Buy To Let To Bullet

My dad told me this story. When he was a kid, the family moved to a new house. After living there about three months, he distinctly remembers that one night they heard a loud bang, and the next morning, he and his siblings found a bullet hole in the mailbox. It was a great mystery for all the children as they wondered why a random person would shoot at their mailbox.

The mystery went unsolved. More than 40 years later, my grandfather developed rapid-onset dementia and had to be put in aged care. As my dad and my uncle went through his paperwork and belongings, trying to sort everything out, they came across several old documents which shed light on some interesting events that occurred at the time of his family’s move.

My grandfather, despite being a Catholic and never missing a Sunday mass, was not a very nice man. When my grandfather sold the previous property, a farmhouse, before moving to the new one, he deliberately neglected to tell the new owner of the farmhouse that the small piece of land in front of the house — the only entrance to get into the driveway — was actually private property. My grandfather had bought it from the council some years back and now owned it, and he didn’t sell that tiny bit of land to the new owner.

He then, after the sale of the house was finalised, informed the new owner that that piece of land was his, and that he’d give permission for the new owner to use it — essentially, to drive through it to reach their driveway — for a sum of $500 per year, which would be about $3000 in today’s money.

Forty years later, my dad finally understood the bullet-hole in the mailbox.