Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Cross your i's and dot your t's

These two are no dummies! Yesterday, I woke up to an email from our realtor saying we had lost the house, that another offer had come in and the seller had accepted it. Oh hell no! Not after what we have been through with the other two farms we lost to absurd circumstances.

It seems that due to a ministerial mistake (I learned that word yesterday from our attorney), the greedy seller's realtor tried to slip in a better offer after we had signed a legally binding contract. She thought she was being clever. What are the odds on the day we docu-sign our contract another buyer is looking at our house and presents a better offer.

I couldn't call the realtor because she wouldn't have heard me over Gerry's screaming and the stream of profanities that was pouring from my mouth.  I might have set the record for saying Mo.. Fu..
(you know)

I set the caps lock on my email and sent our reply. The note started with WE ARE FURIOUS! We checked our contract, thank God for time/date stamps on email. The  other offer came in AFTER we had signed an agreement with the seller. Guess what? you can't take another offer and call the first one off once you sign a contract,  idiot. Do you think we are stupid? Call the lawyer.

We got in touch with a real estate attorney. Explained the situation. His reply back to us:
"this is bullshit". He wrote a very assertive letter with the words  Specific Performance and I strongly urge you, etc.  The seller's agent quickly responded, "we will honor your contract". Damn straight you will! Don't mess with us, we are tired of looking!

So, who knows what today will bring. Never in my life has it been so difficult to buy a property. If we ever get in this place we are inclined to hunker down and never leave. It used to be so easy. What happened?! Like they say, you gotta have a ticket to get into Chapel Hill..... bleh.

At least justice won out. I'm just glad Gerry and I were on top of it, and pushed our realtor to fight back. You gotta fight back, we don't just lie down and accept defeat that easy.

Onward and upward.

10 comments:

Dennis Allen said...

Kick some ass. We had a closing once where the seller refused to sign the Title Insurance companies boilerplate disclosure document after we had already sold our existing house. Never ever have I been so mad. Got a lawyer, got it fixed.

Michèle Hastings said...

My jaw dropped when I read your post. As you may remember, I used to sell real estate. Basically what that agent did was sell the same house twice! Real estate agents are required by law to present all offers to their client until the client advises them not to. BUT if they have a binding contract, any new offers accepted will be considered back up offers that won't go into effect unless the first contract goes belly-up. When the market was hot it wasn't unusual to see a house with a contract and two behind it as backups. Those were the "good old days" that quickly put us into a recession ;-).

Glad you fought back and the other sided backed down.

oldgreymareprimitives said...

It's not just this incident. it is the state of our country's, maybe every country's morality. Get what you want even if you cannot afford it deserve it or have rights to it, everyone else be damned. Give me the bucks and I'll lie and cheat and steal and not have a moment's guilt. No one is afraid of going to hell anymore so just take take take. It sickens me, it saddens me, it terrifies me for our kids. I retreat more and more into slow and simple as much as I can as the world declines, and I mourn for what we have all lost.
The goodness is still there but does it have a fighting chance?

Yes hunker down in your space and live the good simple self sustaining life you imagine and share that goodness as you can.

and watch the blood pressure. All those MF's help.

cookingwithgas said...

Taking names and kicking ass!
I'm so proud of you both for kicking them to the curb.
What happened to honesty?
Imagine being a person who would do that after you signed a contract.
Just one more for the story book of life.
Now, I'm going to go have a drink for you.
Xxxxxxxx oooooooooooo.
M

Vicki said...

My heart sank to my knees initially on reading your words.
Not again...
But, relieved when reading further how you called in the big guns - yours and the lawyers - to resolve the issue once and for all.
Good on you!!
It seems, if one doesn't stand up and be assertive these days, one gets bloody well trampled.

Not you guys though :)
Your wonderful new home awaits, and this will all be behind you soon.
Although, I imagine you won't be truly relaxed until you get the keys...

We are looking at entering the real estate market this year. And will have to fight tooth and nail.
Properties have escalated insanely.
Competition for even shitty homes is very fierce and expensive.
There is absolutely nothing under $450,000 worth looking at nowadays.
And the price bracket of properties between $450,000 and $600,000 are so hotly sought after, that it makes my head spin. We'll never "truly" own our home at those prices.
This now one of the most expensive countries to live.
People here are now realising that their children will never own their own home - not unless they have high paying jobs, are wealthy or have wealthy parents to back them :(

I don't know what's happened either. The market is inflated beyond reality.
And greedy property owners work in tandem with greedy/scurrilous estate agents.

I'm dreading the whole business to come. And worry that my dream of a little country place may just be that - only a dream.

DirtKicker Pottery said...

I worked in the Title and Escrow industry for 20 years. I've seen this type of greed many times. Buying a home is usually bundled with stresses, but to throw this BS into the mix, just sucks. I would request to have your legal fees reimbursed from the Listing Agents commission at close.

June Perry said...

Sorry you had to deal with the unpleasantness of greed; but big kudos for fighting for whats right and getting the property!

I know what you're going to be dealing with, with having to pare down, after moving into a house less than half of the one I was in. Hopefully you will have the time I didn't, to pare down before you move!

Good luck with the move and your new, dream property!

Lori Watts said...

I had the opposite situation years ago, when I sold a house in the mountains of Maine. It had been on the market a long time before I got a decent offer, which I accepted; on the phone, the realtor told me that the buyer had written an earnest-money check for six thousand dollars: sixty times the necessary amount. The next day, we got another, better offer, which we unfortunately had to turn away because we'd already accepted the first.
A week after that, my realtor called to say the first buyers were backing out. I was disappointed, obvs! But at least there's that earnest money. I asked the realtor about it, and he kind of laughed at me, like oh-you-silly-girl, and said "No, you don't get to keep the earnest money." UM I THINK I DO. I THINK THAT'S WHAT EARNEST MONEY IS FOR. When I insisted, he confessed: she had never signed the check.
I wouldn't have cared so much, except that I lost out on the other offer. It was a mess and I needed a lawyer, but the first party eventually did buy the house.

Hannah said...

Heavens! How crazy, the swines! Good for you though, they should know better than to mess with you I should think.
Good luck, hope the rest of the process goes as it should. Fingers crossed.

Shannon said...

what a saga! I"m so glad you were both ON and ON TOP of IT and them and the sneaky realtor. Phew! It's like a full-time job.

here's hoping you're sitting lakeside, soon.