Buyer missed closing date

sheep1234

My house sale was supposed to close two days ago but it did not close , I am the seller of the property . Excuse given to the solicitor was they had trouble drawing down the mortgage funds and It's due to close next week . The buyer is a first time buyer.

To give a bit of background the property went sale agreed at the start of June so they had plenty of time . I'm annoyed about this , I really need the money from the sale and I've moved out of the house , everything is gone. I'm moving abroad and I made sure everything was ready to go for the closing date, I feel they had so much time to sort this .

Is this normal ?

Walter Bishop

Yes it is, closing dates are notorious for 'moving' and you'll frequently get this sort of thing, there's almost nothing you can do so it's best not to let it frustrate you too much.

neonsofa

In fairness to them it was probably out of their hands.

uck51js9zml2yt

Can I interject?
Years ago I remember my parents putting a penalty clause of a certain amount per week that the closing date was missed. Does this still happen?

LirW

We didn't even get a closing date when we signed contracts. We got a call "you can transfer funds now" and once we paid everything got another call with "Congratulations, you can collect the keys now".

philderbeast

We had an issue when drawing down with the mortgage protection insurance insisting my OH see a specialist about a pre-existing condition. This set us back nearly 3 weeks waiting for appointments and waiting for them to sign off before they would release the funds. A real headache considering they didn't ask for this until 2 weeks before closing despite filling out all paperwork with them months before.

um7y1h83ge06nx

We had an issue 2 years ago drawing down funds. Closing date was Friday and was told by the bank on Tuesday that they needed to get a new valuation on the house. I kicked up stink saying I didn't want to sellers to get concerned like you are if we slipped. After putting the bank under serious pressure we just got funds transferred and confirmed before close of business Friday and all was good.

I think it's best not to panic but worth asking the reason for the delay so you know where you stand.

Dee01

I would be more unusual if all went off without a hitch to be honest. I would be fairly sure it's out of the buyers habds and they want closed and in as soon as possible too.

pinkypinky

What's your alternative? Pull out of the deal and look for a new buyer?

Mickeroo

You're lucky it's only been put off by a week.

Peregrinus

pinkypinky wrote: »

What's your alternative? Pull out of the deal and look for a new buyer?

You serve a "time is of the essence" notice giving the buyer a fixed deadline within which to complete the purchase. If he doesn't, he forfeits his deposit. You put the house back on the market, and if you end up selling it for a lower price and the shortfall isn't covered by the deposit you kept, you sue the first buyer for the difference.

It's heavy stuff, failing to complete a purchase when you are contractually obliged.

GGTrek

Peregrinus wrote: »

pinkypinky wrote: »

What's your alternative? Pull out of the deal and look for a new buyer?

You serve a "time is of the essence" notice giving the buyer a fixed deadline within which to complete the purchase. If he doesn't, he forfeits his deposit. You put the house back on the market, and if you end up selling it for a lower price and the shortfall isn't covered by the deposit you kept, you sue the first buyer for the difference.

It's heavy stuff, failing to complete a purchase when you are contractually obliged.

In my opinion not worth doing for just one week of delay, this is probably what solicitor would say. Penalty clause however should have been placed to focus the minds: it is way too common to delay completion in Ireland. Two thirds of my real estate purchases were delayed by the sellers and the cr..py solicitor I had at the time did not request penalty. In one case the delay was so big (more than a month without a date in sight) that time of the essence letter was sent by my solicitor: this greatly focused the minds of the sellers, only drawback is that you are providing almost another month of time when your solicitor sends such letter.

davo10

Peregrinus wrote: »

You serve a "time is of the essence" notice giving the buyer a fixed deadline within which to complete the purchase. If he doesn't, he forfeits his deposit. You put the house back on the market, and if you end up selling it for a lower price and the shortfall isn't covered by the deposit you kept, you sue the first buyer for the difference.

It's heavy stuff, failing to complete a purchase when you are contractually obliged.

And even "heavier stuff" I would imagine, holding on to someone's deposit just because they were a couple of weeks late on completing.

cookiecakes

OP just a word of caution. We were supposed to close on a Friday but there was a problem with the bank and life insurance so it was delayed (It was totally out of our hands at this stage!). Our solicitor advised the vendor's solicitor that it may be delayed by a week. The solicitor then responded that the client had asked them to issue a 28 day closure notice on us (essentially what others have spoken about whereby we had to close within 28 days or we would forfeit our deposit.) we were naturally panicked as we had done all we could do and were terrified of losing the house. Our solicitor was furious as she said delays of up to a week are quite common and that she felt that both the vendor and solicitor were taking her short by going for such an extreme option so quickly and told us not to worry and that both the solicitor and vendor would be sorry they'd gone to such extremes. In the end, she negotiated that the vendor would pay 100% of the property tax which we had previously agreed to split 50/50, due to their ''short-sighted actions'' So just be wary of going nuclear too quickly as it ended up costing our vendor money for even threatening it.

BTW we ended up closing the following Friday.

Peregrinus

davo10 wrote: »

And even "heavier stuff" I would imagine, holding on to someone's deposit just because they were a couple of weeks late on completing.

No. If they complete at all, however late, then the deposit is credited against the purchase price.

You only get to "hold onto" their deposit if they fail to complete, despite being obliged to, and you have to put the house back on the market and sell to someone else. In that situation they lose their deposit, but that's the whole point of deposits; it's to give you an incentive to peform your obligations.

Graham

cookiecakes wrote: »

Our solicitor was furious as she said delays of up to a week are quite common and that she felt that both the vendor and solicitor were taking her short by going for such an extreme option so quickly and told us not to worry and that both the solicitor and vendor would be sorry they'd gone to such extremes. In the end, she negotiated that the vendor would pay 100% of the property tax which we had previously agreed to split 50/50, due to their ''short-sighted actions'' So just be wary of going nuclear too quickly as it ended up costing our vendor money for even threatening it.

BTW we ended up closing the following Friday.

Your post suggests the vendors solicitors actions gave your solicitor some sort of leverage to negotiate around? If that's the case, what was it?

cookiecakes

Graham wrote: »

Your post suggests the vendors solicitors actions gave your solicitor some sort of leverage to negotiate around? If that's the case, what was it?

It was literally professional courtesy. Our solicitor said it was out of line for the solicitor to issue a threat of a closure notice one working day after a missed closing date and should have told her client as much. I just looked up the email and she said ''In view of the upset caused, the vendor has agreed to pay the LPT'' I wasn't in the negotiation with her but I can't imagine there was much else to it. Just that the haste with which they threatened closure notice was seen as unprofessional.

Graham

cookiecakes wrote: »

It was literally professional courtesy. Our solicitor said it was out of line for the solicitor to issue a threat of a closure notice one working day after a missed closing date and should have told her client as much. I just looked up the email and she said ''In view of the upset caused, the vendor has agreed to pay the LPT'' I wasn't in the negotiation with her but I can't imagine there was much else to it. Just that the haste with which they threatened closure notice was seen as unprofessional.

Thanks cookiecakes, I couldn't think other than guilt/apology what would cause a vendor to concede anything.