Handwritten contract for home sale is legally binding: B.C. court

The bungled sale of a $2.89 million Richmond, B.C., home under a Chinese-language contract was the subject of a recent B.C. Supreme Court decision, with the court ruling the one-page handwritten document outlining the deal is legally binding.

Justice Steven Wilson's Monday ruling brings an apparent end to a nearly seven-year legal tango over a home at 3311 Blundell Rd. between two acquaintances who first met in dance class — and then several more times in a courtroom.

Wilson's decision found plaintiff and would-be seller Hong Yang and her husband were entitled to damages after buyer Xue Li failed to pay an $800,000 deposit instalment agreed upon in what the parties called a "Chinese contract."

While another justice refused to decide the case on a summary basis in 2022, Monday's ruling finds that despite different translations, customs and interpretations, Chinese-language contracts are enforceable in British Columbia — in this case, to the tune of nearly half a million dollars.

"I find that the Chinese contract was a valid and binding contract, and that the plaintiffs were ready, willing and able to complete at the closing date," Wilson wrote. 

"The plaintiffs were entitled to accept the defendant's breach, which they did, and are entitled to damages."

The ill-fated deal began in 2017, when Yang asked Li for help finding a realtor to sell the large detached home on Blundell Road, and Li said she herself was interested in buying it, according to court documents.

The two parties signed what Wilson calls a "Chinese contract" confirming the terms of the sale on May 4, 2017, and Li and her family moved into the home shortly after.

The one-page document, written entirely in Chinese characters, listed the purchase price at $2.89 million, with a $100,000 deposit upon purchase, $100,000 due on July 10, and $800,000 due by Dec. 30, according to a translation accepted by the court.

The remaining $1.89 million was to be paid after another property Li owned on West 20th Avenue in Vancouver had sold, the ruling says.

Li made both of the first two deposits before her Vancouver property sold in November, but the third $800,000 instalment never came to Yang or her husband, the ruling says.

For five months, until April 2018, Li claimed she had been trying and failing to get approved for a mortgage to cover the difference — even as she obtained mortgages for, and purchased, two other properties in the same period.

"Ms. Li did not provide evidence of any mortgage applications regarding the Blundell [Road] property, and therefore no evidence that she was unsuccessful in obtaining a mortgage," wrote Wilson. 

Li and her family moved out of the home on April 25, 13 days after she had made a $2.7 million offer on another property for which she had obtained a mortgage, according to the ruling.