So I put a deposit on a horse and am arranging to come get it the following weekend, since it’s a 12 hour drive.
Agent then shows the horse to another potential buyer who rides the horse.
And if the horse is injured somehow, while potential buyer is ‘trying it’?
If the deposit doesn’t = I am buying this horse, he’s basically sold and will not be offered to other buyers… what DOES it mean? Why put one down at all?
[QUOTE=Angela Freda;8158638]
So I put a deposit on a horse and am arranging to come get it the following weekend, since it’s a 12 hour drive.
Agent then shows the horse to another potential buyer who rides the horse.
And if the horse is injured somehow, while potential buyer is ‘trying it’?
If the deposit doesn’t = I am buying this horse, he’s basically sold and will not be offered to other buyers… what DOES it mean? Why put one down at all?[/QUOTE]
As I mentioned, I believe that it is entirely possible that the agent does not believe that the buyer will complete the deal. We do not have the entire story.
The deposit holds the horse for the buyer that placed the deposit on it. Any other buyers would be in a back up position. So yes, the deposit does hold the horse for the buyer.
The horse could get hurt by the owner riding him during the week, he could get hurt in a pasture accident, etc. The deposit does not guarantee the horse won’t colic and die. If something unfortunate happens to the horse prior to pickup, the buyer would be entitled to get their deposit back.
I agree that the deposit holds the horse until the buyer comes to pick him up and that in most cases the horse will not and should not be shown to other buyers. However, I think there is more to this story.
At this point OP just go get a lawyer, stop talking to us, we can’t get your money back for you! Go on girl! Get 'em!
But ads for houses and for sale signs usually say something like sale pending or under contract to let people know the house may be off the market.
Comparing a horse sale to a house sale is really not a fair comparison.
If you want to compare horses to inantimate objects compare to cars. When I put the down payment on my car and they brought it up from the other dealer they didn’t offer it for sale to other people and let them drive it while I was finalizing the loan.
So it seems that some people feel that deposits are always nonrefundable? Even down payments?
[QUOTE=Macimage;8158632]
The fact that the agent ran an ad on the horse and is showing it to other folks does not breach the sale contract and does not necessarily show bad faith, poor morals or whatever.
This happens all the time in real estate with back up contracts. They most likely felt the buyer was going to not complete the contract and are looking for back up buyers. This is actually a good thing for his client, the seller.
Obviously, if the agent is selling the same horse to multiple buyers, that is fraud. However, we are only hearing one side of the story here.
The buyer did not have all the cash on hand to purchase the horse. If I were going to purchase a horse without any conditions such as a PPE and intended to negotiate a cash discount, I would bring all cash.
The agreement she signed stated she was going to come pick up the horse and pay the balance due. It says nothing about a PPE or a history on the horse. The next call the agent expected to get was “I have the rest of the cash and plan on picking up the horse on x date, is that convenient?”. Instead she starts calls asking for the horse’ s history, vet records, etc.
There may have also been something said at the time she bought the horse and didn’t have the full purchase price that lead the agent to believe she may not have the balance due. We do not know.
At the conclusion of the phone call when she scheduled the pickup and payment, the buyer could have then added that she was interested in hearing the horse’s history when she picked him up. [/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Macimage;8158689]As I mentioned, I believe that it is entirely possible that the agent does not believe that the buyer will complete the deal. We do not have the entire story.
The deposit holds the horse for the buyer that placed the deposit on it. Any other buyers would be in a back up position. So yes, the deposit does hold the horse for the buyer.
The horse could get hurt by the owner riding him during the week, he could get hurt in a pasture accident, etc. The deposit does not guarantee the horse won’t colic and die. If something unfortunate happens to the horse prior to pickup, the buyer would be entitled to get their deposit back.
I agree that the deposit holds the horse until the buyer comes to pick him up and that in most cases the horse will not and should not be shown to other buyers. However, I think there is more to this story.[/QUOTE]
I agree with this, Macimage - this is what I was trying to say and said so badly, and you said so well.
Then when the agent asked her outright if she wanted the horse she said no. I too just think there’s more to the story that we dont know.
It seems to me they breached any contract first by NOT returning OP’s MULTIPLE communications-- while still showing the horse to others and re-placing the sales ad. OP, your written agreement, while not specific enough in details, does say that you paid the deposit down and agreed to pay the remaining specified amount. They can’t just willy nilly one-sidedly claim that you must not be able to afford the horse because you didn’t give them the full amount initially. They agreed to the deposit. They don’t get to back out of that, at least not without returning your money!
What they did certainly gives a strong impression that after you left, they decided that Dobbin must be desirable after all/ they decided they could get more for the horse, so they aren’t honoring your deposit. On the face of it that is the strong impression, based on the situation as described.
