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Saw a beautiful, well-maintained house that recently sold for about $75,000. I know the neighborhood and there is no house there whose current market value is less than $1,000,000. The house was never publically listed. I made a few phone calls and the county records office verified the sale but could offer no explanation. One broker said sometimes this happens if a couple is divorcing or there is an agreement among family members or friends that a person can buy the property for a nominal amount. But I still can't quite imagine a (legal) scenario that would prompt such an sale..
What the broker told you is a very likely scenario. Maybe to keep it in the family an agreement was made among the parties/heirs to sell it to a member for that nominal amount. I know that stretches the imagination a bit because there's usually one brother/sister/other relative in the will who wants full price. I've seen it happen here with a few houses over the years so the beach house stays in the family.
When you said "legal" did you mean in violation of a one law or another? I don't know of any, if I want to sell you my house for $1 there's nothing illegal about it.
What the broker told you is a very likely scenario. Maybe to keep it in the family an agreement was made among the parties/heirs to sell it to a member for that nominal amount. I know that stretches the imagination a bit because there's usually one brother/sister/other relative in the will who wants full price. I've seen it happen here with a few houses over the years so the beach house stays in the family.
When you said "legal" did you mean in violation of a one law or another? I don't know of any, if I want to sell you my house for $1 there's nothing illegal about it.
I was thinking of undue pressures and duress. Thanks for your response.
Could also be a probate deal - I tried to buy a house a few years ago where one (adult) child had a 1/7th interest in a property & didn't want to sell, the other family members with 6/7th's ownership wanted to sell & couldn't.. Paying him off would have resulted in a "sale" @ a fraction of the actual property value.
There's a wider variety of legitimate reasons that something got recorded at 75k than some stranger actually paid that much for a million dollar house.
It could be that one person was buying out another person's interest in a portion of the property. My wife and I recorded a QC deed a few years ago, where we "bought" my father-in-law's portion of our land. The deed said $53,000, which was about half the value of the vacant land and his interest in it, even though the market value of the improved property was close to $350,000.
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