My first closing-start to finish

I had planned on writing this, and finally feel like doing it.


I met my buyers in January in the middle of a snowstorm. They called me from an ad, so I didn't know what to expect. It was a mother and daughter, but they didn't like the house I showed them.

We met at a later date to sign the buyer's agency contract. This took 2 hours as they read every single line before signing. You should read a contract before you sign it, but sheesh!

They needed a house that would be handicap accessible. The mother could get around ok for now, but would be confined to a scooter in the future. There were not too many handicap accessible houses on the market (about 3). We saw the perfect house, but they weren't ready. God was going to hold the house for them.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not make them understand the process to buying a house. Other family members became involved, but didn't end up complicating things much. They finally took my recommendation for a lender and got the ball rolling. He told them they needed to write an offer (this is about 3 months from when they first saw the house), and so they did.

At this point in the story we involve the seller and the listing agent. I faxed off the offer and the seller countered with a slightly higher price. We accepted and things seemed to be going well.

The seller had not lived in the house (it was his mother's), so we did not have a condition report. The inspection turned up some things and so we asked the seller to fix them. The seller refused, in quite a nasty way in fact. I then found out that the listing agent had not given me some information (the gas fireplace would not ignite, the seller knew this and stated that he would not fix it). Whatever.

We move up to a week before closing. I stopped by the house and was concerned that there was still personal property (which never did get removed) and door had not been fixed. We had asked the seller in the original contract to fix a door that had a hole in it. I emailed the listing agent, who simply forwarded my email to the seller (NOT the way to do that). He fired off a nasty email. Essentially the listing agent had not bothered to read the contract.

My manager got involved and called her manager, which almost got nasty. Fortunately I have a manager that kicks ass! The door got fixed by the listing agent.

Fast forward to the closing. The listing agent was a piece of work. She was all worried about her reputation! She also had never changed the status of the listing (from active to pending to sold) and when it was finally changed the sale price was wrong! I also had to call to get them to remove the sign, 2 weeks after closing.

My buyers are super happy with their house and it is such a change for them. They lived in a run down tiny apartment in a not so great neighborhood. Now they are in a family orientated neighborhood with plenty of room for family to visit and kids to play.

Moral of the story: Patience wins out and some realtors SUCK