Buying my dream home, aka "worst case ever" - part one

This is such a long story, it will be told in parts.

In August 2015, my landlord’s ex-wife’s sister took it upon herself to give me notice because her loony sister had decided that the shack that I was living in would be a perfect venue to homeschool her kids. (mmm, yeah, right!). I decided to go for broke and try and buy a house and a little bit of trawling the net found the perfect place: small and cheap, with rental units to generate income, the last house in a cul-de-sac bordering on public land in a natural state. Paradise for me and the cats and goodbye to the addicts, thieves and lunatics in the park and the freezing winters down by the river.

I went to view it and fell in love with the massive rock formation next to the house. Only I would buy a house because of the rocks in the yard.

The house is a 2 bedroomed double story, with two small flats attached to it, to generate rental income which would be sufficient to pay off my loan. Perfect. It is sectional title, meaning a house on communal property, and a bank-assisted sale - the owner's last chance to sell before repossession and auction by the bank and it was in very run-down condition and painted yellow inside but I loved it and my offer to purchase was accepted.

Because I’m self employed, I can’t get a bank loan so I blew a large chunk of my life's savings and borrowed money from my brother; it was going to be a cash deal, concluded in 6 weeks.
I met some of the tenants when I viewed the house and they told me that one of the tenants was a little strange and had a drug problem and that the house owner was scared of him. I duly made it a condition of sale that the seller had to get rid of the tenants before I took occupation and the seller promised the agent that this would be done.

After a few delays because the paperwork was a mess, I was told that the sale would go through some time in in November and I asked the agent to instruct the seller to give the tenants notice at the end of October. I went to the property with the agent at the beginning of November to check whether this had been done and we finally meet the ‘strange’ tenant who was very belligerent and informed us that "the house belongs to him and he doesn’t care about anything we have to say to him". The other tenants also denied receiving any notice.

I emailed the lawyers, instructing them to hold the sale because the seller was in breach of contract and I was told that the law firm would issue written notice at the end of November. I delivered notice this time and the other tenants agreed to leave at the end of the month while the strange one continued with his story that the house belonged to him. It came out that the house seller is gay, has a drug problem and the problem tenant is an ex-convict (car hijacking) rent boy who moved in there and refused to leave. The house owner had in fact promised him the house, even though he was an illegal immigrant and legally would never be able to own the house and had moved out to get away from their violently abusive relationship and allowed him to collect money from the tenants. This man naturally used the tenant's rent to fund his drug habit and that was why the bank had stepped in and repossessed the house. No electricity, water or rates have been paid in the last 6.5 years, leaving the communal bill considerably in arrears with the city council.

The next day, I got a call from the tenants informing me that the "landlord" is demanding rental from them (I had told them not to pay him any money) and had turned the water off.
The lawyer instructed me to call the police. To their credit, the police arrived within 10 minutes and knew the law. A shouting match ensued between "landlord", the other tenants and the policemen. The policemen listened to all of this and informed the tenant that he should stop acting tough, switch the water back on and if he felt that he had any claim against the rightful owner of the house, he should take it up in court. They told him that he is just the gardener and has no right to impede things and somehow, this got through to him and he turned the water back on and stopped his posturing.
I noticed that when the policemen go out on calls in the Johannesburg inner city, they are always in pairs and the sole purpose of one partner is to carry an assault rifle and act as armed backup to his partner. Rough world out there...

The next day, when the electrician came to do the quote for the electrical compliance certificate, the problem tenant refused to let him in to his flat. The electrician told me to get rid of the tenants and only then call him in to fix things because the people will only vandalize anything he repairs. I could see his point and was wondering what on earth I had gotten myself into and started to wonder whether it would be prudent to cancel the sale. This would have meant losing my deposit, so I started racking my brains for a solution to the problem.

To be continued....