The Long Story of a Short Sale

Many of you know we put an offer in on a short sale Feb 19th. 4 looooong months ago. We rented our home to dear friends who are taking very good care of it and for the past 2 months have lived in a variety of places out of suitcases. I counted 14 offers from people to live with them when they heard about our situation - the kindness we've been shown absolutely overwhelms me. We stayed with our dear, patient loving friends as a base camp and have visited family or house sat about every other week. Three preschoolers, living out of suitcases, changing locations/toys/beds every week - I don't need to explain that chaos to you. I can't complain too much about this since we are simply sleeping in the bed we've made, so I will hold my tongue and simply say....I am counting down the minutes until this ends.

I was supposed to end today. TODAY. It didn't.

The bank approved our offer three weeks ago (to say that was a happy day is an understatement) and we were set to close yesterday at 11:00. A week ago at inspection it turns out the first thing listed on the MLS - central AC - is not there. "A mistake," the selling realtor says, "People make mistakes." Oh, I'm sure - a $6,000 mistake. After much deliberation we let that slide. It's still a great house for a great price. However, we went for a final walk through Friday morning and they had stripped the home of all window coverings and hardware - $3000 worth of custom window coverings - that were in the contract to be included. The husband was willing to bring them back, the ex-wife was not. Shocked that they really thought they could get away with this, we said we would walk due to breach of contract. It wasn't the curtains of course, it was the principle. We felt completely peacful about walking (shocking in our situation, but we did) and I will forever be grateful for that. We informed them of this and they returned the window coverings. At this point we missed the initial closing time, but the Title company offered to meet us anywhere, anytime to close. The husband agreed, the ex-wife said, "No."

No closing means no possesion means no move. Which was planned for 1:00 today. We cancelled two wards of people to help us move and our truck rental. It is simply unbelievable this is happening.

After some professional advice we decided to do all our paperwork to close today. So we met around our table with the title company, the poor husband, both realtors and signed our lives and firstborn away. There was just one person who has not signed and is not returning calls. I'll give you one guess who that is, but you won't need it.

So, here we sit.

Waiting for her to sign and figuring out if we can/should take legal action.

That is the long story of the short sale without an ending. We'll keep you posted.