A few days ago I got a counter offer from Larry on the property that I picked up at the tax deed sale.

To quickly recap the situation: Larry’s grandmother owned the property and died in 1983. No one paid the taxes after that point. I purchased the deed of the abandoned house at this month’s tax deed sale, and met Larry for the first time a few hours later, as he was claiming to be the owner of the house. Larry seemed a bit crazy at first glance, in his late 40s, in and out of jail, essentially homeless and ridden pretty hard by life. He claimed he was going to come up with the money to pay the taxes and penalties and get his house back, and hand’t been seen until a few days ago, when he delivered his counter offer.

I’ll just link to scans of his counter offer, then respond below. For a larger image to actual read it, click on each image below.

This is the outer envelope, which was absolutely stuffed full. No writing on thr front, just this on the back.

This envelope was inside the outer one above. It was also full, and sealed.

This was folded and inside of the second envelope above, along with the letter below. I’m assuming this is the envelope to mail my response to him back with.

And, finally, the actual counter offer. If you find yourself squinting or doubting the scan quality, umm, no, that’s pretty much what it looks like.

So what do you think? Should I accept his counter offer?

And yes, I know, he’s obviously struggling with larger mental health issues, and I shouldn’t make light of that. I just found it fairly fascinating, as far as the document itself, and it reminded me of stuff from the days of yore when I was grad school, taking linguistic classes and talking about things like the Voynich manuscript, constructed languages, and similar stuff.

Aside from all that, he really doesn’t need to make a counter offer to get the property back, as all he has to do it pay the back taxes and penalties before six months is up, so there’s really no negotiating about it.

On a more serious note, it does make me a bit sad, as far as the real world ramifications of situations like this. From his point of view, there’s no good resolution to this situation. He doesn’t make a penny from what amounts to the sale of a house that he’s considered his for more than twenty years, and this is a person that a penny would be an appreciable amount of money to.

In the rural area where we live, there are really no resources to help someone in his situation, other than handouts from family and friends. I can’t think of anything I can do, personally, as he’s not really able-bodied enough even to do general clean-up manual labor, etc., and he’s got no income of any sort, as far as even paynig nominal rent or qualifying for rent assistance. And, honestly, in his state of mind I wouldn’t even consider the latter, as he’s just too unstable, from what little I’ve seen already.

I expected I’d learn a good bit after dipping my toes into the tax deed sales waters, dealing with much different situations than arise during the normal real estate purchase, but I never imagined I’d be in for something like this,