Winding down my real estate fiasco

Please note that all these are based on my opinion and deduction from my own experience. Please consult legal counsel for true facts. I hold no responsibility if you lost money from following any ideas I expressed in this post. In fact, please treat this as a fictional story. I couldn’t care less if you don’t believe me.

Today, two months after the deal, I finally received the last check from the notary of the buyer for the land survey I have to do due to an outdated Certificate of location. It marked the finalization of my venture into real estate as a property virgin. Now, that I have dabbled in it and come full circle, I understand what the business is about.

As I slowly completes cycles in each and everyone of the markets created by financial gurus, it is getting more and more obvious that every single one of them are sustained by virgins of each sector. I go into each and everyone of them with eyes wide open and experiences reinforced from every other sector. Yet I still get ripped off by at least one middle man in the process.

My business experience got me out of the last one relatively unscathed, but that’s not before spending an additional $4500 fixing stuff in the condo building that doesn’t concern me. When you are about to make a big killing, these vultures will circle around you and try to sap as much out of you as they can. Everyone that contacts you, once the deal is closed is one of those vultures. Their weapon? A delay in the closing, or the possibility for legal action that will prevent the deal from happening. Just keep in mind that in the end, the deal is between the buyer and the seller. If you two want it to happen, the rest have no say in that. Their job, is to keep you away from clearly conveying the obvious logical conclusion that you’ve reached which will save both the buyer and seller a lot of money.

People close to me knew that I had several sparring contest with the buyer’s notary. The selection of which is out of my hand, hence the big sparring match because of different expectations. A notary’s weapon and main source of income doesn’t actually come from the $500 to $900 fees that the buyer’s paid. The most lucrative part of their business comes from squeezing the seller dry of funds by finding small mistakes in any of the documentations that you have. Understand that these documentations are stored with the government somewhere and the only reason why I believe you need a certified copy is because the buyer’s notary asks for it. Something doesn’t sit right with me the moment the buyer’s notary contacted me and asked for about $10k in funds withheld. The logic doesn’t make any sense. If my notary took care of everything before? Why is there any problem right now?

Some more digging into these things and several phone calls back and fourth between the two notaries lead to the revelation of an often overlooked fact about the “contract”. To avoid any of these fiasco, just force the buyer to accept all document as is. Put it as a clause in your counter offer, whether or not they are copies or certified copies or the original. Of course, your real estate agent won’t tell you that, they need to grease all the clogs in the big machine after all and let everyone take a cut to have a good reputation.

By the way if you are looking to buy, read Garth Turner if you haven’t already done so. You want to go into this with eyes wide open, knowing both side of the coin.

As a buyer in this case, it is more important to hire a good reputable Notary who has been in business for a few decades. The reason is simple. In case some discrepancies like the one I had happened, you can go back to them and get them to pay. Because they need to uphold their reputation, they will pay up if the cost is not too high for them. For a notary that just started out… you might not be so lucky. What are you going to do if the newly started notary don’t pay? Sue a lawyer in his own game? Don’t think about this in terms of justice, but take everything from a business stand point. What will cause any party in the game to have the maximum loss. Go after that and you got them by their tail. They are doing it to you, so it’s only fitting that you return the favor.