As terrible as renting is, especially dealing with landlords, actually owning a home can get even dicier! And worse, more expensive!

While some of this comes from property tax and neighborhood fees, the biggest cost for any homeowner is repairs, which can soon add up to be pretty exorbitant!

From replacing essentials, like water heaters or air conditioning units, to renovations like retiling and repainting, fixing up your house isn’t cheap!

So when this user thought he was doing his brother a favor by heavily discounting the renovations for his house, he was shocked when his brother refused to pay, leaving him to pay the $32k cost!

Was he wrong to put a lien on the property in response? See for yourself!

AITA for putting a lien on my brother’s house and refusing to remove it until he pays me.

I do house renovations as a business. Even when I do work for family and friends at a discount I have a contract. My nephews are getting bigger and they want separate rooms.

My brother asked me to help him finish his basement, make a couple of rooms down there, add a washroom, add a kitchenette, and wire up a family room.

I priced it out and said I would charge him $32,000 including materials. This was a sizeable discount.

The bathroom alone I would charge anyone else 15,000. His wasn’t even roughed in.

But apparently that lowered price wasn’t good enough for OP’s brother, because he never paid a cent of it!

He never paid me. He always had excuses. I paid for the material and I paid my guys for the work.

We did it when I had downtime so I didn’t lose out on other money but it still sucked to get shafted.

So I put a construction lien on the house. He didn’t care and I wasn’t going to make him homeless. That was two years ago.

Now he got a new job and has to move. And to get a new house he has to sell his current house. Which he can’t do because there is a lien against the property.

And even being unable to move residencies, OP’s brother was still trying to get out of paying him!

He called me to get me to remove it. He promised he would pay me as soon as it sold. I told him “Screw you, pay me”.

My parents called me to tell me that they would pay what he owes.

I said I would agree so long as he paid them back and if he didn’t then any money he didn’t pay back had to come out of any inheritance we were getting, god forbid.

And that interest started accruing from the day of the “loan”. They agreed that that was fair.

OP’s brother, however, wasn’t as comfortable with the deal as his parents were!

My brother called me to scream at me for involving my parents and out inheritance. I reminded him that he involved them not me.

He finally took money out from a line of credit and paid me. With interest. I’m a reasonable man.

The house sold over asking and the finished basement suite made a huge difference on what he got.

He is still annoyed at me for doing it but I did everything legal and by the books.

AITA?

So OP’s brother is mad because…. *checks notes*, he wouldn’t do tens of thousands of dollars of construction work for free?

And this was after he had already given him an incredible family discount? OP is better than me, because I would have ripped out all of that construction after a year without payment!

Reddit said OP was 100% within his rights here, and that this was why you always get paid up front!

And this user said OP didn’t want his parents’ money because then he’d actually have to pay someone back!

 

This person said by all accounts, OP’s brother got an incredible deal, and avoided any serious repercussions of his actions.

Finally, this user said that if OP got anything from this experience, it was realizing who his brother really was!

So OP just ate that $32k dollar expense for years?

That’s a better brother than most!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.