“I’m 79 years young … I should have known better with all these years of experience.”

This is a second anecdote from the article by Kerry Gold in the  Globe and Mail, February 19, 2009 -

“Lou Skoda and his wife Donna purchased their two-bedroom Port Moody apartment in Onni’s Aria 2 building in September, 2007, for $456,000.

However, a year later, when they tried to sell their smaller condo unit to finance the purchase, the market had collapsed. Mr. Skoda, 79, a retired cartographer, lives on a fixed income and couldn’t obtain a mortgage to finance the Onni condo. He attempted to renegotiate with the developer, he says, but was turned down. By January, he learned that his new condo would be sold for 25-per-cent less as part of a liquidation sale of 375 units. Mr. Skoda offered to buy the condo for the reduced price, but was offered a 6-per-cent discount instead. Onni is now suing Mr. Skoda for backing out of the deal, which means the Skodas could lose their $68,350 deposit and be stuck for damages such as the loss in property value.

“We bought at the height of the real-estate-market wave and we were trying to sell when the real estate went through the floor kind of thing,” says Mr. Skoda. “We definitely didn’t see this coming, so we signed on the dotted line. Of course, we made a decision without consulting with a lawyer, which my lawyer now tells me was a dumb thing to do, and I agree.

“I’m 79 years young … I should have known better with all these years of experience.”