Despite the increasing offers and persistent visits, the defiant spirit remains unbroken, embodying a quiet resistance against the erasure of a community. Each knock on the door is a test of resolve, a battle between heart and profit, where the true value of a home cannot be measured in dollars alone.
A large company is trying to buy up all the houses in my area to build a luxury resort with a golf field, pool, and other things. A few days ago I got a knock on my door and someone came over and she told me she was offering to buy my home, willing to give me 5% over “market value” (their bullshit market value is less than I bought it for).
I politely said “No I’m sorry but I am not at all interested in selling my house, have a good day”. She kept trying to sell the house and I told her have a good day. 3 days later she came back with a new offer, now 7.5% over market value.
I said the same thing, please go away I am not interested.
Next day someone else called me, I just hung up on them. All of my neighbors have been getting the same thing, some are deciding to sell, but most are refusing. That same lady comes over, I was outside doing yard maintenance and says “hello, good news we have a better offer for you, 12% over market value, that’s great isn’t it?
surely we can work something out.”
I then asked “do you have kids? a pet?” she then responded back and said “I have a son and 2 cats, why?” I then said “how much for your son? I’ll give you 15k for him, and 2k for both your cats”
She confused said “um those aren’t for sale” so I responded back “ok asshole, neither is my house, I hope you understand now, get the fuck off my property and never come back, you’re not welcome here or anywhere in this neighborhood.”
She said “listen I tried being nice to you, your house will be sold, and we will try other legal means to get your house” me “did you not understand what I said, get the fuck off my property you ugly disgusting bitch” she left.
I’m scared that this company is going try to use “dominio eminente” to force me to sell my house.
Conclusion
The original poster (OP) strongly desires to keep their home, directly confronting aggressive real estate tactics with escalating, vulgar, and confrontational responses to force the buyer to leave. The central conflict is the OP’s absolute refusal to sell versus the company’s persistent, high-pressure offers and implied threats of future legal action.
Given the extreme pressure applied by the company and the OP’s highly emotional reaction, the core question remains: Is it justifiable to use aggressive, offensive language to defend one’s property rights when facing relentless corporate pressure, or does this approach only escalate the conflict and potentially harm the OP’s legal standing?
Here’s how people reacted:
Look, I get that you don’t want to sell your house. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect you to sell your house just because a business wants to use the land for something else. I think private property rights are often trampled in the name of economic expansion, and I think that’s disgusting.
…but in my experience, anyone who jumps to calling someone an “ugly, disgusting bitch” in this type of situation is…not a great person.
EDIT: Yes, I agree that the woman was being too persistent with OP. Yes, I would also have been incredibly irritated in her shoes. No, I don’t think that makes the remarks okay. I think there is a world of difference between an outburst like “leave me the fuck alone, asshole” and the same remark with “ugly fucking bitch” instead.
EDIT2: I think context matters when evaluating communication. In the case of insults, people often turn to phrases or descriptors they know will hurt the person on the receiving end. They’re upset with someone’s behavior, so they try to strike at something intrinsic to that person that will leave a lasting “mark”.
Why is ugly (or disgusting) an insult? Because society favors the beautiful, or at least neutral / not unattractive. People judge the same action differently depending on whether the person is attractive or not. People often assume ugly people are less moral, of poorer character, or otherwise unsavory. Conversely, people give a pass to attractive folks – the “beauty halo” effect. Life is easier if you’re attractive. And also, ugly people know they’re ugly because the treatment they receive from others (no matter how subtle) reflects that back at them every single day.
Once you pair “ugly” and “disgusting” with “bitch”, things get even more thornier. Historically, women were judged by their appearance over virtually everything else. A man can be ugly and still have skills, or money, or charm – he can have worth outside of his appearance. A woman, though? A woman needs to be feminine, and being feminine means being beautiful. Ugly isn’t feminine. A woman isn’t supposed to be ugly.
Now, of course we’ve progressed as a society – but all that baggage still clings and hangs around. So, this is what I can infer from OP’s use of the phrase “you ugly, disgusting bitch”:
– OP is disgusted by or otherwise put off by ugly people (otherwise they wouldn’t have used the word as an insult)
– OP believes being ugly is bad (again, use as an insult)
– OP believes being ugly is something a woman should be ashamed of (insults are supposed to hurt, so their use of the insult implies the expectation that it would be hurtful)
The woman harassing OP to sell their house is a serious pain in the ass. I don’t fault OP at all for the angry reaction. I do, however, take serious issue what what the specific insult suggests about OP’s attitudes.
