Has anyone had their home sale contract cancelled..on closing day?

[Birdie dog]

I saw on FB that one of my old work friends house was again for sale. Because the buyers backed out on closing day!

I'd die! We moved a year ago and I never plan on moving agai . So stressful! And I live in an area that sells so well that realtors cold call (4th fastest growing town in the US).

My friend lives about 40 miles inland so their houses sell a little slower but dang! On closing day all of my furniture was gone and my house was empty! I don't even know what you'd do!

 

[tvguy]

What circumstance allowed the buyer to back out?

 

[bcla]

I'd cancelled a contract before. The title company found that the city where the house was located in was misstated. As such, we could back out of the agreement without penalty. I don't think it was on the closing date though.

 

[DisneyFan32WI]

Oh goodness, this thread is timely for me. My brother, who lives a few miles away, is closing on his house tomorrow. The buyers want to do a walk through one last time tomorrow morning (the closing is in the afternoon). Why would they feel the need to do this???

 

[marlynnp]

Oh goodness, this thread is timely for me. My brother, who lives a few miles away, is closing on his house tomorrow. The buyers want to do a walk through one last time tomorrow morning (the closing is in the afternoon). Why would they feel the need to do this???

Have you ever sold or purchased a house??? What do you find odd about a final walk-through?
It's standard to do a walk through right before the sale to make sure everything is is as it is supposed to be.

 

[tvguy]

Oh goodness, this thread is timely for me. My brother, who lives a few miles away, is closing on his house tomorrow. The buyers want to do a walk through one last time tomorrow morning (the closing is in the afternoon). Why would they feel the need to do this???

To make sure the sellers had in fact moved out, and that any repairs that were part of the sales agreement were complete.

 

[CaitlinMarie13]

Oh goodness, this thread is timely for me. My brother, who lives a few miles away, is closing on his house tomorrow. The buyers want to do a walk through one last time tomorrow morning (the closing is in the afternoon). Why would they feel the need to do this???

We did a walkthrough the night before we closed to make sure that all the repairs we asked for were done correctly. It turned out they werent and we delayed closing and made the owner fix everything they said they would. They actually ended up leaving a bunch of stuff in the shed, like a broken washer/dryer and a huge old TV. If we had done a walkthrough again the morning before we closed we would have made her move the stuff out before we took possession of the house, but we trusted them. People suck sometimes. My guess is the buyers of your brothers house want to make sure everything is how its supposed to be so there are no surprises after closing.

 

[RedAngie]

I had my parents' house under contract and the buyers backed out a week before closing. Yeah, I accepted a contingency that the buyers would be able to sell their existing home.

It's under contract again the closing is set for June 24. Hopefully it will go through this time.

 

[Birdie dog]

What circumstance allowed the buyer to back out?

I don't know. The buyers actually offered $10000 above asking price and then cancelled on closing sing day. I'm sure she got to keep her deposit.

 

[mnrose]

It's unusual to walk on closing day, unless something came up at the last minute (title issue, financing,etc). But, usually all that stuff is known a few weeks before actual closing.

We did have someone walk away from a contract at the last possible second (before they would have had to remove all contingencies) because they had not sold their current home (even though they had represented that they would perform WITHOUT the house sale, which is the only reason we accepted their offer). Still makes me mad. We relisted the home, and got an offer that very weekend for more $$. Wouldn't you know it, the buyers who decided to walk away "changed their mind" (they sold their house over that same weekend) and threatened to tie us up in litigation for years if we didn't sell to them. Uh, no. I told them I would not sell the home to them under ANY circumstance because they were unethical and immoral (and yes, I used those words). Ultimately, they backed down. They were dead wrong.

Anyway, that's as close as I came to a last minute walk by the buyers.

 

[monsterkitty]

Oh goodness, this thread is timely for me. My brother, who lives a few miles away, is closing on his house tomorrow. The buyers want to do a walk through one last time tomorrow morning (the closing is in the afternoon). Why would they feel the need to do this???

As others have said, who wouldn't want to do one last walk through before making one of the largest purchases of their lives?

When my DH and I were engaged, he had a condo and I had a house. We decided to sell my small house and keep his condo as a rental. Because I had a field trip and concert planned the day of the closing of my house, I met with my relator and the closing agent the night before to sign my end of the papers. The morning of the closing my relator called me and told me the buyer had just done a final walk through and wanted this this and this fixed/painted or they were backing out. I was panicking and my assistant principal , whom everyone called Dad, sent my husband to my house to fix/paint the items on the list. Those items were not on any other thing, so it wasn't as if I was lazy and not living up to my end of the bargain. They were stupid things that my relator feels that the buyer was going to use as an excuse to back out of the purchase. We were closing on our new house the next day so we had to sell my house.

Everything worked out, but it was very stressful day.

 

[CPanther95]

I've always done a final walk-through on closing day and made sure the owner will not be accessing the property after my walk-through.

Too many things could be removed last minute and I don't want to risk that my contract includes everything that could be taken.

