So annoyed with our home purchase

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sanctareparata

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I just need to vent.

When we bought this house, we had a contract with the seller that we would live here rent-free for two weeks and then after that two week period we would pay $40 a day in rent until closing. Our closing person knew this and guaranteed us over and over that we would close long before that two week period. Well, she goofed left and right, never got her act together, screwed one thing up after another, and in the end we closed two weeks too late. So we were out $400+ in “rent” money.

THEN, this same person completely over-estimated closing costs and it was figured into the buying price (I don’t understand it all), but when she was questioned several times by our realtor and the seller’s realtor, she was CERTAIN that closing costs would be that much money. Turns out she overestimated by an unheard of $1600. So our seller pocketed that “free” money from us.

Now, I just found out that our real estate attorney goofed with property taxes, and didn’t collect enough from the seller at the time of closing. WE have to pay for that mistake - over $800 worth. I am SO upset. What is up with all this? The property taxes - that $800+ - we have to pay for we didn’t even LIVE here during that time. It was still owned by the previous owner.

I don’t even know what to do next. You pay these people all this money to do things RIGHT and they end up costing you more in the end. If I wanted someone who didn’t know what he was doing I would have done the closing myself.

Just angry right now. Angry and feeling like none of this is just. :mad:
 
sanctareparata said:
I just need to vent.

When we bought this house, we had a contract with the seller that we would live here rent-free for two weeks and then after that two week period we would pay $40 a day in rent until closing. Our closing person knew this and guaranteed us over and over that we would close long before that two week period. Well, she goofed left and right, never got her act together, screwed one thing up after another, and in the end we closed two weeks too late. So we were out $400+ in “rent” money.

THEN, this same person completely over-estimated closing costs and it was figured into the buying price (I don’t understand it all), but when she was questioned several times by our realtor and the seller’s realtor, she was CERTAIN that closing costs would be that much money. Turns out she overestimated by an unheard of $1600. So our seller pocketed that “free” money from us.

Now, I just found out that our real estate attorney goofed with property taxes, and didn’t collect enough from the seller at the time of closing. WE have to pay for that mistake - over $800 worth. I am SO upset. What is up with all this? The property taxes - that $800+ - we have to pay for we didn’t even LIVE here during that time. It was still owned by the previous owner.

I don’t even know what to do next. You pay these people all this money to do things RIGHT and they end up costing you more in the end. If I wanted someone who didn’t know what he was doing I would have done the closing myself.

Just angry right now. Angry and feeling like none of this is just. :mad:
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I understand the property taxes, but I don’t think the seller should have gotten the extra money at closing. What did your realtor have to say about it?
 
*I would seriously contact a real estate lawyer…if I was only out a few hundred, no…but the seller pocketed your $1600 that was supposed to go to closing? That’s actually illegal. The seller can’t walk away with money that wasn’t part of the sale of the home…or written anywhere that they’d receive. So if you ‘overpaid,’ then YOU should be getting the money back, not the seller. The seller doesn’t get extra freebies because the closing person made error upon error. I’d tell your realtor you want the ‘overpaid’ amount back, if it was $1600 …and if she doesn’t do anything, I’d be calling a real estate lawyer to get some free advice. I might also lodge a complaint with the real estate association board in your state. I am pretty sure that monies that the seller receives, have to all be disclosed to the buyer and agreed upon. They just don’t take whatever is overpaid and call it a day. No way, that is not how home sales are done. The real estate industry is heavily regulated…they have to be in compliance, and this just doesn’t sound right. I’m sorry that happened! That’s my advice. :o (((hugs))) in the meantime. *
 
As I see it, the ‘free’ money that the seller got out of the $1600…um, subtract $800 from that, and they should pay the property taxes AND give you back the remaining $800 because they don’t deserve that money…that is not money for them to keep, it was done in error and you were overcharged. Ugh, I’m upset for you. Please don’t take this lying down. We are Christians, that doesn’t mean we permit people to walk on us. I’d seriously speak up to your realtor, and again, if nothing is done…I’d go to her/his boss…and then continue until I got the overpaid money back in my own pocket. It’s not for the seller to keep, and on top of that you stuck paying property taxes that were also supposed to be taken care of. Who on earth is this closing person? :eek:
 
Somehow the closing costs were figured into the total cost and we were told we pretty much lost the $1600. No way to get it back.

I don’t get the tax thing myself, Indyann. It was totally looked over. Why on earth should we have to pay a year’s worth of taxes when we weren’t even living here at that time? It was complete error on the part of the attorney.
 