If they had good faith intention to follow through with you they would not have ignored so many of your attempts to communicate. They would have said to you, “Oh, of course you can still have Dobbin when you show up with the remaining balance, but we want to continue to show him to others until you show up, cash in hand.” or whatever. Their lack of response shows bad faith.
I think some back flips are being done to try to interpret this differently. You made an agreement in good faith to buy the horse until THEY went incommunicado on you. You were clear and consistent in backing up your good faith agreement with multiple attempts to communicate with them – but they broke off communications with you.
Do keep us apprised of how this plays out, and good luck.
If the agent is in fact legitimate they would tell other potential buyers that they had a deposit on the horse but did not think that the sale was going to be completed.
If your car sat on the dealer’s lot for a week while you were working out your financing and a potential buyer saw it and wanted to test drive it, they may very well have let another person test drive it. You do not know it was not in fact test driven unless it only had a few miles on the odemeter.
Houses are more similar to horses than cars, as there are not exact duplicates available. If you fall in love with a particular horse or home, it is very likely unique. Thousands of identical cars are manufactured daily.
[QUOTE=Ambitious Kate;8158720]I agree with this, Macimage - this is what I was trying to say and said so badly, and you said so well.
Then when the agent asked her outright if she wanted the horse she said no. I too just think there’s more to the story that we dont know.[/QUOTE]
Thanks AK. I read all 11 pages and just had to comment that the seller’s agent may have a very different perspective on this situation.
I am not talking weeks or trying to secure financing. The ad was relisted the next day.
As to cars my dealer is washing off the road dust and applying his sticker and it is parked out back not on front with the other new cars.
I understand the concept of back up buyers but this does seem not to be it.
Of course there are always two sides to the story.
And I don’t know about cars being easy to find with the specs you want. We have been searching for a truck with want we want and there were none to be found.
When I moved to the UK, I put a deposit on a car within a few days of arriving but it took about ten days to open up a bank account and transfer enough cash into it to buy the car. The dealer didn’t care and he didn’t show the car to other people or re-advertise it. The whole point of the deposit was that it reserved the car for myself, and stopped the dealer from showing it to anyone else until I got the dosh together to pay the whole purchase price. Backup buyers? What? Don’t think I would buy a car, or a horse, from someone who took that view.
Did the OP not say that she wanted info on the vet history for her own edification? I’m not going to dig up the post, but she she wrote something along the lines of, “I like [the horse], so it is what it is,” which I read as meaning the medical history wasn’t going to make or break the sale. The agent refusing to answer her calls/texts/emails and relisting the horse for sale was what put her off.
[QUOTE=Couture TB;8158616]
Contract was broke when they decided to show the horse to another buyer.[/QUOTE]
Again, not a lawyer but I don’t think this is correct. If the Agent did not have the horse available for the OP when she came to pick it up with cash for the balance due within the agreed time frame, then the contract would be broken.
He can advertise the horse, show the horse to prospective buyers, take the horse to a horse show, use it to give pony rides, whatever he wants as long as the horse is still available within the timeframe for the OP to complete the purchase. There is nothing in the paper the OP has that prohibits any of this or makes the deal contingent on these things not being done.
If you put a deposit or down payment on a horse and you expect that the horse will no longer be shown to others or limited from any other activity, make sure you have that in the contract.
The problem I see is that the receipt for the money already paid only says the OP will pay the balance. No contingencies for it not being lame upon pick-up, passing a PPE, having registration papers available, etc.
[QUOTE=Macimage;8158689]
As I mentioned, I believe that it is entirely possible that the agent does not believe that the buyer will complete the deal. .[/QUOTE]
… therefore took her deposit because it was an easy way to make a grand?
That’s not cool.
[QUOTE=roseymare;8158815]
And I don’t know about cars being easy to find with the specs you want. We have been searching for a truck with want we want and there were none to be found.[/QUOTE]
Exactly, when we bought my car I wanted it in white… because I am now an ol’ lady apparently. Anyway… could NOT find a white one in several counties of 3 different states.
Had my husband had one shipped to us, and the receiving dealer had others test drive it, we would have been livid.
She wants the horse, gives a deposit to show her intent, the Agent accepts it, but does no one else but me think that the horse does not belong to her until she has paid the full price? In what world - horse or otherwise - is a purchase of a horse complete until the price has been paid? Have we not read thread after thread of sellers who insist that the first person to give them the money is the one who gets the horse? Pieces of the sales price don’t count, unless they agree that it will hold the horse. Sometimes, a deposit holds the horse from being sold to someone else, but not from continuing to be shown.
