Thread by @bethdean

Gather round friends, enough of you have asked that I'm finally ready to tell the story of how I bought my house from a crazy person. It's important to note, buying a house in the Bay Area is an exhausting and demoralizing process to begin with.

I found a condo in a pretty unique location, and right away it was clear something wasn't right. The view was amazing, but it just looked like the seller wasn't trying. Disinterested agent in the open house, place wasn't staged, toilet seats up in the photos etc.

The disclosures revealed the buyer was in bankruptcy (though he was selling the house, not the bank, important distinction) and the marketing window was short so this was a highly motivate seller. I liked the view and how private it was, so I put in an extremely lowball offer.

Meanwhile my agent is like, I swear I've been to this property before. I couldn't find a previous MLS, but I *know* I've been here.

The place needed a lot of work, and I suspected regular maintenance hadn't been done. That said, even places nearby which were completely gutted were going for over $1mil so I did not at all expect to get it.

Less than an hour later my agent called to tell me the offer had been accepted. I wasn't the highest offer, but I had the fewest contingencies. We get to the home inspection and I meet the seller and notice some weird stuff I didn't see before.

The seller, Ron, tells me his plan is to move into an RV and haul it around the country with...a Tesla. You see, even though Ron was in bankruptcy, the housing market here is crazy enough that the sale price of the house was more than 2x what he owed.

I wasn't going to buy a house that had been foreclosed on, I didn't want to be in a predatory situation. But because this was bankruptcy, he was selling the place himself, and he was going to walk away with a lot of cash.

There's no TV, but the living room walls have whiteboards covered in Hebrew. He's also got an extensive Seinfeld DVD collection. The living room sliding door had been broken before (the torn screen and broken glass were still on the balcony) and there's a giant bong next to it.

I notice the kitchen counters, which I had thought were an ugly granite, were actually...composite that had been painted to look like ugly granite. Also, just the front of the fridge had been painted, and for some reason the kitchen was 2" higher than the living area.

Everything seems to be moving along fine, and on my end we're ready to close a week ahead of schedule. But Ron delays closing. Then he delays it again. Pretty soon we're over a month out from the original closing date. Finally we lock a date, and I go to do the final walkthrough.

Weirdly...Ron and all of his things are there. The seller is supposed to be moved out at this point so I can see if he's damaged the house. He seems perturbed that we're even there. This is a Wednesday and he swears by Monday he'll be gone.

He suddenly gets excited to tell me that during the "leadership seminars" he's been running he was able to fit 30 people in the house, and he turned the guest room closet into a bedroom. "Can you believe I fit an entire bed in here?! You could Airbnb it!" he tells me.

He also tells me he rented the place for $5000 a week during Dreamforce which is...unlikely. At this point I do some Googling and discover he's ex-Israeli special forces. His last real job was a few years ago at HP and he's been doing "leadership consulting" ever since.

The "leadership consulting" appears to be a Kabbalah flavor of EST. He and his "business partner" have photos in matching outfits that look like stills from the set of a buddy comedy about two cult leaders. There are CDs you can buy.

Now I'm stressed because I'm trying to swing it so I I'm not paying rent and mortgage at the same time. My plan is to have a contractor in the place for a month while I finish up my last 30 days in the apartment, and then move in.

My contractor walks in Monday morning with the keys, but there's Ron sitting at the kitchen counter. All his stuff is still there. He's got stacks of cash and passports. I'm worried I'm going to lose my deposit, but contractor is chill and tells me not to be alone with this guy.

He said the guy seemed like he was having a manic episode or was on drugs. I shell out for a background check. He's got a criminal record for what appears to be some kind of ruckus leading to a brawl, and it happens to be in the same city as the HP offices.

Something tells me Ron had a bad last day at work. My realtor has his lawyer draw up some paperwork that basically says: you're not a tenant, you have no tenant rights, I agree to give you a week to clear out, but for every day you stay beyond that you owe me $1000.

The $1000 is intentionally absurd, the point is to try and motivate him to leave. We're now a week past the closing date and there's a guy living in my house. California has aggressively pro-tenant laws, which 99.9% of the time is great, but if he decides not to go I'm fucked.

He claims he's just waiting for his Tesla, but like the Model X has tons of people waiting on it, I'm not at all confident this wacko managed to score one or put down the deposit a year ago. He signs the doc and again promises to be gone in a few days.

When my agent checks in, Ron replies with an unhinged color coded email about how he will protect the house and we've been warned.

Now the title co. informs me that in order for Ron to get the check from the sale of the house, everyone he owes money to in bankruptcy court must be paid first. Ron has been disputing a woman who sued him a year ago. A realtor.

Now I realize Ron probably tried to list the house a year ago but when he proved crazy the realtor decided to cut her losses. He probably didn't have the liquidity to move while disputing, which if he'd just told me I would have paid for his movers. It would have cost me less.

I have my agent tell Ron I don't actually want more money, I won't charge him the $1000 per day he agreed to, I just need him gone. He promises to go in another crazy email. I drive over there Friday and what do I see? A fucking Tesla in the driveway.

He doesn't leave Friday, but he's gone by Monday and leaves the place a disgusting mess. I get a $200 electric bill for charging his Tesla. There's dead mice and a zillion dead bugs in the closet he's been sleeping in. Ron's gone but his mail keeps coming though.

First I get his license plates and registrations for both his RV and Tesla. Then I start getting parking tickets for the Tesla at the Permanente River. That's right, Ron lives in a Tesla down by the river.

I get a notice that his RV has been impounded, which can only be retrieved with the registration, which I have. My first thought is "I know exactly what to do with this, throw it off the mountain!" but clearly Ron isn't well.

I don't want to make things 100x worse for this guy just because he fucked me over. I throw out all his mail except the plates and registration just in case. A few months later I'm waiting for a TV delivery and my doorbell rings an hour early.

I am shocked to find Ron standing there in front of me...with his mom. I'm pissed because at this point I've also inherited a $400 trash bill on top of the electric bill charging his Tesla, but I'm not going to give him an earful in front of his mom who is a sweet old lady.

He says "Ah i wondered if you had any of my mail, I've been away for four months. Sorry to just show up, I didn't have your email or phone number." I tell him "That's on purpose. Go anywhere fun?" He says "I don't want to talk about it." Jail? Hospitalization.

We make some small talk and he finally leaves. I haven't seen him since, but I still get the occasional reminders of his presence. Like when I remodeled the kitchen and found 5 previous layers of flooring, accounting for why the kitchen is 2" higher than the rest of the house.

Or when you find out you have major plumbing problems because this house was never meant for 30 people to occupy at a time.