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No More Nightmares
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INTRODUCING MY NEXT BOOK PROJECT

My next book is tentatively titled, No More Nightmares: The DIRT-SMART Buyer’s Collection of Scary Stories and Their Solutions.

These will be stories from the frontlines of buying country property. I want to use your first-hand accounts of unexpected surprises, dishonesty, failure to disclose defects and quagmires of all lengths, breadths and depths.

To do this, I need your help.

Send me a one- or two-page story of what happened when you bought country property. Try to be fair-minded and analytical in telling the story. You can be ironic and funny, even though you really want to pound the table with frustration. The point here is to help others avoid the trap that got you. Wind up your story with lessons learned: what could you have done differently in the scoping and buying of the property that would have kept you out of the mess you’re recounting.

Here’s a first-draft outline of No More Nightmares:

Questionable Ethics:

By sellers as FSBOs
By real-estate brokers representing sellers
By lawyers, on either seller or buyer side
By title insurers
By settlement agents
By consultants you’ve hired, such as a home inspector, farm expert, engineer, contractor, excavator and so on

Examples of the Seller/Agent Failing to Disclose a Defect in the Property

Issues

Acreage
Access
Adverse possession
Annoyance and nuisance
Appraisals and Appraisers
As-is
Auction purchase
Boundary disputes
Breach of contract by seller
Deeds
Deposits

Easements:

Those that your seller has over another party
Those that another party has over the seller’s property

Encroachments

Environmental problems:

Endangered, threatened or sensitive species/habitat
Pollution, from a source off the property
Pollution, from a source on the property
Wetlands

Exceptions to title

Farms

Fees, unreasonable charges

Fences

Financing

Flawed or erroneous information provided to buyer

Flooding

Insurance

Lawsuits

Lenders

Minerals

Neighbors

Ownership, seller’s lack of complete ownership

Regulations:

Federal
State

Seller behavior

Seller financing

Septic systems/permits

Soils

Surveys

Timber:

Seller’s inflated/inaccurate estimates of volumes and values
Problems with consulting foresters
Problems with selling timber

Theft or disappearance of property included in your purchase contract

Title

Unrecorded documents

Water

Zoning

Other

I will not quote you by name, and I will change details to avoid identification of the parties involved. Remember to end with advice to other buyers that would have saved you from this awful experience.

E-mail to:
curtisseltzer@htcnet.org

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