Saturday, September 16, 2006 - Satisfied Seller, now a Frustrated Buyer

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a frustrated seller whose house sale didn't go as he wished. Well, settlement on his home went very smoothly yesterday and we were in and out of the settlement office in about an hour.

However, as you may remember, we were to go from the selling-settlement to the buying-settlement on his new house. Unfortunately, the "everything is done, no obstacles remaining, paperwork delivered to title office" transaction came to a screeching halt late Thursday afternoon. I called the title office to find out when I'd get a preliminary settlement statement just to find out that a major title issue had been discovered. Tuesday. TUESDAY!!!

Apparently the title company had spent two days trying to reach the seller, who is uncommunicative. It will take as much as 60 days to cure the title. Needless to say, my client is pretty upset, but he'll live with it. He's already moved into the house and will pay rent to the seller until things are settled. The listing agent is working hard at taking care of the outstanding title issues, so we may get to settlement sooner than 60 days.

I hope so.

(C) 2006 Susan Pruden.