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My fiance and I recently went under contract with a home in Springfield MO. We asked that they put up a fence and fix the garage, so they raised the asking price and added it to the list of amenities. 3 weeks ago my fiance broke up with me and told me that he didn't want to buy the house anymore. We are 23 and 22 and don't have the best jobs so we wouldn't be able to qualify on our own. We notified the sellers immediately so they could put the house back up on the market, and they have been threatening to sue us ever since. I have tried everything to get us out of this. Our loan was contingent upon me being in school to defer my student loans, so I was not enrolled in school for the summer. Then they still were going to give us the loan. The lender spoke with the legal department and they said that the only way they could deny us the loan was if one of us had quit our jobs. So I put in my 2 weeks with my job and decided to move to St. Louis to live with my parents for a little while until I got all of this figured out. So we signed the mutual release after we were denied our loan and the sellers refuse to sign it and say that we will be hearing from their attorney soon. My Realtor told me that they could sue us for 20% of the house sales price, but other people are telling me 10%.
How much can they sue us for and will they have a good case against us?
I thought about asking my family for the money to see if we could settle out of court, would that be a reasonable move?
BTW... the house that they are suing us for is $89,000, and the house was willed to them, they lost money by putting up the fence and fixing the garage about ($4000-5000) should we offer them the money to compensate them for the improvements to the house or since they raised the asking price and added it to the amenities, should we even worry about that.
I am in desperate need of some legal advice!!!! Please help
It sounds like you VOLUNTARILY sabotaged your financing by quitting your job. The sale was not contingent on you actually being married, so the seller has every right to sue YOU and HER for breach of contract.
Definitely seek an attorney's advice on this. I'll take a guess, though, and say about the only thing the seller could get from you as liquidated damages is the good faith binder deposit. But, then again, if you're still within your financing contingency period, they may get nothing. It really depends on how much money is at stake with your binder deposit, and if you even would fight that.
A good "moral lesson" here, if I may be so bold, is that you probably shouldn't have gotten under contract for purchasing a house until you had your girlfriend "under contract" and had been married. Get your relationship in order first, then add on the extra stuff after you've had a chance to "be married" for a few years. There's certainly no law against buying a house with a "committed partner", but as you see, it's just a disaster waiting to happen, if things don't work out. JMHO
Remind the seller that they can't sell the house with any legal issues pending, and that if they want to sell it before the summer market is over, they best better just move on and put it back active.
I would take your EMD and be done with it--if I were the seller.
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