A man who stole a hotel
capitaldaily.ca
capitaldaily.ca
But then Georgia allows loan terms that are not allowed in other states, so predatory lenders like to be based in GA, IIRC. I think Florida is second in allowing non-consumer-friendly loan terms though.
Reading about its demise is devastating -- its beauty was a credit to both Frederique and Sinclair. If the new owners have ripped out the trees and the vegetable beds, I doubt it will retain the same magic. A special place we can never visit again, sadly.
Yes, following the normal protocols and using lawyers and not using their gut feelings or caring about the buyer’s story would have prevented this.
The guy was broadcasting that he was not a desirable buyer, scam or no scam:
> Thirteen times he and Gregory requested pushing back the closing date, saying they’d be prepared to close “tomorrow” or “next week” or “next month” or in “the first weeks of the new year.”
I searched the article for “earnest money” and didn’t see any mention of it, which means the sellers were engaging with this buyer without the most basic of real estate transaction protections for the seller:
If you have bought a car and agreed on the price, only to find there is another 30% of "fees," insurance, financing costs, freight, and random whatevers, or taken a minimum wage job only to be charged a uniform rental fee, you have been taken by a similar scheme. There are people who do this kind of scamming full time as their living, we call them "salespeople."
If a seller starts the discussion by advertising an offer to sell for $100, and the buyer agrees to continue the conversation at that anchor price, and then after getting details about the goods, the buyer comes back with a lower offer of $50, that's a pretty transparent negotiation. Naming this "gazundering," seems like a ploy to discourage beginners from negotiating.
It is the seller's responsibility to line up other offers, and it's on them to manage the opportunity cost of any discussions. Using deception to get leverage on the seller by using a fake offer that causes the seller to let go of their other opportunities would be a more accurate description of the unethical aspect of "gazundering," but even then, high stakes negotiations can become a kind of warfare.
In the UK, a small property sale goes through a process roughly like this (skipping quite a few steps):
1. Buyer and seller informally agree to buy/sell a property for a given price.
2. Lawyers for both parties get to work, mostly on the buyers side to check everything is OK (e.g. structurally sound, all necessary planning and building regs in place).
3. Once everything is ready to go, both parties sign the contract - this is called "exchange" (because each side signs the contract separately then send their signed version to the other).
4. The contract typically (not always) stipulates that the transfer of money and ownership won't take place until about a week later - that time is called "completion".
If either party tried to pull out between 3 and 4 then this is a serious problem - they essentially can't, or if they do then it is breach of contract. But gazumping is where the seller pulls out before 3 (because they've gotten a better offer from another buyer before then). At that point the buyer has probably shelled out some legal fees but hasn't paid anything to the seller - I don't see how you could consider this fraud. Indeed the buyer could just as well pull out (e.g. because the checks reveals something about the house they don't like) or try to renegotiate the price. That's all above board before the contract is signed.
Edit: More specifically, I don't see how you could come up with a mechanism to prevent it. Should you lock in the sale price at step 1, before you do any checks? What if (as the buyer) the house is not in the condition it initially appeared to be? What if (as the seller) the buyer seems to be dragging their heels and delaying the transaction? You need a way to pull out of the transaction before the contract is signed.
Edit: Looking into it a bit more, gazumping is rarer but not impossible in Scotland, and I don't think it's quite right to say the contract is legally binding at step 1. Things are a bit different because much of the work to determine the property's condition is done by the seller, not the buyer, in advance of offers, and many estate agents are apparently also convenyancing solicitors. And it seems gazumping is legally allowed until the contract is signed, but then the seller would need to change solicitor which acts as a disincentive.
When I sold my business, even when the deal was going smoothly and I had a partner & advisors to lean on, it's still agonising and you desperately want little bumps and delays to just go away.
The mother of the current Prime Minister being involved could have been an alarm bell as she has a vulnerable history, and fits the archetype of the sort of high profile / low judgment person a scammer like that would leverage. It's almost always the kooky ones who let the vampires in.
There is also a low-level scam where "investors," find distressed businesses, take on enough shares to get access the bank accounts, and loot the accounts, sometimes after managing to get a bank loan for whatever "improvements" they were going to make. It's not small, as it's tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it works because when they're done, the victims can't even afford the lawyers to sue them for it.
It's such a heartbreaking story. It seems the conman caught the owners in a perfect storm where they were somewhat desperate to sell based on:
- 2 previous sale attempts had fallen through
- there was a throwaway line I read somewhere that they were dealing with some personal issues. Perhaps those issues took away their focus
- the wife was an overly trustful person
- it seems like they just wanted to retire and enjoy the rest of their lives
I think the main lesson is that no matter how much you want a deal to work out, you still need to be willing to walk away. A bad deal can be much, much worse than no deal at all.
A similar story is how John Spano bought the NHL team the New York Islanders despite having no money. There's a great ESPN 30 for 30 episode about it. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-john-spano-bought-the-is...
Yes yes yes. For almost all things in life you need to be able (and therefore on some level to be prepared) to walk away. And if you can't, you should set as a top priority creating the ability to do so (and don't let on to the other side that you can't walk away).
If the other side of the deal picks up on the fact you can't or won't walk away and is malicious, they will savage you.
These type of people are simply unfixable, they’re in a continual search for targets for their deceptions.
In my case, the speciment left the US leaving behind his family and a 6 year old daughter to escape justice.
Yeah it was super gripping just like a John Grisham novel. Thanks to this great writer for doing justice to such a tragic story.
"a pull quote ... is a key phrase, quotation, or excerpt ... serving to entice readers into the article or to highlight a key topic ... They can add visual interest to text-heavy pages with few images or illustrations"
But, that’s not the stated rationale for a pull quote, which is technically meant just to highlight an important piece of information from the article.
On a website, where you only see these pull quotes if you've already made a decision to read through the article, and they're not even any bigger than the regular text, they make no sense at all.