In a recent post about Counting Chickens Before They're Hatched, I mentioned that I feeling pretty good about things until the inspection came along and had a lot of stuff on there that the Seller really hadn't expected.
Of course, the Seller had all their money tied up in the house and, to make matters even more interesting, the Sellers had moved out of the area and weren't planing on coming back. So here we were with lots of little and not-so-little repair items, a Seller with no money (yet) and me facing the possibility of coordinating multiple contractors to do various things around the house. Not pretty.
Even if the Seller had money, they had already given up the max the lender would allow in closing help at the time of the offer. You see, the buyer wanted every last nickel out of the deal and really didn't have a lot of cash to complete the purchase anyway. So they put all the closing help they could get in the offer and the Seller, wanting to sell the house, agreed.
Now, with the inspection completed there was no more money to give and the Seller (or me, for that matter) didn't want to mess around calling various contractors to fix what the buyer wanted fixed.
We came up with two solutions: release the contract and give the buyer they're earnest money back or negotiate a lower sales price and proportionately lower closing costs credit and sell the house in "as is" condition -- no repairs.
I guess the buyer really wanted the house, after all. They agreed to accept the lower sales price and the house in "as is" condition with no repairs.
To my way of thinking this was a kind of win-win solution. The buyer gets a less expensive house with a smaller mortgage payment and, even though there were repair issues, the buyer evidently can deal with it. The seller gets to sell their house with out the headache of repairs. The Realtor makes out because he doesn't have to coordinate all the repairs....and might even get paid sooner rather than later.
Of course, the fat lady hasn't sung yet. We haven't gone to settlement and since the Sellers are out of town they have to get documents signed and notarized and back to the title company up here for everything to get done.
We are getting closer, though.
I guess what I've learned from this is that it isn't always the best thing to wring every last penny from the Seller right at the time of the offer. Maybe leaving some to take care of inspection issues might work. I'm sure not every Seller could or would lower their selling price.
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