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When we left our heroes we were on the cusp of the house inspection, and the situation, while ridiculous, had not yet managed to quite escalate to the level of "a Shakespearian farce about real estate purchases".
That was soon to change.
The inspection actually went reasonably well, for interesting values of 'reasonably well'. Because the incompetent evil sellers are flippers, we expected a double-handful of couple-hundred-to-a-thousand-dollar issues with the place, and indeed, this was what we found. (Remember that the chaotic stupid sellers had lived in their place for like seventeen years and had done minimal maintenance on it, leading to "SURPRISE SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS IN REPAIRS!" on top of the usual handfuls of niggling stuff one would want to fix up or change in a new house.)
Of course, the double-handful of issues were kind of fascinating. Like, 'half the electrical system doesn't appear to work right' fascinating. Like 'the laundry room doesn't appear to have a drain for the washing machine' fascinating. Like 'there are bare electrical wires dangling in the garage next to the iron plumbing stack which, if the electrical system were functional, would electrify the plumbing in the house' fascinating. And some minor termite damage, a bit of mold, some sticky doors, and a cabinet mysteriously nailed shut in the renovated kitchen.
Also, we couldn't figure out how to make the shiny new intercom system work.
Basically, almost all of it stuff that any buyer would go, "Shit, WHAT?" about, except for the trivial things. Which left us in a decent position for sorting through the situation, we felt. So we worked on composing our response to them.
Meanwhile our agent did what he generally does, and went to the town to check on the permits that they said they had taken for the work they had done (primarily two of their big selling points - the new roof and the new heating system).
Here is where we take a sharp left turn into the farcial.
On Wednesday, I believe it was, we got a phone call from our agent, which I will summarise as "I ACCIDENTALLY AN ENTIRE FIRE MARSHAL WHAT DO I DO?"
So he had gone to get a look at the permit for the boiler installation. "I'm the agent for buyers looking at a property here, the sellers say they had a new oil furnace installed, converting from electric, could I have a look at the permits?"
"Sure, what's the address?" He gave the address. "I ... don't have any record of work at that address," said the secretary, and ran into the marshal's office to fetch him.
The conversation with the marshal went something like:
"THEY WHAT."
"... installed a new oil heating system ..."
"THERE IS NOBODY LIVING IN THAT HOUSE RIGHT NOW, RIGHT?"
"... no ...."
Our agent is not a weak-willed person. I get the impression that the marshal bullied him a bit, and when he spoke to us he was tremendously flustered by the entire situation. He had also eventually managed to convince the marshal that he really needed to be dealing with the sellers and their agent, not him, because they were the ones that had the legal right to deal with the property and all. (He can't fix the issues the inspector saw when he got let in to see things, after all, as he's neither the seller nor associated with the property owners, or the buyers....)
But the property is apparently currently deemed unfit for human habitation. By accident.
In around this the sellers suddenly swapped from "We are totally not going to do any work on this place, who are you kidding? We are flippers with an entitlement complex, and we Must Win!" on our necessary repairs list to, "... let's meet up and talk, shall we?" At noon on Friday it had been "we're not going to bring in an electrician, we don't want to extend the inspection period, we're meeting with the town on Monday, everything they want done will be handled", and then it was a phone call to work out the details of what work these people would do, with noises suggesting they might cave on everything.
For some reason.
Possibly having to do with accidentally calling down the Wrath of Andover upon their heads.
Getting away with doing work without building permits and inspections works much better if the local authorities don't notice, you see.
The only permit our agent found? Was for the electrical work involving the installation of the intercom system.
Which, as far as we can tell, does not work.
(Take a break to laugh it out.)
So we are trying to get them to agree to let our electrician in to have a look at the clusterfuck that is their wiring job and they refuse categorically. But then the attitude swap button gets hit, and it's "Show up on Saturday at ten to sort this out. Bring your contractors if you must. We will bring ours."
Our agent is poleaxed. Not that they're actually starting to make noises about talking - but because in real estate it is just not done to imperiously declare a time for a meeting, one asks if something works and negotiates about it. Fortunately, he can cancel his scheduled stuff for that day, and we are all available at that time, so we say "mutter, grumble" about the authoritarian attitudes and continue, in good faith, to try to make this damn deal work.
