Learned our lesson...🙃

My husband and I own a home in a lake community. His parents live next door, and next door to them is a house his little brother bought but doesn’t live in. January 2019 we talked with his brother and parents about purchasing his brothers home because it was MUCH larger and his 2 kids were moving in with us. It was a shell. His brother bought it for cash at an auction. He bought cabinets and appliances and some paint. That’s it. We renovated this house FULLY. It wasn’t livable before. We’ve poured so much sweat equity into it and did it all ourselves. Our plan was to buy it for what his brother was owed plus some equity and then flip it later. Well our plans changed down the line, we had a baby and decided to move into the city to be close to my family and our work. We never sold our old house because his parents wanted to buy it so we were waiting on them. After speaking with his parents on our plan, I am furious. His mom basically said that ALL the equity into this house we renovated belongs to his brother. Even though we did the work. She said we’ve been “living in a large home rent free paying for our smaller house mortgage “. We didn’t pay rent because nothing is owed on the house...we pay ALL the bills for this house and have since we moved in. Basically we lost around $10k we put into this home. His brother will profit around $70k or more on this house once he sells it. We trusted family and that was our mistake. But it makes me so angry. We have 3 children and have worked so hard for everything. His brother has worked maybe 6 months in the time I’ve known him. And HE has been living in his parents house in the city that they still own, rent free. He’s always been the favorite but this is beyond. I don’t even want to go to holidays and be around them. I’m so angry. We messed up but I just didn’t think family would fuck us over so badly.