Expert: Dick Dennis - 7/21/2006

Question
My husband and I are selling our home ourselves.  We did obtain an attorney.  We have a buyer.  We signed the agreement of sale.  We did this in our home with the buyer.  We had 4 copies.  We took one copy to our lawyer and the buyer took 3.  We made a few changes on the agreement.  One was the settlement date.  We crossed out August and put July 7th.  This was the date we all agreed upon.  We all 3 intialled where we crossed out.  On the morning of July 7th we got a phone call from the buyer saying there was a problem and settlement would be delayed.  Now we are on July 21st and we still have not settled.  The mortgage company says there agreement of sale says just July and not July 7th.  As I said we had 4 copies going around that we made the change on and all intialled.  They finally said settlement would be July 24th and our lawyer made an andendum asking for $1000. more for damages.  My question is, can we do that?  The mortgage company is acting like we are wrong and maybe we forged the agreement of sale.  

Answer
You are in the process of learning two lessons, Kim. 1. A good Realtor is worth his/her weight in gold. All this you have suffered through would never have happened with an expert real estate agent (the buyer would have received only one copy of the purchase agreement, for one). And the purchase agreement retained by the real estate agent is the official original and THAT is the one that counts. That is the one that is copied by the escrow/closing company. You got an attorney all right, but it was AFTER you screwed up the paperwork.

You will never see a professional Realtor ever cross off anything on a purchase agreement because by doing so, it negates the original agreement and a counter offer must now be written, even with the parties initialing the change.

The second lesson is: In real estate, if it is not in writing, it was never said.

Yes, your attorney I think is being very lenient. Only asking for $1,000 as damages is very reasonable. It is obvious someone was not controlling the reins in this transaction to make sure the horse was going in the right direction. I recommend you follow your attorney's directions.

I do wish you well, Amanda.

Dick Dennis            dixiedee13@aol.com