Suing Seller May Be Only Recouse

Added August 20, 2004 by Ilyce R. Glink and Samuel J. Tamkin

Print Articles

Summary: Suing the seller may be the only option for a home buyer that feels they were misled prior to purchase. If a developer made claims about the property that have turned out to be true, the buyer may have cause for misrepresentation. However, since the contract states the deposit was non-refundable, the buyers will have to sue. The dispute is between the buyer and the seller, and the credit card company can not get your money back for you.

Q. We purchased a home last year in Florida. We were misinformed or misled as to the depth of the river that runs alongside the property to get out into open waters. We put five thousand dollars down on this home, which was built for us.

We wrote to the seller and he will not refund our money. The contract states that the deposit money is non-refundable. I placed the deposit on my credit card and the credit card company says we can't get our money back.

We are retired and do not have this kind of money to throw away. How can we get our money back?

A: The short answer to your question is that you will probably have to sue the seller in order to have a chance at getting your money back.

Unfortunately, you left out a critical piece of information: Was the depth of the river a selling point (perhaps the selling point) of the home. If you can't have access because the river isn't deep enough, but the lot was sold as being able to accommodate a boat, you may have a claim for misrepresentation and be able to force the seller to rescind the contract. Then, you could get your money back.

Florida has a number of consumer protection statutes and an attorney should be able to advise you as to what your rights are under Florida law.

With respect to your credit card company's statement that you cannot get your cash back, they are probably right. The dispute is between you and the seller is based on an interpretation of the contract.

Make sure you have, and keep, all the documentation that the seller used to market the home. It would be helpful to your case to have some documentation that supports your case that the house had proper access to the river. If the seller lied to you to induce you to buy the home, you should be able to terminate the contract and get your money back.

Make sure you discuss your case with an attorney that has experience with contract disputes and has litigated matters in this area before.

Published: Aug 20, 2004

See more articles on this topic by clicking on the "RELATED ARTICLES" above and to the right.

We have over 5000 articles on Real Estate Advice, Personal Finance Advice and Consumer Advice on our site. We encourage you to look at these articles. As always, if you have a comment on our articles, don't forget to post your comment below. We thank you for coming to ThinkGlink.com.

© Ilyce R. Glink. All rights reserved. This content may not be used, distributed, syndicated, compiled or excerpted in any medium or form without written authorization from Think Glink, Inc. For information on syndicating ThinkGlink.com please contact us.

Previous article Next article