I had an interesting situation come up recently. A buyer had made a cash offer on a property owned by a quasi-government privately owned mortgage corporation. The offer was accepted, but the seller delayed in getting the executed contracts delivered.
And so the SELLER asked for an extension on the closing date to ensure enough time to get the title work done. The buyer agreed, the extension was executed, and then signed and stamped by all parties.
Here’s where the story gets interesting: On the day of closing, the buyer wires the money to the title company’s office. But after driving 50 miles, and after having done everything correctly, the buyer is told that the contract fell “out of the system,” and that the offer process would have to start all over again.
Of course I protested. I don’t care about this mysterious “system” and what’s in it and what is not. We had a perfectly good, legally binding contract already and I felt that it could compromise my client’s position to start over with a new contract.
The response I got was the typical” “Do you want to close or not?”
My client acquiesced, and we closed a week later. But the title company held all of the purchase money the whole time!
My client did not understand how he could have paid the money and not owned the house. He had worked hard all of his life and saved every penny to purchase a home for his family. He followed all of the rules. He didn’t try to “beat the system.”
Instead, the “system” beat him.
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