Location: Michigan
So me and my wife were trying to buy a house with her inheritance money from her dad, We went through a friend of a friend and they wanted $45000 for the house. We wrote up a contract to pay a partial payment of 20000 for them to move out and find a new place, The contract says
“Authorize sale of double wide for $45000, taking partial payment of $20000 on June 1st 2022 from (My name)” we both signed it with signature, printed name and date signed.
We were told they would be out in 30 days after 30 days we tried to get a hold of them after 30 days and they kept giving us the run around about no being able to find a place to live and all that so we worked out another 30 days, after 60 days the same thing happened and we again said we could wait 30 days. At 90 days we had still seen no movement or attempts to move so in October when they tried the same lime we just said we cant do this we want our partial payment back and we would trying to find a new place to buy. At first she was going to work with us and said she would talk to us about getting our money back but then like a week later she just said we are not getting our money back since we put a down payment on the place and she was keeping the money.
I know we screwed up not going through a real estate agent we are still young and did not think it through very well but we want to try to find a way to get our money back because $20000 is a lot to lose on someone being scummy.. We have a copy of the contract we signed as well as the receipt for the cashiers check we made out to her as well as printed text messages between us discussing everything about the sale.