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Let me preface by saying I am no longer interested in selling our house. We have been trying for 3 months now and home prices in our SC area have gone up 10 to 30k since we started this and we just lost our 2.5% rate. We are choosing to remodel our current home instead and I am trying to find a way out of a purchase agreement I did not know existed.
On FRIDAY APRIL 2, we received an offer on our home. the same day we sent an offer on a new home that could only close on June 3 at the earliest due to renters still living there.
The expiration on the offer on our home was April 2, 6pm.
We crossed out the closing date of May 12 and changed to June 3. We also crossed out the earnest money amount and changed it from $500 to $1,000. We did not initial these changes and we did not change the expiration date of April 2, 6pm. My husband and I signed this offer at 9:30pm April 2.
The next afternoon (Saturday), our realtor said our home buyer WOULD WALK if we couldn't close earlier than June 3. We said, if you can get the renters out of the house we want to buy then sure (we knew this wasn't possible, so we figured our buyer was gone).
SATURDAY 5:30pm our offer on the new home is rejected (despite offering 5k over). We had already decided that would be our last chance and we started picking out paint colors for our current home to reno. We would call our agent on Tuesday April 6 to let him know we were taking our home off the market (it was Easter weekend so we did not call him immediately).
MONDAY APRIL 5 9pm: as we are driving home from out of town, we receive a "next steps" email saying what events will take place before closing on our house. this email is sent by an assistant at the real estate brokerage. We assumed it was a mistake because our buyers said they would walk if we did a june closing. We called our agent on Tuesday telling him we are staying in our home and he says "Well, you're under contract. they could force you to sell your house."
W....T.....F.....
So now i begin to look for any and all errors in this contract that may set us free. this is what i believe i found.
The crossed out sections were never initialed by us or the buyer.
Our "counter-offer" with the crossed out sections was signed at 9:30pm and sent to the buyer the next day (Saturday) with an expiration date still saying 6pm Friday. Meaning, the offer had expired and there's no way she could've accepted it.
Even if she did, we never received a copy of the contract (if one exists) where she initialed/signed next to the new closing date saying that was ok. The buyer's only signature on the contract is from her original offer. She never signed after changes were made.
our realtor is now meeting with his legal team to "mitigate our liability" because the buyer is being difficult and "wants to proceed to closing". i think he just wants his commission and is trying to make us believe this junk contract is legal and binding. he has been sloppy this whole time (we have sent offers and counter-offers about 6 times with this guy) and i think it will finally bite him in the behind.
the buyer has not paid for anything. no inspections, appraisals, etc. we had a previous inspection that she looked at in lieu of getting her own. I do not understand why she can't just walk away having only lost a couple days looking for a home. nothing else.
Please tell me i have grounds to believe this contract is not legal and binding and i can stay in my home!!!
Do i have grounds to convince a judge that i do not have to sell my home?? (if it goes that far)
At least in our area the expiration date on the offer doesn’t really matter to you. That’s as long as the buyer was bound to it but if both parties still want to proceed later it does not void the offer.
The important questions I would try to find out is did the buyer sign your counter offer? You need to see that and should get a copy of it. And did the buyer send earnest money? In our contracts that’s due within a few days of signing. If so you need the dates on those actions and probably need to start consulting an attorney if you feel your agent is not helping you. Time may be of the essence here.
We've now heard that the buyer signed our counter offer at 1pm on Saturday and our agent neglected to tell us or send us a copy of that. However, the counter offer had still technically expired and we do not want to move forward with the transaction. I understand that time can be ignored if both parties are willing to move forward but as of saturday, we were not.
If that’s true they signed it the same day you did, So again I’m not sure I would hang my hat on that.
If you still want out, you probably need to sign and send some kind of request to the buyer to cancel/rescind this purchase agreement ASAP before the buyer incurs any costs or damages that may cost you more money. Buyer needs to be put on notice that you are no longer wanting to sell.
Time is of the essence here. They may be putting plans together and writing checks. If your agent isn’t responding with options you need to make some calls today and get yourself to an attorney. Don’t wait.
In my area, there would be no executed offer since the seller signed an expired offer. There would need to be an addendum to extend the offer expiration date. Out here, there is no mutual acceptance, but not sure how they define things in your state.
We don't cross things over out here either since it makes things messy and hard to determine if everything was agreed to making things murky for mutual acceptance.
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