… so she’s throwing tons of inspections and demands at us.
A bit of backstory: I got laid off a little over a month ago. I’ve since gotten a job, but it’s halfway across the US, and I don’t start for another month.
We put the house on the market, and were surprised when we got a full-price offer within three days. This made us really happy and made our planned move ten times easier, and we accordingly adjusted our moving plans. Contracts were signed, inspections were scheduled… and then the buyer’s daughter apparently convinced her to not buy the house.
The buyer *could * just give us the $4k deposit, to make up for the wasted weeks of effort and time we could’ve been showing the house… but instead she’s using tons of inspections and demands to try to get out of the contract. We bought the house a year-and-a-half ago, and in that time have spent a ton of money upgrading it (new windows, new doors, all-new pool equipment, etc.). Her inspector, however, found apparently twice as many problems as ours did- and some of them aren’t even deal breakers. One of them was that the underside of a decorative mount for the basement banister has some spots of rust on it, fer cryin’ out loud. Luckily, our agent is keeping that sort of thing to a minimum. And so far, at least, we are going to be able to fix those valid items.
The buyer keeps looking for more dealbreakers, though. For example, she had a septic inspection done two days ago. But now she’s decided that she wants a second opinion, and just called to see if she could have another inspection done. We said no, of course.
So it’s pretty clear that she’s trying to run us out of money rather than canceling the contract and giving us the deposit. Do we have any sort of recourse to this? We really want to sell the house, but if she’s not going to take it we’d like to hear as soon as possible and get that deposit to make up for lost time. If this sale falls through, we’ll have to move and work the sale from across the country, paying for the mortgage while paying for rent in our new place. That way lies madness and loss of our nest egg.
You don’t need a lawyer at this stage. Inspect your contract. The buyer’s demands are irrelevant, unless they are part of the contract. Check the contract in re: return of deposit/earnest money. Check the contract. Check the contract. Most of them are written in MOL easy to understand language; however, sometimes you need to read it slowly and/or carefully.
That being said, I’m referring to real estate/contract law as it was practiced in Oklahoma about 15 years ago when I was a Realtor ™.
The two of you have a contract. There needs to be a legal reason to break it. Your real estate professional should be able to give you good information. The professional, however, is only human, and may want the whole matter behind him/her so that he/she can get on with other things, and may sabotage your holding out. So, check the contract, and, before backing down, tell them that you will need to go to the Real Estate Commission in your state before you will surrender the cash/check.
Your real estate professional has the deposit/earnestmoney/wtf, so, at this moment, you are holding the horses.
The buyer is paying for all the inspections, right? I guess eventually she will run out of money.
An inspector is supposed to find everything “wrong” with the house. However, not everything needs to be fixed or is a deal breaker. A good report will have all the nits listed. If they want everything 100%, they should buy a new house.
You shouldn’t have to fix everything they want. Typically, the contract will set a ceiling on the cost of repairs. It’s totally fair of her to ask for repairs up to that amount even if you think they are minor. She can use that money to fix the AC or to remove the rust under the decorative mount. It’s her choice.
One of my friends is going through this right now, including the daughter convincing the mother to not buy his house.
He paid for the original inspections, but on the advice of his agent refused to pay for the rest the buyer was demanding because they weren’t required. He fixed a lot of the little nitpicky problems, but when she started saying she wanted all of the perfectly good windows replaced with triple glassed HE windows, he balked.
His agent backed him up and her agent gave them a sob story about how she was in bad health and shouldn’t have signed the contract in the first place.
Too bad, so sad. She was a mentally competent adult who signed a contract and my friend will be getting the earnest money back in 3 days.
I don’t understand. In California until you remove all the inspection contingencies, a buyer can get out of a contract on a house for almost any reason that the inspection turns up, and get their deposit back. That is the point of inspections. What “excuse” does she need to get out of the contract that would be legit in your scenario?
Listen to Handsome Harry on this. Contracts are binding on both parties. If the buyer wants to back out and can’t point to a contract breach, the earnest money goes to you.
Only if you want the money you’d get from selling locked up for months or more.
Theoretically you can get the contract enforced. Practically the best thing to do is to tell the buyer to take a hike and put the house back on the market.
This happened to us when we sold in Louisiana before moving to NJ. We did talk to a lawyer, who gave us the advice I just mentioned. If you think inspections are slow, wait until you get to the courts. We put it back on the market, sold it, and were done.
When we moved from NJ to here the buyer started to get obnoxious. But our house sold in literally hours, and every real estate agent in town was eager to show it to their clients. When our agent told the buyer, go ahead, make our day, they backed down and bought.
So you can be right or you can be solvent. Take your pick.
(If the buyer has money in escrow, never agree to release it. You’ll at least get some pleasure from that.)
You can always offer the buyer half of their deposit back and you’ll agree to tear up the contract. They will probably jump at it, and you can go back on the market.
When I have purchased houses in the past, it always included a contingency allowing me to back out if I was not satisfied after the inspection. Thus, almost anything would have given me an out, such as “I didn’t realize the doors were 20 years old, I’ll pass, please refund my money.”
It’s not a firm sale until they remove the contingency (subject to the actual language of your actual contract, of course, which we haven’t seen)
When this happened to us - it was a woman who was going to get divorced and then changed her mind - we were going to teach her a lesson by making her do it. Our attorney said “not such a good idea” and we said “oh shit.”
Doesn’t the contract also have a financing contingency? That is usually the one I’ve seen buyers get out of a contract on quite easily.
Their mortgage broker just needs to say they got denied for a loan. Simple and done. No messing around with multiple inspections and hassle. Are you sure the buyer isn’t just hugely picky? Some people are like that…
It’s a weird situation. Apparently the buyer is still excited about buying the house, but her daughter keeps trying to talk her out of it. We’ve only got two more weeks 'til we have to move to another state, and this offer is the only serious one we’ve gotten since we put it on the market.
Sunday is the last day for her to keep putting off the decision- we’ve been doing all of the repairs and maintenance she’s wanted us to do, so unless she wants to give us the deposit, she’s going to have to go through with it. We’ll just have to see what happens on Sunday.
If you don’t hold firm in this instance, you will always regret it. I suggest using a silence tactic. Everything is in contract, so make sure your real estate agent has sufficiently reiterated the terms of the contract to the buyer’s real estate agent, and then sit silent. After a day or so of thinking about it, the buyer will come to realize the situation, and come to accept it.
It is time to get agent to put pressure on her agent. Buyer qualification is very important. Who’d take an offer from that person’s clients if you don’t know if they’d back out?
Well, it looks like the buyer finally made her decision last night- she’s no longer got cold feet. We’ve still got a lot of minor things to fix, but at least we know it’ll do some good to fix those things.