Well. We have finally, actually, verifiably closed on the ranch. It now belongs to someone else. It no longer belongs to us.
According to the notes in my calendar, there were 10 rescheduled closing dates, and the final closing was 2 months and 1 week past the initial date. These 67 days have been quite difficult.
There was just the surface difficulty of selling to people whose lawyer was very comfortable edging over to the gray areas of ethics. We were told this is perfectly normal for real estate, for them to put “are you actually an idiot?” clauses into their paperwork. Because maybe you actually are an idiot and would shoot yourself in the foot. And this is why we had a lawyer of our own. And it’s also why we were just sick of the whole thing after about the first week in.
Personally, I dislike the ‘sure, it’s unethical, but it’s not technically illegal’ style of doing business.
But there was also the emotional difficulty of digging really really deep into the GLO archives and doing all the legwork to run down the details of this deed and land survey all the way back to the 1860s. Because every new discovery was a “Happy would have loved this” moment. Before, there was no reason to chase down all the GIS folks in the office and ask if they were familiar with interpreting historical deeds. There was no reason to ask all my work friends if they knew anyone in rural real estate. The level of effort was certainly beyond what you’d do for mere curiosity. And yet, when we got to where we were over that steep learning curve, and were finding details … Happy would have loved all that stuff. And we would have loved sharing it with him.
It was hard enough just selling the ranch. The ethical irritation and research workload and emotional sucker punches did not help.
So … yeah. It’s sold. And we’re happy. But it’s not a perfect happiness.