No, not these people... We know who they are.
Some of you may have heard about our ongoing saga with the sale of our house. Maybe a month ago a couple about our age came and saw our place. They liked it. A lot. And told us right then and there that they wanted to buy it but didn’t have much money. It turns out he’s a grad student and she’s a stay-at-home mom, so yeah, they don’t have much income. Oh, and they have a one year old daughter.
So a couple days later we get an offer to purchase. Our attorney, Jason, calls up and says there’re some weird things with it and the price is pretty low. Really low. So low that we don’t even consider writing a counter offer since the couple said that even that was pushing their finances.
Fast forward a couple weeks… we get an email from them saying that they are still interested and can stretch themselves a bit more and add $8000 to their offer plus another $2000 that would be paid at closing on the side outside of the sale price. The additional $8000 gets them to the highest price their lenders says that they will be approved so the $2000 is a secret from the bank. The total price is still low, as low as we’d consider going at this time, but we are to the point where we just want to be done with it so we say sure. We have Jason draft up the side agreement and get together with the couple in the evening to sign that and the offer to purchase. They asked about closing costs and we said we’d cover what sellers normally cover. Everything seems fine.
The next morning we have an email from them saying that their lender needs to have their mom sign the offer to purchase because she will be a co-signer on the loan. This is news to us. We tell them that that’s not really our responsibility… go ahead and fax her the forms so she can sign them so the lender can get rolling with approving their financing. We feel like there’s a little urgency to get this done because the couple is going on vacation and won’t be back until July 6th. Shortly thereafter we get an email from the lender saying something like “Congratulations!” Buried in this email is this little juicy bit where he writes:
“Also, please be aware that (Family X) is going to be asking for seller credits to assist them in getting the loan. They are going to be asking for seller credits of $2000.00 in order to make the numbers work for them.”
Huh? (Or in today’s parlance “WTF?”) You didn’t think to mention this BEFORE we signed the offer? I forward this on to Jason. He gets back to me shortly and says that it’s pretty normal that buyers will ask for credits for closing BUT THAT THEY ALWAYS OFFER TO INCREASE THE PURCHASE PRICE! Jason’s been doing this for 15 years and says this is the first time he’s ever seen this happen and that we need “to talk with these people.”
So we do. They are in transit to Detroit via Chicago. We email them three options where we would pay their $2000. 1) They simply add another $2000 to the side agreement (that the bank doesn’t know about!) 2) They move up the closing date a few weeks, waive their right to the inspection contingency and pay us an additional $1000 (that the bank doesn’t know about) in a year. 3) They waive their right to the inspection contingency and pay us an additional $1000 in this silly side agreement at closing (that the bank doesn’t know about!) All of these were deemed perfectly reasonable and legal by Jason and probably “make the numbers work” for the buyer.
What do they do? We get this response:
"We just talked it over with my mom and she's not willing to sign the contract. We have sent the earnest money check out, so we will be canceling it. None of your options worked for her."
Since none of the options actually increased their total expenses beyond what they had already legally agreed to (and two of them actually decreased them) we felt that they we were being quite reasonable. Weren’t we?
It’s probably better off that this all fell apart now rather than later. Neither of us felt too good about the chances of a one-income graduate student couple getting approved for a mortgage. And Jason said he couldn’t stand dealing with people who so clearly didn’t know what they were doing.
But, I wouldn’t be too surprised if we get another offer from them after they get back from vacation… They clearly want our house.
