To meet inheritance taxes, we sold my dad's house a couple of days ago. Those of you who have sold houses will probably know much of what I am about to tell you. I should stress that this was in London, not Bermuda, where for all I know, the real estate business is populated by saints. In London, everyone, by whom I mean everyone, cheats or is desperately incompetent, or both.

Call me na?ve, but I thought a man's word was his bond. "Expletive deleted that," as the British say. A man's word is apparently a way for him to earn a fat fee and then swipe 300 as he's making off. "You've behaved like a gentleman throughout," my estate agent told me, telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. "That's my problem," I replied, "I'm the only one who has."

Here are the details (and I mention this for two reasons: one, if you have ever have to sell a house, you'll know what to expect, and two, because if I don't tell someone, I'm going to kill a lot of people):

What they call buyer's remorse is, in fact, remorse that you ever met the guy in the first place. About the beginning of December, a fellow agreed to buy my dad's house at a price that covered the tax. The house then became "under offer", so no other potential buyer would look at it. The promise to buy means nothing in British law, however, so weeks dragged by while my potential buyer and the lawyers did whatever it is they do, at a pace a snail would call "glacial".

Everyone we dealt with ripped us off. The prize for biggest bastard goes to the man who bought the furniture. He was a cheat from a firm of cheats. When we finally moved out of the house, the lead geezer from the moving company said, of whoever I had sold the furniture to: "What, that fellow from So-and-So Street? Did you ever get the cheque? Bet you didn't." I did, as it happens, but only by visiting the offices on So-and-So Street and demanding it. The cheque was for 20 percent of the conservative end of what I had been told I might expect.

Then I met the potential house buyer. You don't always, apparently, but he wandered in one day to consider structural alterations, months later than I would have thought suitable, with his surveyor. I live around big money guys, and can tell your net worth within five seconds of meeting you, plus or minus three percent. When I met the buyer, it was plain that he did not have the money, minus in this case, oh, half, I'd say. Confronted with my accusation, the estate agent, whom I pay and whom one might therefore expect to keep me up-to-date on the details, suddenly revealed that the buyer would have his money in four or five days, "when his backer returns from the Haj."

So I blew a fuse and threatened to cancel the entire deal and the horse the buyer rode in on, and we exchanged contracts 48 hours later, back in January, to complete on Monday, March 13, a date the buyer selected. Exchange of contracts in British law does mean something. It is a promise to buy and sell that must be fulfilled, or else horrid consequences ensue.

On Friday, March 10, too late to fix by courier, my solicitor advised me that my signature was somehow missing on a document. Failure to sign the form would lead to ugly punishments for me, and the possible collapse of the sale. So I flew to London the next day and met my solicitor on the morning of March 13.

The buyer is renting a house just a few doors down from my dad's, and didn't have to fly anywhere, but he failed to complete on the due date. He didn't have the money. He also suddenly revealed that he was not a cash buyer at all, as had been claimed, but part of a chain of purchases and sales that extended as far as Siberia, for all I knew. Had I been told of this fact three months earlier, I would not have sold him the house.

The buyer then tried to move his furniture in without having paid for the house, which is a jaunty idea. I must try that round at Buckingham Palace. Possession being nine-tenths of the law, as they say, I cut that off at the pass. Then I lost my patience, and imposed interest on the unpaid balance, as per my contractual right. The very next day, the buyer paid up ? mirabile dictu ? but didn't pay the interest. I again declined to hand over the keys, and actually enjoyed that one. Then the buyer paid the interest that he had been trying to welsh on, and now he lives there.

That meant that the money, about half of which I was collecting to pass on to the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, was theoretically mine. Then my solicitors raised a query that meant they had to keep the money for a day, at my cost. The money then spent two more days in the system, at my cost. Transferring funds takes a fraction of a second, but someone else has to hold on to it for no good reason, other than to earn a free lunch first. Butterfield Bank was superbly helpful in damage limitation on my behalf, behaving throughout like the first-class international bank that its management wanted it to become.

Nevertheless, as you read this, I have paid every last person to whom I owed my dad's money, including the chief beneficiary, the British Government. My vote was cancelled some years ago, because I live in Bermuda. Taxation without representation didn't work out so well in Boston, as I recall, the last time a bunch of greedy and inefficient politicians tried it on.

Still outstanding to me are four payments of around 300 from each of the people in the chain, including the professionals, every one of whom kept some of dad's money for purposes they cannot explain. None has so far returned any of it, despite pressure from me. I'll probably have to sue each of them.

The financial message this week, therefore is: do not sell your family homestead. (If you are Bermudian, you don't have to.) To extend this theme, would someone please explain to me why people buy and sell houses all the time? It's just like playing Monopoly, except that the money is real, and every Chance card says "Super-Tax", "Ripped off by agent", "Buyer defaults", or "Go directly to jail." What person in his right mind would want to play that game more than once in a lifetime?