Whatevergirl is right; this sounds fishy in the extreme. You are supposed to get a “good faith estimate” of closing costs shortly before the closing; this is a written estimate, and it is generally very close to the actual closing costs.

Also - why were closing costs in the purchase price anyway? I would absolutely pursue all of this; sounds like a racket to me.
 
sanctareparata said:
Somehow the closing costs were figured into the total cost and we were told we pretty much lost the $1600. No way to get it back.

I don’t get the tax thing myself, Indyann. It was totally looked over. Why on earth should we have to pay a year’s worth of taxes when we weren’t even living here at that time? It was complete error on the part of the attorney.
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there is no way you should have been charged for a full year’s taxes. Perhaps they were in arrears?

I don’t know if it varies from state to state or not, but here, it depends on which month you buy the house. Sometimes, if the last tax statement has not been paid, the buyer will pay them. It is usually negotiated when you make your last offer on the house.

Google "real estate closing costs in --------(whatever state you are in). Usually there will be a list of costs and tell who is responsible to pay.

The other posters are right, you need to follow through on this.

Sorry you are having such a hard time. Actually your real estate person is mostly responsible. The closer too, but the agent should have had fairly accurate estimate of closing costs.

It is usually optional whether you want closing costs figured into the loan or not. Now if you had YOUR taxes figured into a loan, most mortgage companies require the amount of the first tax due, so that it can be put into escroe.
 
The closing costs were figured by our mortgage lender rep who did give us a good faith estimate and estimated closing costs to be $7000+. EVERYONE thought that was way too high and told her to check and recheck, and she insisted it would be $7000.

We asked the seller to pay all closing costs because we took a loss on our other home and had nothing leftover to go towards the new home, so to compensate we had to offer $7000 more so the seller could pay that $7000 in closing costs. (Home price was 155, we offered 162)

It turned out that the closing costs were only $5400 so the seller got to pocket that extra $1600 from us. Total overestimation for a “good faith” estimate. It made everyone on “our” side pretty mad but at that point there wasn’t a thing we could do.

As for the taxes, the house was not homesteaded at the time we purchased it, and the real estate attorney goofed and said it was, so only collected $700 from the seller to pay that. In reality, she SHOULD have paid almost $1600 but because the attorney made a mistake, now WE have to pay that extra $800+. And we weren’t even living here that year - it was still her property. If taxes are due March of every year here, then we lived here a total of barely 2 months and shouldn’t have to come up with the whole $800 from the year prior.

Makes NO sense. I’ve been on the phone with my realtor and he’s looking into it.
 
Wow! What a mess! I can see why you are so upset. Looks like everyone made mistakes, and you are the one paying for it.

Maybe you should go on Judge Judy. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.🙂

Hope your realtor can get it all straightened out. Keep us posted.
 
The only costs that a mortgage broker has any control over are the ones on the 800 lines. (I’m fairly certain that this is a standard in Maryland, but it should be similar in other states.) Everything else is completely fixed. The only way they could have kept the 1600 dollars is if that was included in the down payment for the home.

I just bought a house 3 months ago and I spent an enormous amount of time trying to understand the process. I loved how the brokers would try to sell me on a higher interest rate by saying… Oh come on it’s only an extra 50 dollars a month, and I’ve done SSoooo much work leg work for you. Right buddy, that’s an extra 50 bucks for 30 years, and you’re just doing your job!
 
You’re being scammed. Go make an appointment with a real estate attorney and bring ALL your paperwork. There is no such thing as “extra money that goes to the seller” by default. Every dollar you pay or finance must be accounted for and there is no such thing as “overpayment by accident” that you don’t get back.

They are being resistive because it will cost them money to fix it. Too bad. Their mistake.
 
DOShea said:
You’re being scammed. Go make an appointment with a real estate attorney and bring ALL your paperwork. There is no such thing as “extra money that goes to the seller” by default. Every dollar you pay or finance must be accounted for and there is no such thing as “overpayment by accident” that you don’t get back.

They are being resistive because it will cost them money to fix it. Too bad. Their mistake.
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*Exactly. The selling and buying of a home is a LEGAL process. The homeseller cannot walk away with undisclosed money, it needs to be specifically documented somewhere in the paperwork. It’s not like accidentally giving the cashier at the grocery store $10, and she gives you back the wrong change…and you don’t realize it until you get home. Oh well…that happens. No, this is not right, and it is ILLEGAL for the money that the seller received (you paying the property taxes and you overpaying $1600 to the owner of the home) to not be disclosed. No one should walk away from the closing, not having any idea ‘‘what just happened.’’ Too much money was lost BY YOU. Please make a grievance with the bd of realtors, but not before you try to get i squared away with your realtor, and the closer. I would say…I want to see where all of the money went in the closing, LINE BY LINE. That is YOUR realtor’s job. She made a commission off of this deal…make her/him work for her money. Their job is to represent YOU. The seller’s realtor is to represent THEM.

