House of Horrors

Looking back, I didn't like the vendor's furtive, beady eyes from the get-go—but such misgivings are swatted aside when you're on the emotional roller coaster that is house hunting. For a fatal moment my heart ruled my head, and I ended up entangled in every expatriate's nightmare.

Rewind to March 2003. Bangkok was recovering from the property doldrums, banks were lending again, and it seemed a good time to buy. After months of searching for a new home, we stumbled on a village on the city's northeastern outskirts—full of old houses with potential, in quiet, green-canopied lanes—and spotted a small for sale sign. The house was a mess but we could renovate or rebuild. Shifty eyes aside, the owner was charm itself. He had retired from the air force, he said, and introduced himself as a general.

We negotiated to rent for six months, with first refusal to buy after that, and asked him to fix the place up. But when we came to move in, it was a shambles. New paint was already peeling. Plumbing leaked. I had already paid for half of these so-called renovations, but now we smelled a rat and sought a lawyer. He told us to stall while a title search was made. It wasn't easy, as the deed number had been obscured on the copy the general had given us. But when we were shown the original, we were stunned: there was a big, red stamp on the top, forbidding the owner from selling or renting out the property. We subsequently learned from court documents that he had borrowed money against the house, been unable to repay it, and had his ownership revoked. The house had already been put up for auction three times by the court, without attracting a buyer. If we wanted it, we would now have to bid at the next auction. We were devastated, but decided to fight for the house—and to stop handing any more rent to the general.

Soon after, the general's wife started showing up with a gang of cronies (including monks), yelling, haranguing, even singing. We received threatening letters in mangled legalese.

Gun magazines ominously appeared in the mailbox, along with almost daily missives from debt collectors. One morning the general himself appeared—in military fatigues, frothing at the mouth—and threatened to put me in a coffin. He pulled out a pistol-shape package, brandished it, then drove away. Was it a gun? Or simply a last-ditch attempt to scare us off?

The police told us we had every right to stay. They began to put together a case against the general for forgery and fraud. He had allegedly done the same thing to two other would-be buyers, but they'd been too scared to complain about it. Nor was he a general, police said, merely a middle-ranking officer who had been kicked out of the air force for misconduct.

A warrant has now been issued for his arrest, and the police have set up a checkpoint outside the house. A cop comes by every three or four hours. In the meantime, we live in limbo. We've now built a big fence and bought four dogs. I sleep with a crowbar under the bed. And when I dream, it's of a legion of weary lawyers intoning "buyer beware."

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