In the spring of 2013, I was looking for a house that we could buy in the Portland area, and I stumbled across this real estate listing, where they were listing an investment home and asking $9000 for it. So I made an offer on it. The next day, I received an email from the seller saying the property was sold the same day and that they were no longer looking to buy it.
In the spring of 2013, my friend, Edmonds (his real name is Edward) called me. He had done a little research on the real estate listings that the seller had emailed out to his contacts, and when he called it was clear that Edmonds had been scammed. The email had a link that showed a picture of a property that was for sale in the Portland area.
The real estate seller, who was later identified as Edmonds, had been trying to sell the property for a year. He had been trying to sell the property for over a year, and when he decided to sell, his initial offer was $5,000 a month. He only had $1,000, and he was asking for a $5000 deposit, but he was only willing to give $5,000 at the time.
The email also included a link that showed a picture of a house in Edmonds’ neighborhood. The house was on the market for $1.5 million. Edmonds didn’t even bother to show up to the closing, and was only willing to give a 5% downpayment. His downpayment showed up in the email as about $200,000.
A few weeks later, after an offer from a buyer was made, Edmonds called us to say he was willing to give the buyer the house for a deal, but only on a 5% downpayment. The downpayment was still not made. One month later, we see Edmonds’s picture on TV, and at that point we knew he was just being a dick to us.
One thing that has always annoyed me about Edmonds is his unwillingness to pay the downpayment. He’s got lots of cash, but he won’t even give the buyer the house on the 5-downpayment. Why? It’s always a mystery. I want to ask him the same question, “Why do you keep paying off our downpayment for what seems like a month?” I can only think of one word to describe his reluctance to pay.
We have a story about Edmonds that we will never get out of our editors. It all started with an email asking us to put together a story that would be as funny as possible and tell the story of Edmonds and his new girlfriend that we had never told anyone. This was the story that we never had time to write. And then the day came where we get an e-mail from Edmonds telling us he had decided to pay us back for the downpayment.
No joke.
This is all so wrong on so many levels. The irony of Edmonds paying us back might have been lost on us, so it’s great that we got to see how he did it, but the fact is that we didn’t really do anything wrong. We were just trying to do what we felt like doing.
Edmonds (who is a well-known local business executive) and his new girlfriend moved to our area and we never had the chance to get to know her. In fact, we didn’t even know she was a local until we got an e-mail from her saying that she was going to the city. We had no idea whether or not this was a good idea, so we never asked. The fact that we didn’t ask made us feel like we were doing something right.