Still Waiting ...

Warning: A minor rant.

Why do people have to be so diffcult? (that was a rhetorical question).

When the house inspection turned up a few issues, the sellers initially jumped all over volunteering to take care of all these things. I was overwhelmed with gratitue, and even asked my agent to tell their agent how grateful I was, how I appreciated their efforts.

But in the last week they've only done one thing I didn't ask (or need) them to do, and haven't ponied up on the rest of the deals. Then when I ask them to do what they said, I get flak from their agent, saying 'Look, my clients have done a lot for you.' Really? What? Failed to disclose important defects, then promise to fix them, then not do it?

There was an issue with the furnace which they volunteered to have fixed, and to provide me with a copy of the invoice so I could see exactly what the problem was and what was done to fix it. When they finally sent it yesterday, it was a fax cover sheet from their agent's realty company with the words "furnace fixed" and an amount I could barely read scawled on the bottom. Nothing else. As I pointed out to my agent, in a couple weeks I have to live with this furnace - I'd like to know what caused the problem, and what was done to fix it. That doesn't seem too much to ask. I initially volunteered to have the furnace looked at myself, for that very reason - I told my agent, if I have someone come in and I'm there, then I'll know exactly what was what. But when the sellers jumped all over offering instead, we opted to let them take care of it. And now I have no information on what the problem was or even how it was fixed ... for all I know it could have been their cousin's uncle Bob who came in and mumbled over the thing for five minutes and declared it fixed, whether it was or not.

There was another repair issue - the water in the closet from the frozen gutter - they said they'd get an estimate on it, then either claim it on their homeowners' insurance, or credit me the estimate amount at closing. That was a week ago yesterday. Over the weeked my agent advised me that the sellers' agent told her that they'd stuck a dehumidifier in the closet, it was all dried up, and so the problem was resolved. I said, umm, no? (especially in light of the fact that three days after the inspection they decided to enlighten me as to the fact that that 'happens every winter' - so obviously it's not resolved).

That's not what they said they'd do. Reluctantly my agent (more on her later) contacted the sellers' agent back and reminded him of their promise, and now - a week later - they are supposed to be finally dealing with this issue.

We could have closed this week - this week - all my ducks are in a row. I'm a horrible procrastinator and hate making phone calls, but I did everything I needed to do to have made a closing possible in two weeks from the date our offer was accepted. But I'm waiting on other people who won't do what they said.

Speaking of which ... my buyer is dragging his feet as well. I told him two weeks ago that we hoped to close on the new house by the end of this week, and they wanted me to close on the old house first, so he had two weeks to get the closing lined up. He said 'no problem.'

Guess what I found out yesterday. Nothing's been done toward making that happen yet. The title attorney hasn't even been contacted yet to start the procedure (like doing the title search, for one thing). Lovely.

So there's no chance we can close this week and get the keys by Friday as we'd hoped. We planned to move next Saturday, the 21st, and had people already lined up to help us that day. But if these people don't get their heads out of their collective asses and get things moving, we're not even going to be able to do that.

I undertand how frustrating these processes can be, but it's doubly frustrating when I did everything I was supposed to do, and did it quickly, and now I'm waiting on other people who are just screwing around not bothering to keep their word. Growl.

My agent's giving me grief too ... it's like, once an offer was being considered she 'turned,' and hasn't really seemed to be working for me since. Several times she's made comments that directly convey more concern for the sellers than for me. When I thought the whole deal was falling apart because my buyer was backing out, and I told her I needed a little time to try to resolve that issue, she got all spiky and one of the first things she threw at me was, did I understand how that was going to effect the sellers if I backed out of the deal now - these poor people who had their house on the market two years, and now thought they had a sale, to pull the rug out from under them that way would be cruel of me. Never mind that I was facing being stuck with two mortgages I couldn't afford - she didn't care about that, only about how the sellers would feel.

Same thing's been going on with the problems with the house. Her whole take on it seems to be, from her comments to me, that I'm just nitpicking, and I should just ignore all these semi-major issues that turned up in the inspection, chalk it up to "there's going to be something wrong with every house," and move on. Never mind the fact that they misrepresented or didn't reveal at all several important things on their property disclosure. I'm not stupid - I know there are going to be little things that come up in any house. But these weren't "little things." And, the sellers promising to do things, then not doing them, has delayed us past the point of my being able to do anything about it myself, as my agent reminded me recently I only have 'so many days' to address issues that turn up in the inspection. Well, if I hadn't been waiting for other people to renege on their promises, I could have had these things done by now!

Sigh. Okay. I know it'll all work out eventually - in a month this'll all be water under the bridge, and we'll be moved and settling in. But ... it's still very frustrating in the moment.