Brokers: What is the craziest reason you've seen a deal fall apart?
A recent thread got me thinking about this. I saw a lease abandoned after nine months of negotiations because LL wouldn't allow a burger shop to sell pre-packaged dessert items at the register. A residential broker once told me about a 6 million new construction sale that blew up when the buyers went to do a final walk-through only to discover the developer breaking in the theatre room with a female guest. He refunded their earnest money and offered a discount if they purchased different one of his properties. They did not.
What's the craziest thing you've seen blow up a deal?
Financial Sponsor turned out to be a 200 year old crustacean from the paleolithic era. Was seeking approximately tree fiddy of JV Equity proceeds. Craziest thing ever.
I did some construction litigation back in the day, so this is kinda related. Rich offshore dude wanted to rent a luxury home. Neighbouring lot behind him was slightly uphill and had a pool in the backyard. Retaining wall between the 2 lots collapsed, the pool broke and flooded downhill onto the luxury home, cratering the deal. Craziest part is that the collapse of the pool/backyard on the other home apparently led to family issues with the kids fighting, parents divorcing, and husband going into depression and becoming a gambling addict. At one point, geotech engineer was in court arguing that the deficiencies in the retaining wall didn't cause this husband's depression and gambling debts.
This could be a movie about a cursed pool.
Get Bruckheimer on the phone!
I wonder if personal anguish is typically covered in E&O's when it doesn't cause physical pain. Gotta be some money there, right?
Regarding the prepackaged desserts that actually isn't insane if the plaza was grocery anchored. It was probably listed as an exclusion in the anchor's lease.
Yeah smells like co-tenancy
It was not grocery anchored, no applicable exclusives in place. LL was holding out to retain possibility to grant exclusive rights later on if desired, which to your point is understandable.
The irony was losing a deal for a burger shop over some cookies that represented less than one percent of previous sales. Not the craziest thing ever but it came up the other day and made me curious what experiences other people have had.
Someone I worked with a while back had the buyer for a deal pass away during DD. fairly sure their estate ended up closing the deal anyways
I have a few deals I could write a book about. However, every firm I have been at has been insanely well capitalized so we could always fix problems by blowing people out with cash.
Had someone try to bully a partner of ours on GP terms, not realizing we were Co-GPing. Really slow to redline or turn comments on the JVA. Closing day came around and they thought we needed their money, we said we didn't like their terms and were clear that it was not ok during the process, and they had no idea we had the money to take them out of the deal and assume the LP position as well.
haha that's badass
That's awesome!
These business (unethical) tactics can be a thread of their own.
500K/yr CFO of a rather small firm recorded revenues in one year as double actual numbers, and used his friends audit firm to hide the trail.
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