What it boils down to is that I don’t believe a word that comes out of my realtor’s (my father-in-law, too) mouth. We need to make sure that the seller’s will be out of the house by the closing date of March 31, and he’s saying he doesn’t know if they will be. But we haven’t heard otherwise from the other realtor.
I want to call the other realtor and just ask him what his clients are planning - if they’re pretty sure they’ll be out of the house by then, because we need to schedule our movers and make a few plans for the move in.
Will I be breaching any etiquette or rules or anything if I do this? All I’m going to do is ask him about his clients’ plans so that we can start making ours.
The seller’s realtor is not suppose to deal with the buyer (and vice versa). It’s considered a breach of ethics, and could get you in hot water with the REALTORS or even the state’s Real Estate Commssion. You can contact your attorney and ask them to contact the seller’s attorney on this point.
Not a lawyer, don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but when buying our current house from the nut-case seller, I did call the seller’s agent on a couple of occassions. I never got reamed out over it, and I think the seller’s agent appreciated the fact that one side of the party wasn’t a crazed-out loon.
Okay. Thanks. I just realized my FIL never gave us a copy of the damn contract on the house, either. So I’m having my husband call him to get a copy faxed to me. I want to see what the specified date is on that contract.
Yikes. Please do yourself a favor and do not make the biggest financial decision of your life without copies of every piece of paper involved (including explanations of all of them BEFORE signing anything). Buying a home under the best of circumstances is pretty stressfull.
Legally, if the closing is set for March 31, the previous owner must vacate the house prior to closing, unless prior arrangements have been made with the buyer. Once the papers are signed, the house is yours.
Don’t worry - I’m doing everything I can to get a copy of that contract TODAY. Including calling my mortgage broker - who’s in a meeting right now - and having him fax me a copy. I’m so angry at this point, it isn’t even damn funny.
We’re first-time home buyers who kind of assumed his dad (his freakin’ DAD) was doing what was in our best interests. We’ve learned our lesson. Not going to happen again, I can tell you that.
In many jurisdictions, letting the previous tenant remain past closing may make them eligible under landlord tenent laws - that’s right, you may have to legally evict them through whatever process your state allows!! :smack:
You might also check with the escrow company. They tend to have copies of the most important documents. Even though you’re upset, be nice to them; this isn’t THEIR fault. They are obligated to be neutral, but you are entitled to a copy of everything.
The good news is that the other people involved in the whole transaction (like the title company and mortgage brokers) should be giving you copies of everything as you go along; since you’re physically putting pen to paper it’s simple enough (on both my initial purchase and on my refi the title company had two copies of the enitre monstrous stack of paperwork, one for them and one for me).
Where are you in the process? Sounds like you’ve extended an offer that has been accepted. Assuming that you don’t have to fill something out in the next 5 minutes you might be able to get a third party who specializes in this stuff (i.e. another realtor) to look it all over, make sure that you have everything you need, no important paperwork is missing, that kind of thing.
IANAL and IANAR but if you’ve got concerns over your current realtor, regardless of his relation to you, I think it’s simple prudence to cover your ass. It’s a big financial transaction so you want it to go as smoothly and calmly as possible (which has the nice side effect of keeping the waters calm between you and your father-in-law). Remember that aside from the sellers, just about everyone involved works for YOU - you are literally paying their wages.
Maybe you could drive by the house and see if it looks like the sellers are getting ready to move.
I don’t want to add to your stress, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some sort of emergency contingent plan. A week before I was supposed to close on my house, the sellers “discovered” that they owed more on the house than they thought they did and couldn’t get all the papers, yada yada yada. The closing was put off for a month. I’d already given notice at my apartment, scheduled movers, appliance delivery, etc. Don’t tell anyone, but I just went right ahead and moved in (the sellers had already moved to another state).
Best of luck to you. Whatever happens, just remember that in six months you’ll be settled in your wonderful house and none of it will matter anymore.
Why don’t you just call the seller and bypass the realtors altogether. I was selling my house and couldn’t get an agreement on various items so I called the buyer direct and we cleared everything up in ten minutes.
We are two weeks from closing as of this past Thursday. As far as we know, the sellers have made no mention of not being out of the house by closing. We also found our contract and it lists April 1 by 5 PM as to when the sellers are required to be out.
We do have a contingency plan, but it would REALLY screw things up if we weren’t able to move in then. My parents are coming out, along with my aunt and uncle, to help us move. My uncle’s planning to do a bunch of things for us in the house (there’s a fake fireplace we want removed and he’s going to fix some of the wiring) - we’ve already asked if they could push back the visit a week, but unfortunately, everyone’s already gotten time off from work and can’t change that. So it would really be a huge issue.
We’re just going to have to roll with the punches. We’re planning to get into the house one night this week to do some measuring - hopefully, the sellers will be there, so maybe we can just casually ask them about it.
Well if all your paperwork is done or on the right schedule and you’ve got a signed contract that says the sellers will be out on the 1st it sounds to me like you’re in good shape.
Also remember that unless you have a signed contract with your FIL to be YOUR buyer’s agent, that he may act essentially as a second realtor dor the seller. If you don’t have a written contract with your FIL, contact anyone you want for any information you need.
IANAL, but I bought my first home last November and learned some hard lessons. The most important is that EVERYONE wants the deal to go through, so there’s enormous pressure on you the buyer to go on despite any doubts you have.