I am the potential buyer of a home. The seller does not want to turn over possession until a few days after closing. I do not like the legal risks of this. For example, the seller could damage something over the weekend or an accident could occur in the house. I want some protection. I see one site that says to ask the seller to provide a check for a few thousand dollars. This will serve as "possession escrow." What do you all think?
I think you should throw his/her ass out as soon as you sign . We had a case here of a neighbor who sold her house , but her pedo son didn't want to move . Took the new owner almost 3 months to get his sorry ass out of the house .
It is quite common. You will have insurance in effect and can have theirs overlap. Often closing is on a given day but for various reasons the seller can't vacate that day.
Often it happens for weeks, not days, and the seller pays rent for that time. Talk to your realtor or real estate lawyer and they may have some standard agreement for it.
Given that you may be in that house for 20 years and it is the house of your dreams, don't let a minor thing like that sink the deal.
Does he have a believable reason?
Does he have a pedestrian son?
Could you delay the closing by that many days, so he's out by then. Or even have the closing a couple days after he's out. (Does he need the money you're paying to buy his next place? ) I've only bought one house, and the seller was packing up his last items the morning of the closing, but he was completely out by the time of the walk-through (and I guess he had an apartment that overlapped so he was movign thigns out slowly.)
Actually, he was also fertilizing the rose bushes and berry bushes the morning before the closing. Not every seller is that good.
If Ed says it's common, then it's common. I only have bought one house and never sold one.
Where does the seller say he's going after he moves out? In town? Far away? Does he still have his job or have a job in the new city? I'd want to hear why he can't go in advance.
But I understand wanting to vary the normal procedere. I wanted to move in before the closing** and pay rent, but his real estate agent was probably right that he woudln't want to do that. But that's different. I was the buyer, not the seller. I had a job (that I hadn't started yet and might have been lying about) and I had no other place to go.
**Because the mortgage company was insisting I start work before they'd grant the mortgage!!! Stay in a motel with all my stuff back in NY, have to go get it on the weekend. Do all the unpacking while I'm going to work 5 days a week. I didn't like that, and avoided it, and dropped the mortgage company.
It is still a dangerous thing to do. I just did 2 closings in a week and in both cases, the keys were handed over at the close. We never went back to the house we sold and we never saw the seller again at the condo we bought. Move the closing until the seller can vacate.
I may be the worst example on the house I bought in 1971 although it was because they let me move in before the close. I had a lawyer handling my part of the close. The seller had made the close contingent on financing he couldn't provide after writing it in the contract and we ended up being a quarter point off in the financing I could provide. He had no way to get me out and no way to charge me rent according to my lawyer. In those days interest rates were going up every day. He ended up kicking me back a couple thousand dollars to compensate for the quarter point and get paid. The lesson I learned was, possession changes when the money moves, not before, not after.
Snag, Ed and Micky, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Micky, the seller is a middle-aged couple that is buying an RV and evidently hitting the road. I know they got burned in the last several weeks by a buyer whose financing fell through in the last minute. My offer (as yet not accepted) is all cash. But the couple seems to be untrusting. In this wild housing market, I am not sure I blame them.
The couple also is offering to leave a number of pieces of furniture and will let me pick and choose. Yet I am not some charity case and, while I do not look like it, I have plenty of money to buy whatever. Scads of money for furnishings, due to simple living and careful investing. I cannot seem to get the sellers to nail down what it is they want to leave in advance. I am getting a bit tired of not simply having an empty house into which I can move and start anew, furnishings-wise.
I am also sensing my realtor is going into double-talk / strong-armed mode. I know it takes a tough skin dealing with one's agent at times. As in, "It's me (the buyer) facing down two realtors and a seller." Of course I stupidly let my realtor set up a house inspection on Tuesday (two days away) before a purchase agreement was signed. I have a half day or so to decide whether to cancel it.
Money is still flying every which way where I am, with investors aplenty clogging up the ambiance of buying in a bad way.
Ed, I hear you that this is not uncommon. The realtors have yet to present wording that makes legal sense to me. I feel they have even been resistant to this.
I realize I have to weigh all this; figure out how much I want the house; and make a decision.
I will continue to read further comments.
Thank you again Snag, Ed and Micky.
I think there are no children, relatives or free-loading friends involved. The house is in good repair. The middle-aged sellers seem tidy and competent, when it comes to caring for a home.
