On January 18, 2009 we found the Peacock Four.  The Prudential agent Angela Skloss of the Live Well team was holding an open house at 605 Peacock Ln. in Austin, TX in the much desired 78704 zip code.   The units were nice (some nicer than others) and we were a bit on the fence about buying first thing in moving back to Austin from Brooklyn.  However, we were intrigued by the deal that they were offering where the units would be bid on and the highest bid would win.

We discussed w/ Angela the possibility of putting in a real low bid and if the seller would accept it.  In other words, as she described it would be like an ebay auction, we asked what the reserve price would be.  She indicated it would be 250k.  The asking price at the time was 389k.  We were shocked and at that price it would be a very nice deal.  So, we did what any house hunter would do, we put an offer at 250k on two units (we liked both) and decided we’d go with whichever one we got the best price on.

The next day we get a call.  There had not been any other bids on one of them and there had been one other similar bid on the other.  They said, look, here is the situation – the seller just simply can’t let them go for that little.  The minimum they are willing to do is 330k.

This should have been our first clue.  The deal had been presnted as a bid scenario.  In a bid scenario as long as you meet the minimum and there are no higher bids, you should get the house.  Instead it was a faux bid situation and when it didn’t quite work out how they planned, they backed out.  Til this day I still see postings that they are doing yet another “bid” on these units.

Instead, we decied that 330k was still an ok deal and it was a nice unit.  As long as we got the one we preferred we would push forward.  The seller agreed and we had a contract drawn up.  The units even though they were stand alone were being sold as condomeniums.  So we signed a standard Texas Reas Estate Commission Residential Condomenium Contract.  We specified an option period w/ an option fee of $200.  And, we specified an earnest fee of $5k.  Per the contract, as long as you are within the option period you can back out for any reason and you simply forfeit the option fee, but the earnest money is returned in full.

Next is where things started to get weird… stay tuned.

In this blog I am going to try to recreate the series of events that led up to the owners of the Peacock Four trying to steal our earnest money.  We got a bad feeling about the purchase, well within the option period, primarily due to some erattic behavior by the seller.  It gave us a sense of dishonesty and given the market, we decided to not take the risk.  Almost a month later, we find out the seller is trying to take our earnest money!  Even though this is epressly outlined in the contract that within the option period we can back out for any reason and get 100% of the earnest money back.   Herein lies our story and a warning to anyone looking to do business with these people.