She probably has to keep at it until you say yes so she’s giving you the hard sell. IF you have any interest of taking her up on your offer, tell her a counter offer. Tell her a counter offer that is twice what you want. This will ping her radar that you are wavering, so only do this if you want to sell. She will have an upper limit (gonna guess 15%) that she can make to you, but her supervisors will be able to make the call to increase the amount further. For me, if an owner has a legitimate beef that we are under-valuing their property then I will run some tax information and take it to my supervisors and advise that we up the offer amount and start negotiations over. It’s helpful when the property owner provides documentation to support an increase, but I also do my research too as I am trying to do as right by the property owner as I can while still fulfilling my goal.
They cannot force you to sell. She’s trying to imply eminent domain which I’m not sure is even possible for a golf resort. Eminent domain is really, really expensive for the company trying to enact it. They have all these legal hurdles to jump through and if you haven’t even seen a written document then they aren’t going that route. I have to document everything because every interaction I have is admissible to court. The last thing any company wants to do is go to eminent domain and will try everything before they do that. Lawyers LOVE cases like this, too. You can probably find one that will happily take up your case.
TL;DR: If you don’t ever want to sell, you are fine and they can’t force you, get a lawyer. If you would sell for the right price, negotiate way high and force her to show her work.
NTA. She’s bad at this.
That’s pretty insulting, people aren’t property and pets are a grey area for sure. Realistically I’d bet there is a sum that properly compensates you for the property, the hassle and the costs of moving. Insulting people and pretending otherwise is counterproductive, just give them a price that is so high that you aren’t bothered if they take it.
> “did you not understand what I said, get the fuck off my property you ugly disgusting bitch” she left.
That’s extremely rude, I understand they are annoying you, but insulting people isn’t ever going to solve a problem and usually just makes things worse.
>She said “listen I tried being nice to you, your house will be sold, and we will try other legal means to get your house”.
>
>I’m scared that this company is going try to use “dominio eminente” to force me to sell my house.
As you should be, those laws exist for exactly this sort of situation whether you like that or not. You can commit to a long hard fight over this, if so you need to gather up the neighbours and seek legal advice quickly. Or, you can accept that ultimately you are going to lose this battle and instead focus on challenging their ridiculous “market value” and insist they also add on extra to make up for the legal costs of a sale and the hassle of having to move. If you carry on telling them to sod off and that you’ll not accept any price then all you are doing is encouraging them to go through the courts.
I’m going to go with NAH, you behaved badly but its understandable given the circumstances.
* Talk to all the neighbors who refuse to sell. Put your heads together and find the right lawyer for this kind of thing. Talking to the press or collecting evidence together could be the next step;
* install camera’s outside, I don’t know if they want to play dirty but now your house and others are targeted for sale, It could be somebody is going to be sneaky to take down the value or even bully you out of your home.
* Maybe a step too far but I’m just putting it out there: Taking this publicly on what is going on, even better if you have evidence of that representative, It could all be a good leverage towards the investors and maybe they’ll back out due to the bad publicity. The more ‘risk’ is if this falls through, the better.
I don’t know what kind of power they posses (or even if it’s true or not).
But it sounds to me you got to take action and find resources to help you further in this mess..
There’s a lot of money at stake here on their side and people/company’s feeling they’ll lose money on this, they can act ugly!
Form a Save our Neighborhood group and run to the press. Make sure you get your story out first, before the real estate company has persuaded the public that this luxury resort is needed. Find the most sympathetic homeowners, the couple that bought their house 50 years ago and raised their family there, the young widow with kids whose now-deceased husband painted murals in the kids’ rooms, etc, and make them the face of your group. Be ruthless and cynical in tugging on the public’s heartstrings. Public opinion is key in these fights.
Calling people ‘disgusting bitch’ is being an asshole. There are so many better ways to handle this.
Edit: Everyone in this scenario is an asshole.
The company sending her for obvious reasons and her for not respecting your “no”.
However, “ugly disgusting bitch” was _completely_ unnecessary and was rooted in misogyny.
I’m sure people will pearl clutch over that because, you know, Reddit. But I can guarantee you don’t immediately jump to insulting appearances or using a gendered slur when a man pisses you off.
I’m sorry you’re in the situation but grow up and stop calling people names.
NTA you WERE nice until she harassed you to buy your house.