Our inspection period technically closes on Friday, but we assume the invitation to bring our electrician means they are not going to be additionally assholes about things. Technically we have until Saturday night to have our list of demands assembled. We had been making a list of "No shit fix this stuff or we walk" stuff to try to get them to deal with that, but we extend the list to "Well, if you say you're going to do most everything we want...."
Meanwhile, the radon report comes in. It's fine. That's nice.
Also meanwhile, the text in their MLS listing goes from "Active: Offer to Purchase accepted" to "Offer to Purchase accepted. BACK UP OFFERS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED!" We marvel.
So we make an appointment with our agent to meet him at a cafe at 9:30 to quickly go over the inspection report so we have our talking points in order, and set up task delegation (I am on toddler wrangling duty, so I do not do most of the walking about). We get there at about 9:15, I order an omelette for breakfast, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whispercricket orders a waffle.
We wrangle with our agent for a bit when he arrives, and gradually the time creeps around to ten, and our food has not showed up. Eventually we sent our agent to the place withartan_eter, saying we will follow ASAP when we get our damn breakfast. whispercricket goes to swap it to a to-go order, gets told that we are just waiting on the toast! It will only be a minute!
Waiting on the toast, people.
The toast.
We get our food, finally, and truck over to the house, which is amazingly full of people: our agent, our electrician, the seller's agent, the seller's electrician, the seller's general contractor.whispercricket and I grab a mouthful or two of food and then head in with KJ while the electricians and artan_eter inspect the wacky outdoor wiring issues.
KJ still loves the house. She loves running up and down its length. She spent a lot of time playing peekaboo around the corners withwhispercricket and me (and then we started shaking things up by moving when she was looking for the other one of us, greatly enhancing the gigglemonster effect as she found people).
We are expecting this to be kind of agonising. It actually goes surprisingly well; we go around pointing out things and their contractor (fairly laid-back guy) repeatedly responds with an, "Oh, that. Yes, I see the problem. That's an easy fix."
The seller's agent is shocked, shocked! that there was no permit on file for the boiler installation. She was sure there had been all necessary permitting done. People go down to the boiler room and their guy is immediately listing off ways in which this had not been done properly (and giving the impression that a particular subcontractor may soon be in some trouble).
The electricians at some point go wandering off together.
Their agent started out looking quite tense and agitated, but KJ was willing to be friendly and that seemed to help matters a great deal. (She also made off with her phone at least once.) They sat together on the basement stairs while various things were poked at, under KJ's orders. ("WOWO SIT.")
After they showed us how the fucking intercom worked (it apparently had been fiddled with by too many people coming through at open houses, agents seeing the place, and so on) we broke up the party because their agent had to go get her hair done and run up to Maine for a wedding. That afternoon.
We told her to be safe, because as we all knew there was a hurricane coming through. We had a list that was agreed-to in principle, and that was kind of surprising.
(Because this story really required a natural disaster to spice things up a little.)
The deadline to get the extension signed passes. We become agitated, but remember to breathe. Sunday passes, too. We become a little more agitated.
artan_eter goes and supervises the pest inspection.
We hear from the other side's agent! She is sorry, power out due to hurricane, here's the extension. Not actually a crisis, or them trying to fuck with us then. A bit of a relief. She asks for Paul to get the forms in order because the power has rendered her unable to do so, and to extend the P&S timeperiod to 2 Sept. It is extended to 7:30 pm and no later, however, because the seller is enjoying his little power plays.
We get some answers to some of our questions. Our agent asks some of them again because some of them were not answered. Everyone gets testy. We get the pest report on the same day - at 4:20ish - and forward it to the seller, along with a request for a price rebate to cover the necessary work and some refinements of our list.
There is a sidebar in here about how they didn't need a roof permit because it isn't a new roof, only it's a new roof, and then it's everything will be done in order to get a permit, so we are moderately nonplussed, but ... in the long run, whatever?
We get everything done - including actually getting the pest report back on the same day! - and to them with a few hours to go, and then we wait. And wait. And wait.
The deadline passes.
We are required to say "Look, if you're not going to deal with us we're walking away from this deal" in order to not forfeit our deposit. We are informed that it is the seller's children's bedtime at 7:30, and he is unavailable to deal with documentation by that time.
Which he picked. And refused to extend beyond.
We are mindblown.
Eventually we get feedback, frantically hash out our response, and as we send it off get an, "Oh, the seller changed his mind, rather than do anything, how's $3K in cash sound?"