Showing interest and following through are two very different things in the horse world. If the agent had any experience, he would continue to show the horse and line buyers up behind the OP. If he was earning his commission from the owner, at least. I see nothing wrong with continuing to show the horse, if he was not sure the OP was going to follow through with the sale. We don’t know - there may well be something which made him suspicious that she would not follow through. Maybe he thought she would, but it is his policy, from being burned before, we just don’t know, to continue to show a horse until it is paid for. He may even have told the OP that, for all we know.
He may have good reason to think she was having financial difficulty coming up with the money. We don’t know. She may have said to him “I just can’t afford the purchase price, but I will offer such and such paid in cash, if you come down so many dollars” and he may have agreed. We don’t know why he thinks she couldn’t afford the horse.
He mayh have told her the sale wasn’t final until she came back and paid for it, we don’t know. He may have assumed she knew that a sale isn’t final until she comes back and pays for it. She may have told him WHEN she was going to come back, and he may have assumed he would hear from her about those arrangements and she flooded his phone with texts about vet records, and he may have gotten wary. We just don’t know.
There may be other parts to this story which explain what the agent did that we don’t know. We have only gotten a few bits of the story. And rightfullly so. But the Agent’s responses to the OP do not sound random, they sound like the ends of conversations, and conclusions over a time of discussion, so I am not going to say he’s a scumbag. There are alot of things buyers can do during a sale which can make you doubt their credibility, and the few things we see from this guy doesn’t sound like he was real convinced this buyer was going to come through.
From his point of view, I guess he was right. When he asked her directly if she wanted the horse, she backed out.
I’m not a lawyer and don’t know the legalities of the wording, but, coming from the photography world, we are told to never use the term deposit on contracts, even if it is followed by the words non-refundable.
From what I’ve been told, legally, the term deposit means that you are putting money up in return for a product or service. If that product or service is never rendered, then, if the payee takes you to court, you will have to repay the deposit. Again, this happens even if your contract says non-refundable deposit.
Contracts now use the legal term retainer to avoid having to refund monies to clients who do not fulfill their ends of the contract.
For example, say you use the term deposit in a contract with a couple that hires you to photograph their wedding, and that couple decides 2 months before the wedding to not get married, or to not have a photographer, and calls to cancel service. If you denied to return their deposit, and they took you to court because they wanted their deposit back, you would most likely lose to them because no service or product was delivered for their deposit.
This has happened to many, many photographers and is a big thing in writing contracts now.
I believe the only time you can actually keep a deposit if there is specific wording about ‘liquid damage’ and that the deposit is to cover said liquid damages. The wording has to be pretty exact though, about what liquid damages would be covered by the deposit. In other words, you can’t just say a deposit is to cover liquid damages, you have to specify that the liquid damages are for the use of your time and the inability to book someone else to use that time, costing you monetary damage. Something like that. I can post some links about it if you all would like.
So yes, I think the OP has a chance of getting her deposit back if she took a legal course of action.
For the record, I have test driven MANY cars that were sold to other buyers and awaiting pickup. When you purchase a relatively rare car, it does happen. If it’s important to you that no one test drives it, make it clear when you purchase it that it is NOT to be test driven and you will unwind the deal if it has more than X miles on it.
OP, I’m no lawyer, but that was one lousy contract on the agent’s part, so I think you definitely have a case! Lawyer up and go after them!
[QUOTE=roseymare;8158815]
And I don’t know about cars being easy to find with the specs you want. We have been searching for a truck with want we want and there were none to be found.[/QUOTE]
I stated that as a rule cars and houses tend to be unique or one of a kind, whereas, cars are usually mass produced. I was going to add of course there will be exceptions but that seemed obvious.
Yes, there are buyers looking for cars that want a certain set of features that are hard to find. But in general, it is much harder to find an exact duplicate of a horse or a house than a car.
[QUOTE=Angela Freda;8159069]Exactly, when we bought my car I wanted it in white… because I am now an ol’ lady apparently. Anyway… could NOT find a white one in several counties of 3 different states.
Had my husband had one shipped to us, and the receiving dealer had others test drive it, we would have been livid.[/QUOTE]
Yes, but you were able to find the exact same car somewhere to be shipped to you. I understand you would be livid but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen without the buyer’s knowledge. New cars will often have 5-20 miles on them that is explained away by the dealership.
[QUOTE=Angela Freda;8159059]
… therefore took her deposit because it was an easy way to make a grand?
That’s not cool.[/QUOTE]
No, he took her deposit to hold the horse until she came with her trailer and the rest of the cash.
[QUOTE=Macimage;8159312]
No, he took her deposit to hold the horse until she came with her trailer and the rest of the cash.[/QUOTE]
Even though he thought, as you suggested, she wouldn’t?
Either he accepted her deposit as glue to the contract which included agreement that she would return, pay in full, and then own said horse… or he took it expecting she wasn’t buyin’/couldn’t afford the horse, therefore took it w/the expectation that it was in return for… nothing.
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