Thursday, September 22, 2011

Disaster Strikes

My first blog post noted that by starting a blog I was jinxing our process.

Today it hit - even though we have been talking about late September as a closing date for some time, today the seller informed us that he wouldn't be ready to move out / close until Monday, October 3rd.

As renters, this creates quite a problem.  Our options at this point:

  • Asked our current landlord if we could stay longer - while they have rented our apartment out, that person isn't planning to occupy the apartment until October 10th
  • Move our furniture into "our" garage - this may be possible with the seller's permission, although we'll have to then move it out of the garage after we close.  2 moves < 1 move.  We'd also have to find a place to stay for Friday night through Tuesday
  • Move our furniture into a moving truck and rent it out until we can move in.  We'd also need to find a place to stay.
Since we can't stay in our apartment, there isn't much point in renting out another unit in our building for a month and pushing back closing.

Lessons learned:
  • Communicate early and often with the seller and his lawyer / Realtor - make sure they understand the need to close "on time"
  • Perhaps have your lawyer add a "late closing" penalty into the contract
  • Try to schedule your closing date for the middle of the month / expect delays.  
On the last point, I was walking our dog this morning and I ran into a woman I know from our building.  She asked how the process was going and I gave her the update.  She said that they once had a similar issue - there were three houses involved and they all needed to close at about the same time.  Owner A was selling and moving into House X, Owner B was selling and moving into A's home, while Owner C was selling and moving into B's home.  Closing needed to be coordinated for the same day.  Needless to say, there were problems and the whole thing was a mess.

So, anyone have a place for Pamela, Akina, and I to live in for a few days?

No comments:

Post a Comment