey.