Our farm is owner financed for 15 years, originally @ 12%. Let me tell you all about one reason I will from now on deal directly with the seller:
We started our land search back in 2008 when things became truly untenable at our old place; it was a jointly owned property between my dad, who lived in California, and I. I've lived here full-time in Maine since September 1999. The longest I've been out of state was the week long trip we took to Niagara Falls & Toronto in 2007. I have a sister who has a drug problem and wants to stay living the way she is, and my dad's trailer that he and mom spent the summers in was also on the property where we were living. We had just cleared about a half acre over there, invested in a small tractor, got the house finally sided after it being a quarter done for 8 years...numerous things my dad was always gonna get to for me in the summer but got ticked off about something else and never got around to...So, he decided to let my sister and her boyfriend, with a record of drug prosecutions longer than I am tall, live in that trailer year round...one day while we were gone they got someone to drive them to the equipment rental and dug a trench across the driveway, jacked a line into our phone box, our cable line and our power, buried it, and then had a nice neighbor with an excavating business gravel the driveway to hide the trench...yeah, real enterprising when they figured they would get 'freebies' for as long as they were there. Well...our phone bill, thank goodness, was one of those unlimited plans, so it went undetected for a LONG time...same thing with the cable, I had a good speed package and didn't notice a drop in speed...considering I had been on dial-up even the dropped speed seemed blinding fast to me, lol!
When our power bill went from $80 a month, to $170, then up, and up, and up from there until one month it was over $400...that was when the 'theft of services' was discovered.
My dad always used a generator when he was up, him and mom didn't use much power and they had a propane water heater and stove, like we did. Well, my sister sold that water heater to someone, along with dad's little 3-phase RV fridge that he ran on propane usually and on 110 when he had the generator running. SO the story came to light when I called and said, 'Look, you guys are grossly misreading this meter...now, every other month I've given you all the benefit of the doubt, maybe my husband's running the AC when I'm gone or some such, BUT now it's coming on fall and there's no AC running, etc and we have propane water heater, dryer, and stove. SO I would like you to come out and help me figure out what's going on, please.'
They sent a crew and one of the guys used a voltmeter...and they went into the basement with my hubby and that was when the BRIGHT ORANGE 110 line was discovered...running from a hole drilled into the basement wall UNDER our porch...and my husband said, 'Well, that's new...to us, anyway...I wonder what it powers?' So they came back upstairs and one switch at a time in the breaker box they threw each switch...first the kitchen went, then the office, then the bathroom, living room, kids room, shop outside, and then there was one breaker left. A double, unmarked. As soon as the CMP man flipped that switch, we heard shouting from across the driveway. Now, here is where the real enterprising side of these thieves shows up: they had scrounged an old meter off an apartment building and mounted it on a pole at the road, 'like CMP told us to do, and the power line is underground.' Yep, the same day they trenched the driveway to jack into our utilities, they trenched their back lawn so it looked like CMP had been there. Yes, I am naive and trusting at times...this time though CMP cancelled the bill, and I had them take the service line down. We used our land savings down payment to get a generator set-up going and we've been off grid for over a year, going on two years, now actually.
We started looking for a place that we could truly call 'our own' immediately after that. My sister and her boyfriend both had outstanding warrants and in spite of what they did, and the fact that over 20 marijuana plants were found growing inside the trailer, my dad said they could come back to the trailer. When the state's child protective services office was called and I was in danger of losing my kids because of those people, my husband and I really went land looking in earnest and found the place we know call 'paradise.' Our own little farm in the woods, if you will. We got a terrific deal by going owner-financed.
Sadly for the landowner, the woman we bought the place from developed chronic heart failure and died within months of us signing the contract. Her son, a lawyer, is a flat out crook. We have been paying since August of 2009 on our land, to the realtor as the contract specified and then to her son after her death as we were notified to do. The landowner, a well-past retirement gentleman, winters in Florida but lives just miles from us. It was brought to our attention in October that this poor man had not received one cent of the money we had paid in. He initially contacted us requesting contact info for the real estate agency as no one would return his calls...when we told him about Virginia's passing he said he knew and had been told her son would be taking over things, just as we were. My husband and I traveled to the real estate office and found that someone else had bought the business just prior to Virginia's passing and the son had elected to retain the contracts on the land and homes she had sold before her death. He had been collecting payments and NOT passing them on. Virginia had probably gotten caught up in her health and had brought her son on board well before her passing to take over things and he decided to embezzle instead...well, nobody can find this man at all...his law practice is gone, his home has been cleaned out and stands empty...craziness.
So, if you are going to be purchasing land for sale by owner, or through an agency with owner financing, make sure all contracts have some sort of clause in case of any wrongdoing on the part of the agency or their agent.
Our landowner has elected to forgive the payments we've made to the realtor, and just started collecting from November directly from us. We were very fortunate as there were many other avenues he could have pursued, including retaining an attorney and a long court battle with us in the middle...
