Acquiring Our Land

I visited Guanaja for the first time in 1997, a few months after Hurricane Mitch had wreaked havoc on the island.  I was instructing diving at the time, and a few of my students were traveling around on their sailboat, so they offered me a ride over.
Once I was there, I went to the former Bayman Bay Club to visit with the manager, who I had met at a dive show in the US.  They had some guests that were interested in doing a dive course, and they had no instructor on staff, so it worked out perfectly!  I stayed at the hotel for a few days, taught a course and earned money to catch a flight back to Roatan. 
Ever since then, I had thought about going back to visit, but there were no ferries from Roatan, and flights were pricey and had to pass through La Ceiba.  I met someone at the hostel who was living in Guanaja and interested in starting a hostel there on his uncle’s property.  I encouraged him to get started, and would occasionally contact him when one of our guests was interested in Guanaja, to see if he had gotten anything going.  A few years later, he still hadn’t gotten anything started, so I decided to plan a trip over with my boys and give him some motivation as well as getting to know the island better.
We loved our days in Guanaja, and we helped give Aaron a nudge to get his place going.  We planned several trips over after that, and one summer, the boys spent a week there at a fly fishing camp.
Now that my boys are starting adulthood, Deo’s been considering buying a piece of land.  He wants one on Roatan, but I thought I’d look for something for the 3 of us to buy together in Guanaja, so we could enjoy both islands.
I went over in March 2022 to spend a few days on Guanaja at Aaron’s place, and arranged for a realtor to take me to see a few properties.  I was mainly interested in the leeward side of the island, as I don’t like constant wind.  We went to see a few pieces of land on West End.  It’s a beautiful stretch of beach with almost nothing on it.  2 houses that are vacation properties with caretakers, and a rundown former resort that was being sold.  That immediately attracted me, I was so excited about the thought of it.  I sent the boys videos and photos.  There was another piece of land a few doors down from there, but I pretty much immediately dismissed it as being more than we wanted to spend for completely undeveloped land.
I started day dreaming about the business that my kids and I could develop together over there.  I headed back to Roatan, worked on an offer with the realtor on the 1st spot, and waited to hear back.  Unfortunately they turned us down flat, not even a counter offer.  I asked the realtor to find out their best price, but it seemed like they weren’t really interested in selling.
I shelfed the day dream, and tried not to feel to disappointed.  I figured the right thing would come up at the right time.
Fast forward a month later, and the realtor contacted me to let me know that the owner of the 2nd piece had dropped his pricing by $30,000.   I called the boys, and we discussed whether we wanted to make an offer.    It had to be a team decision, we were only moving forward if all 3 of us were ready to commit together.  The boys hadn't even seen a photo of the property, but they trusted my judgement, so we decided to put an offer in.  After a few weeks of back and forth, we had a signed deal in April 2022, with a close date in August.  Power of attorney paperwork issues with the absentee sellers turned the close date into November.

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