When you are renting a home it is important to keep things up and as nice as you can since you are living there.

What would you do if your landlord agreed to sell you the home in the future if you built a fence, but then sold it out from under you?

That is what happened to the family in this story, but they were able to get some satisfaction in the end.

Check it out.

My family lived in a house that was owned by, according to one of my family members (let’s call her Mary), benevolent landlords.

After they had lived there for two years on lease, the lease expired and so they started living there on a month-to-month basis.

Mary’s husband (let’s call him John) suggested that they renew their lease.

Mary, being convinced that they had established a relationship of trust with the landlords, insisted that there was no need to do so.

This was the first mistake.

Some time after, there was a storm that knocked over a relatively flimsy (and, frankly, hideous) chain-link fence that was built around the house.

Now, because Mary and John kept important things in their yard, they needed a fence.

This should work out well.

The landlords were looking around for contractors to rebuild the fence, but John had an idea that he felt would be beneficial for all.

See, John and Mary really loved this house, and they were hoping to someday buy it off the landlords (something that the landlords had suggested as a possibility from time to time).

John suggested that he build the fence instead.

He would only charge for the materials required, and he would provide the labor at no cost under one important condition: the landlords must promise that they had no intention of selling the house.

One landlord (we’ll call him Benny) not only promised John that the house wouldn’t be sold anytime soon, but even went as far as saying that they would only ever consider selling the house to John and Mary.

And so, a deal was made.

John would rebuild the fence more beautiful than it had ever been, and Benny and the other landlord would ensure that John and Mary would get to keep living in that house, enjoying the fruits of their labor, until the day the landlords finally decided to sell the house to them.

John and Benny agreed upon what the dimensions and material of the fence would be.

They decided wood, and they decided on the fence being fairly tall.

John bought the materials, and Benny paid John for the expenses.

Halfway through building the fence, John asked Benny about whether he wanted certain changes in the backyard that would, alongside the fence, only serve to make the land value skyrocket.

Sounds like a great arrangement.

Benny said he would love said changes.

This next part is important. John looked Benny in the eye and said, in no unclear terms: “If you have any intention of selling this house to someone other than us, tell me now and I will stop this entire project. I’m only interested in building this under the condition that I will get to enjoy it.”

Benny responded, equally clearly: “You and your family will get to enjoy this home indefinitely. Feel at ease and do whatever you want with this yard.”

And so the fence was finished, and it was beautiful. This is the part where I come in.

I came to visit my family, and I helped them finish the fence and clean up the yard.

I wasn’t particularly happy about the terms of this agreement, but there was nothing that could be done now.

Now comes the part where my family gets mistreated. Hard.

Not so much as a week after the fence had been built, Mary gets a call from the other landlord (let’s call her Jane).

Jane tells Mary that something unexpected has occurred.

See, her niece is currently on the market for a house, and she really wanted to see this particular house.

Mary, who can feel herself getting riled, asks Jane how this could be.

The fence was only just finished, and they’re considering selling the house?

Jane assures Mary that her niece will most likely not want the house, but that she has to let her see it.

Very well.

Now, I’m not sure about the details that happened shortly after, but it seems that Jane’s niece didn’t like the given price of the house (which was now more valuable than it was before), and so she chose not to buy.

Bullet dodged, right? If only.

Benny came to visit John and Mary with something they had always wanted.

Suddenly the landlords wanted to sell, and an offer was made to my family.

Now, my family is not wealthy, and they would have preferred to have been told well in advance of the intention to sell.

Nonetheless, the offer that was presented was not unfair, and my family said yes.

Excellent.

Yet, as soon as my family was approved to purchase the house, Benny came back with a change.

The landlords no longer wanted to sell the house at the original price.

Instead, the price they had in mind had now skyrocketed to roughly the same price as the most expensive house in the area.

A price John and Mary could no longer afford, and certainly more than the house was actually worth.

That’s not the worst of it, though.

Wow, they must have known.

Suddenly, the landlords needed to sell the house immediately.

John said to Benny: “We had a deal.” Benny responded that they suddenly needed the money because of some family member’s needs.

