Expert: John - 10/15/2007

Question
hi,  my husband and i put our coop for sale on may 23 2006 we explained to the buyer before actually signing the contract that we were leaving the country and needed to get this done as quickly as possiblel, They assured us there would be no problem . we signed a contract that the closing would take place 90 days from then. The time came and went and nothing, we didnt hear a word from the coop board and teh buyers kept stringing us along saying this was almost a done deal (we werent able to leave the country because of this and that is a whole other story to financial hardship that we suffered ) now we were told the closing would take place in around nov and even that came and went with nothing. by jan we contacted our attorney and let him know that we wanted out of this contract since is definitly had gone beyond the 90 days agreed upon. he said he would take care of it , we didnt hear from him till april when we called him again and told him our request , again he assured us he would take care of it. in may i personally went to the buyers and let them know that we didnt want to go through with this and wanted to return their escrow money.they said they understood. but once again nothing, by june , or july we were contacted by our attorney that the coop had lost all our paperwork, we couldnt understand what  was going on , now on sept 19 when  our attorney finally notified the buyers attorney of our intention to end the contract , they said they were just interviewed by the board and were planning on going through with the contract anyhow. I dont understand how they have a right to do this a year later when the contract specifically stated 90 days and now its a year later. this was not an open contract to go through whenever this was very specific, do we have the right to back out ? THANKS I REALLY HOPE YOU CAN HELP WITH SOME ADVICE

Answer
Hello,
I found your question in the question pool and may be able to help you.

Why did you wait this long?????

I hope you see why you never sell by yourself and why you use a Realtor.
A Realtor would have never left this happen.

OK, your rights.  And this all depends on where you live.

First, Get a new real estate attorney.  Not an attorney, a real estate attorney.

The bigger question is do you want to go ahead with the sell or not.

If not, have the new real estate attorney cancel the sell.

I see no reason why you can not cancel and why you can not even keep the deposit.

John