"It's known as an "Unconscionable Contract" and there are provisions
under which a contract may be deemed unenforceable owing to such
provisions. However, in order to meet such a criterion, the abuse has
to be extreme and simply a higher than market value in and of itself
would be unlikely unless it were truly and extreme case. In general,
it
would require some sort of deceit or other heinous action on the part
of
one party to create such a condition. That somebody agreed to pay
$200k
or a boat that might only be worth $150k or so would be very unlikely
to
elicit such a reaction unless there could be shown a willful
misrepresentation on the part of the seller. Simply the excuse of not
being able to afford the payments would not be sufficient, certainly.

Here's a summary of the general provisions typical...


"Unconscionable contracts are so unfair to one party that the contract
becomes unenforceable, usually with respect to consumers induced to
sign
contracts via high pressure sales techniques or who misunderstood the
requirements and conditions. Such contracts hide procedurally unfair
terms in the fine print, contain exorbitant price or limit buyer's
remedy (waiver of buyer's defenses, prohibiting buyer's recovery in
case
of product defects, limiting remedies to useless options, giving a
seller the right to reposess items sold on credit regardless of payoffs

on some of them)."


Yes, I agree, you MIGHT win a case if you had some or all of these
conditions present. But most of those type cases are brought against
companies by the govt for doing that list of things many times to large
numbers of consumers. I didn't see anything in the contract that
started this thread that qualifies as grounds for throwing out the
whole contract. For sure, it's a bad contract for the homeowner and I
wouldn't deal with the company. I'd say much of it is unreasonable
too, but I think they would likely hold up in a court of law.

The problem I had was a previous poster suggesting that a contract had
to be "reasonable" for it to be enforceable. Most people would say
signing a contract to pay $200K for a boat that was only worth $150K
was not reasonable. But I think we agree, it would be hard to find a
court to rule the contract invalid on that basis. Courts don't get
involved in figuring out if the contract was really fair, if somone
should have gotten a better deal etc, unless it's way out of line and
usually then in a number of areas that are totally over the top.