Buying equipment that is under lien!!

[JD Seller]

Down below there is a post from a young man about wanting to buy his Dad's tractor that his grand dad bought new. There is all kinds of suggestions on how to do this or that. Some took exception to me saying for the father to declare bankruptcy. Then I told the son to get the tractor off the friends farm. The tractor needs to be on his Dad's property or the son's with the fathers knowledge. Until the bank claims any or all of the equipment the father is still the owner. This is just to keep the "friend" out of the any future transactions. Friends have a funny way of making claims later in these kind of deals.

I have bought a fair amount of equipment that was in these type of deals. I always dealt with the bank and the farmer both. Many times I could get things done that neither of them would do because the relationship was poisonous between the bank and farmer.

I would go and ask the farmer what he felt was reasonable in value on the piece of equipment. I would ask him if I could try to deal with the bank on buying the piece if they would release it for an amount of money. If he agreed then I would go to the bank in question and outline the deal. I would then make them a cash offer for the equipment as-is where it was setting.

Many times this worked well for all parties involved. The farmer may only have one or two pieces of equipment left. The better/new stuff may have been financed with the equipment company and already was repossessed. So the farmer really did not have enought stuff for a auction. The bank would have had to pay some one to recover/sell the equipment. So they where getting value out of the equipment without further costs being incurred.

There is nothing wrong with doing this. All the people involved know exactly what is going on.

Good people do fail too. If they do not try to hide things then bankruptcy may be the only option for them. They did not set out to take some one for money. They just did not make it.

The ones that are crooked are the ones that run up a bunch of debt knowing they will never pay it back. I have had guys buy corn off me and file the next day. They just stole the corn off of me. I have had others go under still oweing me a repair bill. These guys usually where not trying to do anything crooked just could not make it. I did not like it to happen but it was not stealing.

 

[Janicholson]

Well said. The issue is transparency. If that tractor is on others (neighbor's) property, it is necessary to retrieve it pronto. Make sure the interested parties all are aware of the move, including the neighbor.
If the neighbor is antagonistic, s/he could claim the tractor for storage and loss of productivity, having to farm around it for X time. Jim

 

[320B]

I agree, the only thing you need to make sure of is that the who ever has the lien on it hasn't issued any kind of paper work on it. As in the may have sold it in a packaged deal to somebody else and have been unable to locate it. If you are moving it from point a to b and get caught you can be charge with grand theft. Make sure the father still owns it before moving it.

 

[fixerupper]

The farmer who used to do my custom planting asked if he could store his new 60' field cultivator on my creek bank. I let him do it because it wasn't in the way, and besides, it gave me status LOL. Later I found out he was hiding it from the bank. When I found that out I was questioning whether I could have been accused of being in a conspiracy to hide mortgaged equipment even though it wasn't mine. Jim