Closing Has Been Delayed

The buyer's lender did not get stuff done in time. The loan is still going to go through, but it is "in line for funding," whatever that means, instead of "funded." So our new closing date is Tuesday, although it could close as early as Monday.

The buyer had his final inspection and everything was ok except for no hot water. The house has an electric water heater and I know for a fact the circuit breaker for that is turned off. I don't know why it is, but I know yesterday when I was out there, I had to check the circuit box to make sure the blanks were installed, and I noticed that one particular breaker was off. Since I didn't need hot water at the place, I left it off. We told the buyer and they are ok with that.

Also yesterday, I picked up my lockbox, hid the key outside, and put the other copies of the keys inside. My agent passed this info on to the buyer, which is when they went to do their final inspection.

One thing I am curious about is that my HUD settlement shows I am paying the property taxes up through Friday. With the extension, there are now another 4 days of taxes due while I own the place. Since the delay was not any fault of my own, I don't think I should have to pay the additional tax. I'm curious to see if the escrow company modifies the HUD settlement document to show this. It only amounts to about $26, so if they don't, I'm not going to make a big deal out of it. However, it will be something I keep in mind for the next time. The extension was done just as a contract addendum, so if I run into this situation again and the delay in closing is not my fault, I'll counter the addendum and include the request that the other party is responsible for taxes beyond the original close date.

I never want to schedule a close of escrow on a Friday again. If some problem comes up (and one usually does), nothing can be done until after the weekend is over. Rather than stress out over the weekend, it would be nice to have a business day the next day for things to get resolved.