This episode chronicles the legal strategy development after the messy Texas title deal seller—who cooperated fully for 8 months collecting family signatures and clearing complex heirship issues—suddenly bailed in tears the day before closing following an emotional conversation with his estranged sister. With $5K+ in hard costs invested and sophisticated documentation proving good faith throughout the delayed close process, the situation required escalating from friendly rapport-building to demand letters and potential lien placement to force performance.
Key Takeaways:
- Survey Before Clear Title Was $3,400 Mistake Ordering the $3,400 survey before confirming clean title on an estate/heirship situation created unnecessary exposure—all major due diligence should wait until title issues are definitively resolved regardless of seller cooperation.
- Demand Letters Work on Unsophisticated Sellers Nasty grams threatening legal action to the fullest extent often scare non-professional sellers into performing even when enforcement costs would be marginal—the psychological impact alone can resurrect dead deals.
- Liens Cloud But Don’t Force Sales Placing a lien on the property provides legal protection and prevents future clean transfers, but doesn’t compel immediate sale—meaning capital could remain tied up indefinitely if the seller simply refuses to transact.
Listen to the full episode for the complete legal escalation framework and specific tactics for balancing friendly resolution attempts against aggressive demand letter timing.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. So I know yesterday I was remarking on, you know, some of the nasty updates about this transactional deal and how we’re just, you know, you know, starting to incorporate or starting to encounter some potentially brewing legal situations. Literally the last thing I would want to be spending my time on. I think a lot of other operators can agree with that and
Or it is, you know, a lot of wrenches thrown our way this week. So on top of that, like Right as I’m in the middle of dealing with that Transactional deal situation and you can listen to yesterday yesterday’s episode if you want more on that I’m getting another text from this deal this messy title deal that we’ve been working on for the better part of eight months also in Texas that
We were finally set to close. it’s taken forever. And I think I’ve talked about this on the podcast a number of times. But just this kind of crazy situation for a large acreage and there’s this estate deal and just, you know, tons of affidavits of airship were just needed and back and forth and witnesses and the title company and attorney prepping the docs. They were so slow and it just took forever to get this done. And we were finally there. We got the final last witnesses.
Good to go seller scheduled to sign the final closing docs yesterday. And then I hear from the originator saying, the seller has gotten cold feet. Was in tears and had called the title company and said, I need to reschedule to next week. And now it’s not answering his phone.
It seemed to be related to one of the last witnesses that was needed for the affidavit of airship. His sister, who he hadn’t seen since I think his mom’s or their mom’s death, that kind of led to this estate sale. And we’ve seen this pattern before. We’ve dealt with this family conversations, get involved at the very last minute prior to land sales. And then just some regret starts coming up. But like we are very deep in this one and we have,
over five grand and hard costs committed to it. mean, something that we could live with, but you know, it hurts. It would hurt if we had it and we thought we were going to have to give up on it earlier throughout the year. But you know, we were imminently set to close like literally a day away to get this one done finally. And to have this happen, like it’s just, it’s such
It’s just such a downer. It’s not the first time that we’ve seen this where we’ve had a $500,000 deal with investor involvement fall apart at the closing table where family got involved and just totally broke down the deal and it’s bailed at the closing table and we weren’t able to put that one back together. That’s a story for another time.
And, this one has been a bit different because, you know, the seller has no, you know, they haven’t visited the property there. They, they, they’ve been set to sell. They’ve been working with us. They were getting all those, um, heirs and family members together to sign all of the docs. Like they were an integral part of figuring out this messy title situation. Um, and then they’re, they’re the one to bail right at the end. And so.
As we try to approach this first, when the originator brought this up, if we can get on the line, let’s start to figure this out. What are we working with here? To me, my thought always is like, okay, was this more of a long con? The seller was just looking for somebody to clear title on this property and then back out of the deal so he can get a better deal later now that somebody cleared up his problem. But we own all the documentation. So the lawyers that we’ve been working with.
The seller doesn’t have access. You didn’t pay for any of this So he literally have to start from day You know square one again if you ever wanted to sell the property so, you know, have that over him for sure And You know, this is where it starts to get a bit hairy too is because if we had originally signed all this purchase agreement and months and months ago
Assignment etc us as a funder coming into this so technically the close date had passed like quite a while ago But it’s also delayed because of titles issues, so it’s like an implied Continuation of the contract and we just have everything documented You know calls and emails text messages etc. Just showing you know good faith Continued push to close on this deal plus the seller willingly and voluntarily
participating throughout this process. So we are in the midst of trying to reach out to the title attorney who worked with us on this deal, but they haven’t been the best to communicate with. You they probably couldn’t represent us, but they could at least, you know, point us in the right direction. Okay. What, what’s the actual situation here? What might we have to consider for a possible path forward? And I’ve just told the originator, Hey, you you’ve built up a ton of rapport. Like most people will feel some type of reciprocal.