Later on, the story changed to them no longer needing the money.

Then it was Jane who needed the money because of some other piece of completely fabricated information.

The point was that they wanted to sell the house now to line their pockets, but they could never stick to a single excuse.

Again, John told Benny that they had a deal. Benny’s response? “I don’t remember that. We never got anything in writing, and so we never had any deal.”

Jane later told me: “A verbal agreement doesn’t mean anything.”

Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law, nothing could be proven.

We couldn’t force them to sell the house to my family at the original price, and we couldn’t force them to let my family keep living there.

Alright, thought my family, we just want to get paid for the labor that we put into the fence, then.

This was not ideal, since they now needed to leave the home they had lived in for quite some time.

But they knew it wasn’t theirs, and they weren’t going to put up a fight over it.

At this point, they just wanted to get paid for their labor.

Benny and Jane didn’t want to pay.

My family members needed that money.

Given that they were getting kicked out on such short notice, the money was needed in order to find a new place to live.

Benny and Jane, however, insisted that they had always been fair with the rent, and they simply didn’t owe my family legally.

I told Benny and Jane that we would just take things to court and have a judge decide.

Given the fear of court, Benny and Jane decided that they would pay my family, but that the labor for this gargantuan monstrosity of a beautiful fence just wasn’t worth that much more than the materials it was made of.

The labor couldn’t possibly be that much, they reasoned.

Also, they would only pay for the labor for the fence, not for the rest of the work that was done on the yard.

Well, everyone decided to get an estimate.

The average we got was $3000 for the labor.

Benny and Jane managed to get one estimate from one of their family members at $350.

The day to leave arrived, and Benny and Jane paid my family far less than what the labor was actually worth.

My family left. We lost. We lost so much.

The effort that went into building this fence, with the intention of getting to enjoy having it, under the agreement that they would get to keep living there, just to have it taken away, and to barely even get paid for the labor.

That was unacceptable to me. We couldn’t win anymore, but I didn’t want them to win either.

So, the revenge.

Education can be very helpful.

I read up on fences.

I learned far too much about what was and wasn’t allowed when it came to fences.

I memorized every rule.

I learned when permits were and were not needed.

I learned what the allowed dimensions were.

I learned about whether fences needed finish.

Oh boy, the things I learned about fences.

I learned that you don’t need a permit if your fence gets damaged so long as you’re rebuilding the exact same fence.

But this was wood, and the old one was chain-link.

I learned that the fence needed to be painted, but this one was not.

I learned that the fence had a very specific height limit, one which this fence violated.

These people were so happy to stick to the letter of the law when it came to screwing over my family, so I decided that I, too, would stick to the letter of the law.

Somehow, the county found out that this fence was permitless, unpainted, and far too tall.

Shortly after the county found this out, Benny and Jane got a visit from the county right before they managed to sell the house at their obscene price.

Wouldn’t you know it? Their fence was built illegally.

Now, sometimes you can just get a permit after the fact, but their fence wasn’t allowed to be built the way that it was.

There were no plans, no inspection, nor anything else that the county required.

It had to come down.

My family got a very angry call.

The landlords accused my family of never getting a permit, something that my family literally could not do, given that this was not their property.

Besides, it was the landlords who assumed no permit was needed, and my family knew nothing about how permits worked.

That must have been so satisfying.

So, the fence had to be torn down.

There goes the money they saved by not paying my family.

And they lost their prospective buyer. There goes the money they wanted to make.

And the land value of the house went down. There goes the price point they wanted to sell the house at.

And they need to build a new fence, since no one will want to live in this house without some sort of fencing.

Looks like they’ll need to pay for a new fence, labor and all, from an actual contractor.

We didn’t win, but neither did they.

Sometimes revenge is just as good as a victory.

Read some of the comments that were left on this story.

Yes, what happened to a handshake being someone’s bond.

They should have gone for it.

That would have been perfect.

This is good to know.

Hey, good idea!

It is so sad that people can’t just be honest with each other.

The world would be a lot better if we could.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.