Seller Beware
Apr 5th, 2007 by Don Ray
The other day I posted a piece called Buyer Beware”. It caused me to think about a person I met in 2002 when I came here checking out Panama. This fellow (a Panamanian) had a piece of property that I was considering buying. The going price at that time was about $6 a meter for a good location with a view.
I made an offer for the land, but the seller was convinced he could do better and rejected my offer. If I remember right I had offered $60,000. Well when I returned in 2003, I found out that he had used a Real Estate agency and had sold the property for $80,000.
Now it sounds like he was wise to reject my offer. However, here is where the story gets interesting. He took a payment of 50% ($40,000) down and gave a power of attorney to the agent to act in his behalf and get all the paperwork completed and deposit the balance into the seller’s account.
The buyer was overseas and transferred the money to the agent who completed the sale with one small exception. He kept the second $40,000 and left the country. The last I heard the seller still had not recovered what was stolen.
I guess the moral of this is that you need to be extremely careful in all business transactions in Panama. Sometimes those you think you can trust are the very one who will take advantage of you.
