{"id":25,"date":"2005-02-04T10:54:56","date_gmt":"2005-02-04T14:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/02\/04\/the-fat-lady-sang\/"},"modified":"2005-02-04T10:54:56","modified_gmt":"2005-02-04T14:54:56","slug":"the-fat-lady-sang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/02\/04\/the-fat-lady-sang\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fat Lady Sang"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yep, it’s over. I am no longer a property owner. Of course, as with all things involving lawyers and real estate brokers (perhaps two of the least honest professions in the world after car salesmen), there were complications. We signed the Intent to Buy in early December. We signed the Purchase and Sale in mid-December. That gave everybody over a month and a half to prepare for the closing.<\/P>
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We did our part by getting the 6-d certificate, fire inspection certificate, copies of tax bills and certificates of insurance. But throughout the process, when I faxed paperwork or called the buyer’s lawyer to ask questions – they never responded. Finally, just two days before closing I left the nastiest of nasty messages (I let my inner gay out and got all bitchy on their ass). An hour or so later they called back. Instead of an apology, they just said they assumed my attorney would ask the questions on my behalf.<\/P>
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Gee, if that was the case, why would I have placed 6 phone calls and sent 3 faxes myself…each time stating “Please call me back to confirm receipt of this fas (or voicemail)”?<\/P>
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Anyway, they said we were all set to close yesterday (although they did bump it back a half hour for some reason.<\/P>
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Matt and I arrived a few minutes early and were directed to a back room since the receptionist didn’t know where to put us because the buyer’s idiot lawyer (the one who never returned my calls or faxes) neglected to reserve a conference room for the closing that had been scheduled for 45 days. When their attorney arrived, we were able to meet him for the first time: the official Doogie Howser of the legal profession. I swear he looked 18, though he must have been 26 or so – fresh with acne and a 28 inch waist.<\/P>
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Fortunately, the paper-signing process went fine. It was quite simple and quick. But then when all was said and done, Doogie told us that we could not have our money because the transaction needed to be “registered” and that the buyer’s bank had one last item they needed to submit. He said he could lose his license if we cashed the check before they received this mysterious item from the buyer’s bank. He told us the check should be ready by 1PM and that he’d call us when it’s ready. So, I ended up having to waste a full personal day from work (I had intended on returning after the closing for a half day).<\/P>
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Of course, 1PM came and went without a call. Then 2PM came and went without a call. During that time, we also realized that Doogie forgot to get the keys from us so the buyers had no way of going to their new home. ugh. We called the lawyer and the receptionist kept saying he was in meetings or on the phone.* We tried two other times until about 3:30PM.<\/P>
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Finally, we called our lawyer since we were concerned that the transaction was over and we never got our money. Shortly thereafter, the buyer’s attorney called us and said the check was ready (and acted like he had done us a huge favor in doing so). Unfortunately, by the time we could get there to pick it up, our banks were closed and we weren’t able to deposit the check.<\/P>
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But it’s over! Chapter closed.<\/P>
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*While were were at the office that morning we caught the receptionist answering calls and trying to connect them to attornies only to have the attornies tell her to tell the caller that they’re out of the office. So the receptionist would go back on line and tell the callers that the lawyers they were trying to reach were on the phone or in a meeting. So, I’m sure she did this with us.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yep, it’s over. I am no longer a property owner. Of course, as with all things involving lawyers and real estate brokers (perhaps two of the least honest professions in the world after car salesmen), there were complications. We signed the Intent to Buy in early December. We signed the Purchase and Sale in mid-December. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}