How would this be possible? The only way the seller would owe the money at closing is if the finance company held a lien -- which every good finance company would have.
I just don't understand how it got that far -- if there was a lien, it was publicly recorded. Isn't it the broker's or the escrow company's job to get all the ducks in line for closing and to search the public record to prepare a statement of costs at closing? There's no way the sellers should have been surprised.
I don't really know if we have all the information. I don't even know if there was a broker involved here. But there's no way a deal should get to the point where the entire deal depends on the seller bringing a check to the closing. Maybe that's traditionally how it works, but it shouldn't. The money should go into escrow well before the end stages of the deal. You pay a broker 10 to 15 percent an escrow company hundreds of dollars for a reason. This should never never happen.
Now, maybe the broker gave the buyer clear notice in March that the seller was upside down, and that the deal would be contingent on the seller delivering a check at closing. If that happened, and the buyer decided to take the risk that sellers were honorable people, it's a different story.