FWIW, I avoided it by borrowing 80% of the purchase price from my brother. Not everyone can do that. And even he only had it liquid because he was hoping to buy a medical practice in San Francisco. I think he didn't because they were all very expenive, even considering the return you might make.
Because I didn't get a mortgage, no one there insisted on a title search or title insurance, or fire insurance, including my own lawyer, hired for this purpose. When I wanted to know later if the title insurance wsa included in the flat price he'd given me, he said no, you don't really need title insurance.
And this wss a property divided into lots only 4 years earlier, and almost every lot was a different size and shape, especially mine.
Not only that, the whole comnuity of 100 houses was mistaken about the property line, and the developer used some of the adjacent property that we did not own. A swap was arranged, letting us keep it in return for our giving them some of our land. This all happeend before I got here, maybe even before the first owner of my house got here.
What a boob the lawyer was.
I went to another mortgage company that said 30 days for a mortgage and I told my brother he'd have the money back in 30 days. 75 days in, no mortgage. I called them up and said, How long to get a mortgage, 30 days. Then how come I've been waiting 75 days. They called me that day or the next to say they had gotten the paperwork off the guy's desk, buit didn't say how many other desks it had to go to. I think it took another week or two. The bank went out of business 26 years later, that is, it was merged and the name dropped.
Hmmm. Wikip says Provident Bank of Maryland was founded in 1885 and almost went out of business in 1983, the year my story takes place.
But they screwed up 2 other ways in later years, also.
Generally agree, it sometimes is necessary and happens. But the first question is, why is it necessary in this case? How far along is this deal? Why can't the buyer just move the closing date by the required few days? Closing dates are moved for all kinds of reasons all the time.
I agree. When buying, I've always negotiated with the seller to adjust the closing date when necessary to enable turning over the keys at closing. There shouldn't be a valid reason why the seller wouldn't be willing to do that. I've never encountered that situation. Of course, if the seller does have a valid reason, and the delay will be greater than just a day or two, I'd discuss with both my real estate agent and lawyer the preparation of a short term rental contract with a substantial prepayment fee from the seller for potential damages, to be returned to the buyer if the condition of the property remains as it was on the date of the closing. You don't want to move in and find out that items that were supposed to convey are missing or broken, and have no recourse.
Now this makes no sense at all. If they have not even accepted your offer, how is it that there is a closing date? I was under the assumption that the deal was well along, with a closing date already set. Also if you have an actual closing date in the offer, then you must be paying cash or have someone other than a normal lender providing the funds. This is nuts and something is fishy.
The last house I bought about 15 years ago was paid cash for. While I did not need anything, I did get the title insurance and a few other things just so I would be covered. They way things are written if a lawyer makes a mistake it is just too bad for you.
The one thing I will not do is a home warrenty, or an extra warrenty on most anything.
what it is they want to leave in advance. I am getting a bit tired of not simply having an empty house into which I can move and start anew, furnishings-wise.
If you do not need it, just let them take everything. The last house i bought I wanted it empty. I had been planning on moving for a number of years, so the major items in the house i was living in was old and I was planning on buying almost every major item new. The house I moved out of I empted out everything but the refrigerator. The stove was built in. Had a large dumpster brought in and everything in the house that I did not take with me or the children got was tossed into the dumpater.
All that had been in the planning stages for a few years. When I was in a position to move it took about 2 years of looking for land or a house like we wanted.
Outside of personal items I think the only thing major I brought was the TV set and computers.
True, our closing on both deals moved a couple of times for various reasons and in both cases the money was already in escrow. Closing was just signing the papers and getting the checks. The money didn't move until posession changed.
We had a similar situation when we bought our first house. The sellers rented from us for a month. It all worked out just fine.
Cindy Hamilton
I agree with you about warranties. I don't get them either.
I did do my own home inspection, at least a little one. The house was only 4 years old, I checked that it had copper pipes and copper wiring, and it turned out there were no hiddlen flaws except the 3-way hall light switch was wired wrong. Both switches had to be right for the light to go on. I could fix that. And the powder room light switch is on the same side of the door as the hinges. No big deal.
The one thing that I learned later was that the stoop was sinking. About
2 inches now. This is true for everyone on my side of the street, 15 other homes, and everyone in the next n'hood too, 2 blocks away, but adjacent to the same stream.Is being at the bottom of the hill the reason, that before the houses were built, dirt was washed down from higher on the hill and it wasn't as firmly packed as dirt usually is? Or was it when they dug the hole for the foundations, they didn't sufficiently tamp the dirt where the stoops would be? Or they didn't wait long enough? Or was there some other reason? The 80 other houses not on my side of this street don't have a stoop problem.
