For Sale By Owner: Getting the contract ready

Let me preface this blog entry with: we were in a time crunch to close on the house because our lease was up at the end of the next month [We were negotiating at the end June and our lease ended July 31]. Our lender had said that to get everything in order by that deadline would require everything to go smoothly, not to mention we wanted to close earlier. [We were stressed!]

So at this point we had come to an agreed price, but we needed to make it official. What that meant to the sellers is that we needed to have a contract drawn up by a lawyer. No big deal, right? Wrong!

The timing was awful; they wanted the offer ready by Monday-it was Friday! I was headed up to NYC for a conference and my father-in-law was coming into town for the weekend to go see the Phillies play with my husband. We scrambled (or I should say my husband did, I was not very available over the weekend) and got everything in order by noon on Monday.

Then we waited for them to simply sign and return the contract. Monday night: No response. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock… Tuesday: No Response…


[Note Copyright]

Most of Wednesday had gone by before we heard from the sellers and they were not happy with the contract. Their reasoning was absurd [in my opinion]: The copyright for the contract that we presented to them was 2000. The document had since been updated.

We asked them how it was updated and what the problems were with this 2000 document. Their response: The new contracts are 8 pages long (instead of 6 which as far as I can tell is due to font size and formatting!) and instead of listing the appliances included, there is a check box for the appliances. This was their sticking point, they were not willing to go through with anything without that check box!!


[Check box from new contract=Must Have]

We were in a rush and this seemed so unnecessary! Our rental lease was up at the end of the month. The minimum of 2-3 weeks that our lenders needed to get the documents ready for closing was quickly approaching the end of the month as things were getting pushed later and later. And more importantly [to us and nobody else], we wanted to refinish the floor before we move in. I cannot imagine trying to refinish floors while we are living in the house… I think it might just be impossible.

Until we got the new contract, nothing was going to happen [as we know by now, Mr. and Mrs. Seller were not the type to get things done].

Question: Have you recently bought a house? Did it seem like you were going in circles with your sellers?