Really, really good luck

Okay, here's the end of the stories about contracts.

Once there was a saga of two friends. Friend No.1 had bought the land from her husband's best friend's father, who had found out he was dying. Friend No.2 bought land from her husband's sister's father-in-law. I am not making up these relationships, even if I sound like the girl from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Friend No. 1 bought horse property and improved it. The Ones put in a septic system, ran electricity to the property and put in fencing. They decided to sell but it turns out they had never actually gotten their friends to sign the mortgage contract. There had always been an excuse -- first, it was grieving over the father who died (but charged 9% interest on his deathbed, and wanted 12%). Then it was the son who was constantly out of town. So the Ones paid their "mortgage" for 5 years before finding out the family had other liens on the property, the big one being from the IRS. They had to abandon the property and start over.

Cost of the land: $35,000
Cost of the improvements: $15,000
Worth of the property at time of abandonment: $120,000
Loss, in real dollars, through payments and improvements: $45,000
Loss plus equity: $130,000

Now for the Twos.
The Twos were in a similar situation. They bought a piece of land at $18,000 and put a mobile home on the property. The Twos, however, did get their brother-in-law to sign a contract. The problem was, said brother-in-law didn't actually have the deed to the property. His father had it. The Twos are actually very good with their money, so they doubled up on payments and paid the debt within 2 years. Three years later, there was still no deed. The sister went into a Betty Ford clinic, which made them fear that she had taken a loan on the property to pay for her addiction.

However, through pure, blind, and wonderful luck (I really, really like the Twos, and they are actually very level-headed, they are just too trusting!) the sister came back from Betty Ford facing a divorce and decided they needed that deed before everything fell through, so she got her husband and father-in-law to sign and my friends called yesterday to say they had the deed to their property. I couldn't restrain a whoopee!!! myself when I heard. In fact, I want to say that I am putting these stories on my blog so that other may avoid these errors. Please, please avoid doing either of these things! The Twos won out in the end, but spent 3 years stressed and unsure whether they truly owned the land they were on or if they'd just given an alcoholic $18,000 to spend on her habit.

Cost of the land: $18,000
Improvements: less than $5,000 (they opted not to improve the property until they had the deed in hand -- a smart move, I think)
Worth of the property + improvements today: $85,000
Total gain: $62,000 (this isn't perfectly accurate; there was some loss from interest but I'm not sure how much, as they paid it off so quickly)

Total cost of peace of mind: immeasurable