The Subdivision That Saved the Deal

I love the hours around sunset on a Friday afternoon. It feels as if the world has stopped and everyone is gathering with their families for Shabbat. I’m enjoying a cup of coffee and the weekend paper when a WhatsApp message from an unknown number pops up on my iPhone. I need your help, I’m in Bucharest and we’re stuck…

I don’t recognize the number and I hope everything is OK, I replied, and went on: but I suggest we talk Sunday morning, since I assume you haven’t been arrested and need to be bailed out right now. I chuckled to myself as I finished typing.

He insisted on calling to explain… I agreed, and was annoyed with myself for getting dragged into work during my favorite time of the week.

The phone rang with the number I didn’t know, but the moment I answered I recognized the voice on the other end.

“We’ve finally found a buyer for the plot!” he said, excited.

I’ve known Moshe for more than a decade. I know that plot very well. I’ve offered it to clients more than once, tried to help, tried to get agents interested. Once or twice we even negotiated a sale that blew up.

“Well, congratulations. And what guarantees that this time it ends in a sale contract?” I asked.

“I have a good feeling about him. I was taught to strike while the iron is hot… He’s a Turkish buyer who came to me through an agent, and I want to sign a memorandum of understanding right away. Can you prepare a version for signing?”

Yes, you’re right, strike while the iron is hot… Send me the passports, and within an hour you’ll have a document ready at my law office in Bucharest.

I’ll send you the address, and one of the lawyers will have you sign.

Two days later he came to my office in Israel for a meeting. It turned out the buyer had a local lawyer and nothing had been signed yet. We called her right away, and during the call I also sent her documents.

About two months of back and forth and all kinds of excuses from the lawyer, until one day I told Moshe on a call that they were just stalling, telling stories and making unreasonable demands.

We talked it over, and that same day we told the prospective buyer that if an agreement wasn’t signed by the end of the week, we were taking the plot off the shelf on those terms.

The deal wasn’t signed, but I decided to take the plot on as a project with the local team. We prepared sketches splitting it into 500 m² plots in line with the local authority’s requirements, left room for an access road and launched a campaign to sell the plots to people building their own homes.

It was a slow process that took almost a year, but in the end we sold the plots. When it was all over, despite the expenses involved, Moshe and his partners came out with a profit (even compared with the last prospective buyer’s offer), since the plot had been bought more than a decade earlier at a relatively low price, and development in the area together with rising prices turned the project into a worthwhile deal.