Well we have a price pinned down on the property in Puerto Rico. That was part 1. Now we are going back and forth on a closing date. Contract negotiations are sometimes hard to come to an agreement on.
I figured we would come up against a barrier here as I had initally put out a closing date of June 15th. Admittedly that is pretty far out. They’ve come back and said they’d only be willing to go 90 days which puts us in March. By my calculations we might be able to swing April without having to get too creative.
We still need to aquire the assitance of a lawyer to check out all the paperwork and details that Cassie and I don’t have the abilty to look at. This coupled with our jobs as well as getting all our finances in order will mean we have to come back with a date further out.
We say June 15th they say March maybe we can see if they’ll do May. Or we can go back to closer to our initial price that we offered and do it closer to their time frame…the choice is between time or money. Give us more time, we’ll give them more money. Less time, less money.
We also kind of feel like the real estate agent isn’t doing us too many favors. I think we can make this work, but we might have to talk to the owners directly to make something that works for all of us. The agent seems to like being in the position of keeping us in the dark.
RA working for you or THEM, or herself/himself???
It is the listing (seller’s) real estate agent…we don’t have one at this time. But, we might hire one!
I’d go with giving them the furthest out date they want and then you can work with our friend David (I’ll talk to him soon or someone he recommends) and that date will magically get pushed out when they have trouble verifiying certain things. (In other words you must pretend to be cooperative, be apologetic, but work it so it is someone else’s “fault” that things are delayed. This will not be hard to do. I have found this tactic to work well to get what you need in Puerto Rico) Just make sure that when you give them the date you specify 1) the date you are trying for, 2) that certain things must be verified by the authorities on the subject before you close – like a layver must verify/clear the titles, an inspector must give you a written report and problems must be worked out before closing etc) I would not rely on the realtor (who has no interest in this) to convey the information, I would snail mail it or email it to the realtor in spanish/english for the owners to SIGN. Doing this will probably buy you a couple weeks or more since it is the holidays. As a fudge factor You could say that if an extension of the closing date is required you will show good faith by placing a certain amount of $ in escrow and they will in turn sign an extension for the new closing date. The only problem we had was that Oriental Mortgage took some time that popped us beyond the closing date – we bought the house xmas and the holidays messed things up and things took a little longer. We had to get the extension thing. I think you can pretty much count on it closing a month later than you think it will. If you are going to have the house inspected (we didn’t) that alone may buy you a bunch of time. If you have it surveyed that will buy some time. You can agree and then it will get bumped out anyway – just don’t make it be your “fault.” Things here move along on their own schedule and they know it!
KK one smart lady!