“Screwing Over A Struggling Family For Less Than $20,000”: Friend Helps Family Take Pro Revenge

Acquiring your first home is something many people usually dream of—and work hard for—for years. That’s what makes it even more upsetting if a place you had your eyes set on suddenly becomes unavailable.

But when a deal the friends of this redditor had with their landlord fell through, the OP wasn’t willing to let it go. They came up with a plan for pro revenge and reverse gazumped the greedy landlord with the help of some creativity and quite a few kind participants. Scroll down to find the full story below.

If you’re unfamiliar with the word gazumping, you shouldn’t be too upset about it, as it means that you’ve probably haven’t been gazumped yourself. To cite the Cambridge Dictionary, it’s “the practice of refusing to sell a house to someone after you have agreed to sell it to them, and selling it instead to someone who offers to pay more”, so in other words, you haven’t been deceived in a way that would get you all happy and excited only to watch your hopes and dreams—regarding the house, at least—come crashing down.

To get a feel for how prevalent gazumping actually is, a UK bridging finance provider, Market Financial Solutions (MFS), carried out a survey this year, which found that more than a third (37%) of people who had bought property in England or Wales in the decade leading up to the survey have been gazumped at least once. This marks an increase of 6% from their last survey in 2022.

In Greater London, the situation is reportedly even more dire, as roughly half of the buyers there have found themselves gazumped – 62% over the decade leading up to 2022, and 51% who bought homes in the period between 2014 and 2024.

In the comments under the post, the OP revealed that their story didn’t happen in London, it took place in Sydney, the most populous city in Australia. Bearing in mind the prices of houses in said city, it is no surprise that the family was quite upset with the price change – even back then, roughly 15 years ago, it was one of the most expensive cities in the country to live in.

According to the Domain real estate company, the median house price in Sydney grew by close to 70% in roughly a decade between 2010 and 2019. The median house price in the year leading to September 2019 was reportedly $1,079,490 AUD (roughly $702,993 USD), while the current (as of June, 2024) median price is reported to be $1,170,152 AUD ($762,034 USD).

Luckily for the family, the redditor’s pro revenge resulted in a price increase that was less severe than the additional $80000 the owners asked for. However, while some netizens applauded said revenge, others sided with the owners, saying that it’s not unfair to sell a house for market value. Both sides shared their thoughts in the comments.