Differnt people have had different remedie3s. I just put 2 12x12 pavers in front of the door, and when it sank more, I added another level.
I'd like to use the same style paver in front of the bench I have outside, but I've looked everywhere and they don't have the same color or pattern.
As long as you get a real lease the rental thing is OK. You just don't want some kind of open ended handshake deal.
I hate to say it but that is the kind of thing they could delay. One of them could get covid, or some other disease, or they could decide the price of gasoline is too high and it wouldn't be such a big financial loss to let an RV sit unusued as it would to let a replacement house already bought sit empty. IIUC quite a few people just use their RV in the summer and let it sit in the driveway for months at a time.
I wish there were someway to waive in advance the need for court hearings to evict someone, that they could agree to be out by 12/1 and if they weren't the people who move you in could just move them out, with no extra time possible. I don't think there is. But Snag's story is not too surprising. I have a friend in his late 40's and some guy from *high school* needed a place to stay, and my friend let him stay in his new/old house that he was remodelign before moving in, and he stayed there more than a year paying no rent and my friend might even have paid the heat and lights and water. And when it came time for my mfriend and his wife to move in, the other guy wouldn't go. It took months and iirc my friend had to hire a lwayer.
No one is saying you're a charity case. If they're moving to a trailer, they don't have room for all their things.
I've always thought it silly tha vacating owners and even tenants** have to remove everything.
So I told the seller that he didn't have to get rid of anything he didnt' want. I would take it and either use it or give it to a charity.
He thought Baltimore was too cold and he was moving back to Louisiana where he was from. Social Security or HCFA was going to tranfer him, but if they didn't arrange the transfer promptly he was movign to an apartment first. If he did that, he was going to leave me garden supplies** IF otoh, the transfer was arranged by then, he'd move straight to La. and take the garden supplies but leave me some big pieces of furniture.
**And he did, plus rose fertilizer and a bunch of other things I can't remember without looking in the basement. And I did what I said I would. I didn't trash anything. I either kept it to use it or I took it to Goodwill. He left some books too, sitting on a shelf he'd built in the laundry room, 4 or 5 gardening books, a big thick book on learning Spanish, and others including and a book on restoring furniture. I read that one from cover to cover, and I never would have seen it if he hadn't left it. Eventually I bought new hedge shears because his were small and simple.I had a good job, and without details, money too, and if I bought another house, I'd do it the same way.
That's a small problem but they're probably attached to everything and can't decide. When you move in, you'll find out!!
If you have scads of money, let them leave what they want and you give to Goodwill what you don't want. But you'll have something to use while you are shopping for what you want. If it's furniture there's at least one charity that will come and pick it up. And I assume when they come for furniture they'll take smaller thigns too, yes?
I didn't have mhy own realtor and I dealt with the seller's (two women) and they violated the law or came close. I wanted to rent the house if I coudln't close before my planned move-date, and one of them told me the seller wouldn't want to do that. I didn't repeat my requrest firmly enough to say for sure she violated the law, whch requires any good-faith offer to be relayed to the seller. Instead, I left and called the one person I knew here and got from him two lawyer referrals. By now it was 6 or 7 PM and one didn't answer the phone, but the other did. He's the one who turned out to be a boob. (I didn't dicker with him about the price and I still got bad service.)
A couple months after the sale I arranged an appointment with the two women. I pointed out that the seller was moving to Louisiana, but I was
36 y.o. and everyone I met woudl be buying a first home or sellign and buying a second home. That it was a mistake to treat me badly for the sake of one sale. A few years later I noticed they weren't working as real estate agents anymore.Doesn't it make some sense to do the inspection before agreeing on the price?
??
**Let me give an example of a tenant. A friend of mine had an apartment in the same building I was in and there was molding in the living room and he and his wife had painted the rooms nicely, and she had painted the molding a very nice contrasting pastel color. It looked great and was in great condition. After they moved out, the landlord painted everything white again.
He is paying cash. I missed that there is a closign date already.
Well, the poster didn't say there is a closing date, but that's usually how you get into the situation that the seller needs a few extra days. Now it turns out there isn't even a signed contract. If there is no closing date, then the question is why doesn't the seller want to turn over possession until several days after the closing, instead of closing 3 days later? They need the closing money to buy the RV? That's about the only thing I can figure.
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