Waiving the Appraisal Not the Pain
Another great part of the original contract was that the buyers were willing to waive the appraisal contingency. They were willing to come up with the cash to offset any difference between the appraised value of the house and their offer. But, unfortunately, they still had a new loan objection deadline just a week before close. This means for any reason. If the buyer doesn’t get the loan they want, they can still get out of the deal.
We soon realized that what we thought was a strong contract was really just hype.
Our realtor, who became a transaction broker because the buyer was using her as an agent, told us the buyer had the cash to pay for the house but took out a loan because of the rates. So we bought this line because it’s actually what we did for our Edwardsville house. She also said that they wouldn’t need an appraisal because they were putting over 30% down. Then about two weeks before closing, we were told they actually did need an appraisal.
The straws that broke our back came 11 days before closing. First, the bank canceled the appraisal because the appraiser didn’t have a valid license. Then, the loan agency said they couldn’t get a new appraisal until five days after closing, making a new closing date two weeks after the original. Finally, they wanted us to sign an extension without any other changes.
Lawyering Up
The idea of lawyers makes me sad.
It’s not their fault. It’s society. People can’t agree to terms on their own and want more than their fair share. That hurts my being. In Colorado, you don’t need a lawyer to buy a property. There’s standard paperwork that’s fill-in-the-blank and makes the process simple, except when you realize that basically, it is designed to let the buyer out for multiple reasons, and the seller is held hostage until closing.
Three weeks into the process, the buyer can walk away because they couldn’t get a loan, and the seller doesn’t get any earnest money.
Thankfully we have a friend who is a real estate lawyer, and after hearing about our situation, he politely insisted on helping. He reached out to our real estate agent, and she did not seem too happy. She was being very defensive and saying that we have been more problems than the buyers. She was supposed to be working as a transactional broker, but she had multiple meetings with the buyers and presented their contracts to us, and when we would suggest something, she would make a statement like, “they would never do that.” She quickly knew that we had someone willing to defend us against her and her buyers.
This prompted the buyers to ask for a 4th showing of the house.
After a 10 minute walk-through with our lawyer present and seeing that the house was still in perfect shape, they agreed to guarantee more earnest money and show our lawyer proof that they could actually close the deal. So, unfortunately, we had to wait another two weeks, but we had already moved all our items to Illinois, and it wasn’t much of a difference to us.
We successfully closed and got a substantial deposit in our savings account, where it still sits today.
Part 5 will talk about moving to Edwardsville and renovating our house. But I’ll wait until that’s done.
Maybe 2023.