 

[LisaR]

We sold our home For Sale By Owner. A couple came through who claimed the seller backed out of the home they were supposed to purchase an hour before closing. The couple had closed on their own home the next day and were forced to put all their stuff in storage while they started over looking for a new home. They said the house they were buying was being sold by the adult children after the death of their father. The kids apparently got in a huge fight and canceled the closing. The couple wanted to sue but they were a little consumed with house hunting. Sounded like a nightmare!

When we closed on the home we moved into, we were talking to the people at the closing telling them about our own horrible situation with our credit union that we got our mortgage through. At one point they refused to believe my DH works for the company he works for because they are headquartered in a different state than where we live. Really? He's worked there for 38 years and the company has people living everywhere around the globe. The HR department called DH and told him "these people are absolutely crazy!" Anyway, the title people then told us that our credit union called twice while people were literally in the middle of their closing because they "found something " and denied their mortgage. I can't even imagine. Really wish we hadn't gone with them. So much for trying to give our business to a local company.

 

[Tozzie]

It's unusual to walk on closing day, unless something came up at the last minute (title issue, financing,etc). But, usually all that stuff is known a few weeks before actual closing.

We did have someone walk away from a contract at the last possible second (before they would have had to remove all contingencies) because they had not sold their current home (even though they had represented that they would perform WITHOUT the house sale, which is the only reason we accepted their offer). Still makes me mad. We relisted the home, and got an offer that very weekend for more $$. Wouldn't you know it, the buyers who decided to walk away "changed their mind" (they sold their house over that same weekend) and threatened to tie us up in litigation for years if we didn't sell to them. Uh, no. I told them I would not sell the home to them under ANY circumstance because they were unethical and immoral (and yes, I used those words). Ultimately, they backed down. They were dead wrong.
Anyway, that's as close as I came to a last minute walk by the buyers.

Where you live it may be unusual to walk through on closing but not where I live the walk through is the day of closing or the day before, it is also standard where i live that the sellers have 5 days to hand over the keys and money is left in escrow should any problems arise

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Oh goodness, this thread is timely for me. My brother, who lives a few miles away, is closing on his house tomorrow. The buyers want to do a walk through one last time tomorrow morning (the closing is in the afternoon). Why would they feel the need to do this???

That is standard and normal.

 

[winterman]

About an hour before the closing on my house, I got a call from my realtor. She said that we had not gotten approval from the town to subdivide the lot on which the house was built. (Our previous house was on 6 acres and we took 2 to put the new house on.) I had a moment of panic but I knew that we had gotten approval. She was able to verify that so closing went on as scheduled.

 

[jerseygal]

I've always done a final walk-through on closing day and made sure the owner will not be accessing the property after my walk-through.

Too many things could be removed last minute and I don't want to risk that my contract includes everything that could be taken.

We do a thorough "walk through" night before and a "quick" walk through immediately before closing. Unfortunately, "Buyer beware"!

 

[QueenIsabella]

We always did a "final walk-through" on the morning of the closing. You never know if the people took the fridge they were supposed to leave, or damaged something, or some other problem.

On one house we bought, we did the final walk-through on closing day. The sellers just started packing THAT MORNING! It was clear we weren't going to be occupying the house when we bought it. They ended up using the entire weekend to move out (closing was on a Friday), and left a huge mess behind. We were pretty peeved. OTOH, they also left behind a bunch of stuff with some value, so we eventually just called it a day. Luckily, we hadn't sold our old house, so we did have a place to live.

 

[barkley]

I threatened to the day before closing.

we had entered into contract for a home in a new development. we were scheduled to do the 'final' walk through the day before closing to make sure everything on the punch list was done. I had scheduled the appointment a few weeks prior and confirmed it multiple times b/c I had a gut feeling something would go wrong (there was a battle going on in the on-site sales office between 2 of the sales reps-and the one we weren't working with struck me as someone who would pull something to make the other look bad, and he was the one who had supposedly scheduled our walk through).

dh and I take the morning off work and sure enough no one shows. I had the direct number for the guy who did the walkthroughs and he told me it wasn't scheduled-and he was totally booked w/ other mid build inspections. I called the developer's office and told them that unless someone met us on site within 30 minutes I would call my lender and kill the whole deal. 10 minutes later the guy who was supposed to do the walk through with us showed up.

 

[MIGrandma]

Not me, but our neighbors cancelled purchasing a house on the closing day. They said there were too many things wrong with the house.

Seems like those things would have been addressed before agreeing to purchase the house.

We had the option to cancel the purchase of our land up north on the day we closed. The closing was done in a lawyer's office and they did talk to us about the property line dispute and said we could back out if we wanted to. The property was 30 acres and there was a dispute about where the property line was supposed to be at one corner. DH had investigated it and it was less than an acre, and in the wooded area where we weren't planning to really do anything with it anyway. So we continued with the sale as we loved the property otherwise. This was almost 9 years ago.