You’ve worked with this guy hand-in-hand for eight months Like he’s got to be feeling bad, you know, he was in tears Feeling emotional about this property like try calling him every day, you know use a different number if you have to To try to get him on the line You know keep the friendliness some type of the rapport But you know if he’s not answering and if it turns out
Hey, this reschedule that he’s tried to do with the title company for signing his docs isn’t going to work out this next week. Then yeah, we can start getting more aggressive. And we’ve used this tactic before where we’ll send a demand letter, you know, nasty gram serve, serve people up. Um, Hey, we are, we’re going to take legal action. Um, you know, we do have money committed both time and, uh, know, sweat equity and, and monetary equity in this deal here. We want, uh, we, need you to perform.
And we’re going to pursue, you know, to the, fullest extent of the law to get you to sign these docs. And, you know, especially for unsophisticated folks, you know, that, can definitely scare them into acting. And we, we would have teeth here. Sometimes the demand letters that we send out, like they don’t have teeth behind it. It’s just like, okay, can we shake some bushes? But if we need to do something beyond that.
We really have to weigh the extra costs associated with this one. This one we probably would, especially because the land investor working with us would be willing to commit more funds to. And that’s a tangent as well before these messy title deals. we, know, 3,400 of that five grand that we had spent was before we knew it was really a messy title deal and we had spent it on survey. Like I would just not do that.
anymore, I wouldn’t order any survey or any other kind of key due diligence until we’re certain that title looks good from a particular property, especially if we know there’s like an airship or an estate situation. That was just a mistake, you know, over six months ago that I would not repeat. Plus if it’s messy title too, would, we would, and we’ve incorporated this more in our docs. It’s just, okay, if a deal falls through for whatever reason, like in good faith,
plus just documented within our funding agreements is that we’ll ask for a half of the cost to be covered by the land investor working with us if a deal falls through for whatever reason. So it’s less of just full monetary risk on our side or just to have a deposit from the land investor into the deal that gets paid out through the waterfall at the point of disposition, like it’s just a bit better risk alignment.
It’s hard to look at hindsight 2020 on this one. So many things changed during the course of this. we really felt like we were literally an hour away from closing on this deal and seller bales who’s been the most participatory part of this entire, like if there’s one person I was trusting to do their part of the bargain, it was the seller because they were there with us every step of the way until like literally the last minute.
You know, it is what it is. So we would have adjusted the risk alignment differently too, and we have updated our docs since then. But, especially if we want to pursue this legally, we would ask for more participation from the land investor. And the person working with us is a, know, sophisticated guy, a solid individual and business owner. So, and he’s committed to seeing this through. So we’re more open to potentially pushing on this. So, you know, we could see, okay, demand ladder, we’ll get them to a…
perform that has worked for us in the past. That’s yet another story for another time. But beyond that, again, pending attorney review here, we have enough ammo that we could almost assuredly put a lien on the property and cloud the title, which is helpful. But like if this guy just bails from wanting to sell the property at all, like we could just be waiting forever.
Uh, till it, you know, um, till kingdom come, I, I don’t know. Um, so like that, that is an avenue for like legal protection, but it doesn’t necessarily force a sale, but it is something we could do there. And then it’s like an open question. Okay. How far do we take this into the court of law to try to force the seller to perform? Like, I’m not sure what the cost might be, the timeline, et cetera. Like this is already starting to be a bit more of a questionable margin deal.
especially in light of just difficulties of selling properties recently in a lot of the country, especially Texas. So, I would be cautious from that perspective, as well, but we are not, not, not certain yet. So game plan is try to still be, you know, good cop for a couple more days. See if we can get the seller back on the line.
figure out next steps with an attorney and then start to get more aggressive and a bit more nasty bad cop. Start sending demand letters, start getting legal. See if we can scare people into acting because sometimes it’s just what you have to do to get something done. And we have done it before. But again, you can probably tell by tone of voice from some of this, it’s just, you just, you wish it could be easier sometimes. And like, again, the legal side is just, it’s such a headache.
I don’t know who just thrives on getting involved in those situations and just loves it. I’m sure some people do. I don’t know really any operators who prefer having to go through legal battles to get things done. It just makes everything more costly and time consuming. But nevertheless, it is a tool in your tool belt if needed. And we have solid
Again, documentation in our favor in this case to go after it and try to get this deal done. I guess like 110 K purchase property with significant upside. Like it was much smaller. Who knows? Would we really have pursued it? But this one could be solid and good deals are hard to come by in today’s market. So TBD on that one, but just wanted to update you as far as our thought process and game plan about that.
to you once we have additional insight. SeriousLand.Capital for any of your funding needs. Again, 50K minimum, purchase price 150K plus preferred. And then Land Daily Diligence Facebook group for zero cost review of your land deals and LandPricer.ai for the most reliable land pricing tool on the market. Again, I think I mentioned yesterday, just started emailing that list with some updates on the product, anticipating getting this out finally by…
the end of August with the soft launch at Unconference the first week of August. So I’m excited about that. Our engineering team has been working overtime to deliver on the product here. I’ve been very exciting to see their progress and thoughtfulness here. I certainly could not have done this alone and definitely could not have vibe coded my way through this either. It’s pretty sophisticated.
Excited to deliver it to you all here soon and with that subscribe and share. Take care everybody. Bye
