When you make a deal with a friend, family member or neighbor, always get it in writing. Make sure it’s legal and can’t be changed. Hopefully, this wouldn’t be necessary, but in the case of the person you made the deal with dying, you run the risk of the deal never happening if you don’t make it official right away.

That’s the issue that happened in the story you’re about to read. A woman made a deal with a neighbor to buy the empty lot between their houses, but when the neighbor died and the neighbor’s daughter inherited the property, the daughter had other plans for the empty lot.

Thankfully, the woman had friends on her side and a good lawyer who helped them out.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Land Deal Gone Awry – A Tale of Vengeance

My parents live in a nice, quiet neighborhood. For the most part, everyone gets along well and the neighborhood exists in its own little bubble; the only time you see people from outside the neighborhood bubble is on Halloween.

Our backyard neighbor, a single, middle aged woman who we’ll call Sally, was kind of adopted by our family and came to all holiday parties and family get togethers.

We all love her and that made our revenge all the more satisfying.

Here’s how the problem started.

Sally had a next door neighbor who owned a lot between Sally’s house and her own.

When the neighbor expressed an interest in selling the lot, Sally offered to purchase it and a deal was made.

Unfortunately, Sally’s neighbor died prior to the land deal being finalized and the lot went into her assets to be distributed to her only daughter – who we will call Resting B Face, or RBF.

RBF had plans to sell the lot to someone else.

RBF disliked Sally and refused to sell the empty lot to her because she believed Sally had been attempting to screw her mother over.

RBF claimed she was going to sell it to an interested developer who would build a house there.

When my parents heard this, they were upset; our house was on a hill and the empty lot also ran up to our backyard. My parents did not want to look down into another house/backyard.

Likewise, Sally did not want a house next to her so she tried one last time to purchase the lot. She offered more than she had originally planned on paying, but RBF said she would never sell the lot to her.

They tricked RBF.

My parents and Sally hatched a plan, though. My parents, whom RBF did not know, had an attorney draft a purchase offer for the empty lot. They offered several thousand less than Sally’s original offer had been.

RBF hemmed and hawed, but came back with a counter offer equivalent to Sally’s original offer.

My parents offered her five thousand less and she accepted.

After the sale was finalized, my parents sold the lot to Sally for the same price they purchased it; Sally ended up receiving the lot for five thousand less than she had originally agreed to pay (and over ten thousand less than what she offered to RBF).

Everyone got what they wanted except RBF.

RBF did find out what happened and tried to negate the contract with my parents on account of “fraud” but that’s obviously not a legitimate claim.

RBF never spoke to Sally, or to my parents, after she learned what happened.

Another interesting tidbit – after purchasing the lot, my parents notified the town of their intent to not develop the property so nobody can ever build a single family dwelling on it. Killed two birds with one stone – no downhill neighbor and the property stays in the “family.”

That worked out well for Sally.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

I’m sure RBF was not happy about the way it turned out.

Definitely!

It is satisfying!

Here’s a similar story.

What I’m unclear about is why RBF sold the land to OP’s parents. Did the lawyer trick them into thinking they were developers?

Regardless, it was nice of OP’s parents to help Sally out, and they benefited too since now there won’t be a house built on that land.

Being greedy can really backfire.