So keep your temper, especially when it is a question of property you really want.  We have known people who were turned aside from an ideal place for which they had hunted months, because the seller failed to fall in with some totally unimportant detail or because they didn’t like something his lawyer said or the way he said it.  Sellers may be cantankerous and their lawyers exasperating, but remember, you do not inherit them along with the property.  Once the latter has been acquired, which is your real objective, they pass out of the picture along with your irritation at them.

In buying any property, however, make sure that the title is clear.  The author of the old hymn, “When I can read my title clear to mansions in the skies,” must have been familiar with the complications attendant on acquiring earthly domiciles.  In other words, if the place on which you have set your heart is suffering from that obscure complaint known as a “cloudy title,” it is something to be let alone unless the seller can clear it.  By this term is meant that somewhere in the chain of ownership from the original land grant, some seller could not give a clear, warranted title.

There are many contributing causes for such a condition, particularly with country property in the older sections where wills and deeds were not always drawn with clarity and skill.  Old second or third mortgages, presumably paid, for which satisfactions were never recorded; tax liens that have not been cleared; or possible interests of minority heirs under a will dating back a generation or more; are some of the most common causes for imperfect titles.  But if one is patient and the seller is willing to cooperate, such clouds can usually be removed.

Sometimes one discovers a desirable piece of property with a cloudy title due to a family feud or the stubbornness of the present owner.  Here it may be to the buyer’s advantage to obtain an option on it and engage a local lawyer experienced in real estate matters to perfect the title.  For example, two spinster sisters lived in their father’s old farmhouse.  They were not at all averse to selling, but under the terms of their father’s will, a niece in a state institution for the feeble minded held a life interest in the place.  Her aunts grimly refused to sell and hand over the sum representing her interest to her guardian.  “Alice has cost us plenty and never been anything but a source of worry.  Not a dollar more of our money goes to her as long as we live.  She is in an institution where she belongs.  Besides, her father was a rascal.”

They were willing to sell at a price several thousand dollars less than like places in the neighborhood were bringing.  So a prospective buyer negotiated an arrangement whereby he acquired an option to buy the property at this low price, provided he could make a settlement for the niece’s contingent interest at his own expense.  It took about six months but at last a settlement was reached through the courts.