Good luck, and please keep us posted. God bless!*
 
So have you actually gone to closing yet? This exact thing happened to us. We rolled in our closing costs etc. But we got a check at closing bc of it.
 
I don’t understand. If we told the seller SHE needed to cover OUR closing costs and we gave her $7000 above her asking price to do that, but it was $1600 too much, why would she have to give the money back when we’d already agreed on the price? I mean, it was signed. Nowhere did it say if closing costs were less than that $7000 any monies should be returned to us…

As for the tax stuff, our realtor got back to us and said our contract explicitly states that if the house lost homestead status between her moving out and our moving in, she would have to cover the costs. So he’s getting paperwork ready to send her (she has no clue!) essentially billing her for almost $900. Yikes. :eek:

Thank GOD that’s being settled though… I do feel badly. I can see her not having the money, us having to take it on ourselves to overpay our mortgage next year to make up for the loss, and then letting her just pay us back so much $ per month.
 
sanctareparata said:
I don’t understand. If we told the seller SHE needed to cover OUR closing costs and we gave her $7000 above her asking price to do that, but it was $1600 too much, why would she have to give the money back when we’d already agreed on the price? I mean, it was signed. Nowhere did it say if closing costs were less than that $7000 any monies should be returned to us…
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You are right. I am sure there is nothing in the contract saying that you get that money back. When we sold our house, we paid $5000 of the buyer’s closing costs. The offer for the house was increased by $5000.

In the contract, the offer was listed. Then it was listed that we were paying $5000 of his closing costs. There wasn’t anything in the contract that we increased the asking price or that we were using the extra money to pay the closing costs.

On the other hand, the Realtor made more money on the house because the commission is based on the selling price and it had been increased by the $5000.
 
maryjk said:
You are right. I am sure there is nothing in the contract saying that you get that money back. When we sold our house, we paid $5000 of the buyer’s closing costs. The offer for the house was increased by $5000.

In the contract, the offer was listed. Then it was listed that we were paying $5000 of his closing costs. There wasn’t anything in the contract that we increased the asking price or that we were using the extra money to pay the closing costs.

On the other hand, the Realtor made more money on the house because the commission is based on the selling price and it had been increased by the $5000.
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That ain’t the way it works. The conditions and stipulations for housing sales are at least in part determined by legislation, and not just contract. There are certain conditions a contract simply cannot legally include, because legislatures pass legislation specifying that contracts must say certain things and cannot say other things - or simply laws stating that sellers and buyers HAVE to do or not do certain things, contract or no contract.

I’m not an American lawyer nor a property lawyer, but it seems that the process of accounting for and paying the sort of expenses we’re discussing is one of those areas where you have to do what the legislation says.

If legislation says that a seller can’t be asked to cover the buyer’s closing costs, or that if they do any excess must be repaid to the buyer, then it doesn’t matter that the contract doesn’t mention it, it’s still a requirement.
 
Find their car, slash their tires and bend the number plate, should cover the $800 they took from you.
 
LilyM said:
If legislation says that a seller can’t be asked to cover the buyer’s closing costs, or that if they do any excess must be repaid to the buyer, then it doesn’t matter that the contract doesn’t mention it, it’s still a requirement.
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I am guessing that the agreement was simply that the sellers would pay part of the buyers closing costs, $7000. And I am guessing that the increase in price is in the contract, but doesn’t have a note next to it about it being used to pay closing costs. That’s how it was on our contract.

In fact, from what I understood, after we did it, was that it is very hush hush because the bank doesn’t want to lend to someone that can’t cover the closing costs. It doesn’t give them a warm and fuzzy about the lender being able to pay the mortgage.

sanctareparata is welcome to fight it, but unless her contact is very different from ours, she won’t have a leg to stand on.
 
maryjk said:
sanctareparata is welcome to fight it, but unless her contact is very different from ours, she won’t have a leg to stand on.
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No, I’m not going to fight it. There is nothing in the contract that specifies that money was for closing, like you said. It just annoys me that we had to offer SO MUCH toward the closing costs because the “good faith” estimate was so ridiculously wrong.
 
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