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CONFESSION #0059 — DEAL THAT EXPLODED
Friday, May 9, 2025
I had a deal under contract for three months. Three. Months. We survived the inspection, survived the appraisal coming in low, survived the buyers threatening to walk twice over a broken sprinkler head. I hand-held everyone through four addendums and two extension requests. The sellers had already bought their new house. The buyers had given notice on their apartment.
Closing was scheduled for 10 AM on a Friday. At 9:47 AM, the buyer's lender calls to tell me they ran one final credit check and discovered my buyer had financed a boat. A boat. Three days before closing, this man walked into a dealership and signed papers on a $45,000 fishing boat because, and I quote, "it was on sale and I figured we were basically done."
We were not basically done. We were basically dead. The loan fell through. The sellers are now paying two mortgages. The buyer is homeless with a boat. And I'm sitting here looking at sixteen weeks of work that just evaporated because someone needed to catch bass.
I don't drink, but I'm considering starting.
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Judge Reginald Escrow III
⚖️ Presiding
GUILTY OF CATASTROPHIC MARITIME FINANCIAL SABOTAGE IN THE FIRST DEGREE
This Court has witnessed many acts of closing-table destruction, but NEVER has it beheld such magnificent self-immolation as a man purchasing a forty-five thousand dollar bass vessel seventy-two hours before the most important financial transaction of his natural life. The defendant-buyer stands accused not of stupidity, for stupidity implies accident, but of a WILLFUL NAUTICAL DELUSION so profound that Judge Escrow must pause to collect himself. You shepherded this transaction through FOUR ADDENDUMS. Four! You negotiated peace treaties over sprinkler heads while this man was presumably already browsing boat catalogs with glazed eyes and a heart full of lake dreams. The sellers now service two mortgages while their buyer sleeps in a vessel he cannot legally moor anywhere because HE HAS NO ADDRESS. This Court hereby sentences you to one ceremonial drink of your choosing, to be consumed while staring at a photograph of a boat you will never purchase because you, unlike your client, understand that large purchases have consequences. Judge Escrow must now adjourn to scream into a decorative pillow.
Nautical Financial Homicide
Have a confession? Judge Reginald Escrow III's docket is always open.
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