The headdesking, it is immense.
We mostly say something to the effect of "Look, we worked through all this crap and agreed to it already, no."
The next day we get responses that are semi-informative along with "We will only provide the credit we promised after we receive and review the pest report" which we had already sent them. There is a lot of faffing about how we don't know what we'll be fixing things with, but we will let you know as soon as we know. And a "We do not do any work before we have signed the Purchase and Sale Agreement" and "We will do all work in a workmanlike manner with all permits required" (all in a kind of huffy 'how dare you suggest otherwise' tone). ... okay, fine, why are you so defensive about this? I mean, aside from the fact that we caught you not doing things with permits?
Eventually they say that they refuse to inform us what kind of electrical panel they were going to use for the work. We are willing to let slide a bunch of their other "we quibble with this", but the electrical panel is a reasonably big deal and we don't want whatever piece of crap they salvaged out of their last flip. We say "Okay to these other terms, but if you're going to not disclose the panel thing we would rather have a credit to the value of half the work." Some backing and forthing later, we finally agree that we will have our electrician do all the work after we buy the damn house, they won't do any, because it makes more sense to have all the work and permits consolidated, and they won't have to do anything except give us a little money. Finally.
Within half an hour after a generalised agreement on all terms and a "We will try to get this done in the spirit of cooperation as exhibited on Saturday", the property was relisted as "ACCEPTING OFFERS! OPEN HOUSE SAT. 9/3 11-12:30PM." Without the notification that it is under legal agreement and cannot accept offers. Our agent comments, "So much for cooperation!"
Meanwhile, they are intensely hardline about how all P&S negotiations must be completed by the deadline, they are totally not extending it. The P&S must be completed Friday.
Notice something about the timing, did you? So did we.
By Tuesday afternoon we get a "This does not have active termite activity! We are not going to pay for a treatment! We do not believe you that it is normal to have termite treatments done when there is any evidence of termite activity! Huff, puff, blow house down! You people are so unreasonable, with your 'clarifications' and your 'now that we have the information this is what's going on', you always have new demands for me!"
Our assumption at this point: he wants to get rid of us.
At this point we lose our shit entirely. We keep coming to agreements, and then they throw a shitfit and try to change the terms. They have done this since our initial offer, and we are sick and tired of being screwed around by this crew of assholes. Our agent thinks we should walk away from this deal. We say "We will compromise as far as a rebate for half the work, but no further negotiations, and if they won't do that, we are walking" to our agent.
He calls them, and suggests that, y'know, he hasn't really talked this through with his clients, but if that's how they're going to be it might be a dealbreaker. Their agent says "... let me talk to the seller."
Within ten minutes the seller calls our agent to invite him to a pity party. Oh how sad, we are going to ruin him, ruin him! His poor wallet! Your clients might really say "No deal" over this? After being so compliant to all of his agreement-changing in the past? Really? ... we'll pay for the termite treatment.
We call our lawyer to work on the P&S.
It is relatively quiet for two days, with a few "how do you feel about this wording" and "have I missed anything"s from the lawyer. We get a message from the fire inspector in the town expressing some crankiness about the nonresponsivity of the sellers, with which we are entirely sympathetic.
Thursday we get a language tweak that binds them more thoroughly to the declarations of the town, with which we are happy to assent, if nonplussed that they suggested it. We get a finalised version of the documents at 2:30, and manage to catch that our agent's name is spelled incorrectly, which is deemed not a big enough deal to do more than hand-correct and initial.
At 2:40artan_eter's phone rings, and it is our agent, so I answer it. Our agent is, as usual, nonplussed that I answered artan_eter's phone.
This is not the crisis you are expecting. (She does not get eaten by the eels at this time.)
It is instead a totally different crisis, as our agent now needs to leave town at 9am to attend a very unexpected funeral in Pennsylvania, and thus we need to have the paperwork prepped and signed to give to him that evening in order to make the P&S deadline the next day. I take on the task of calling everyone and getting the ducks in a row to make this possible.
Whenartan_eter gets up from his nap, I have him print out the necessary documents and sign them, and then he takes KJ out to visit his brother. Because I suddenly remember that their lawyer had been a jerk about the personal check vs. bank check thing, I mention this as a thing that needs to do, and that gets handed off to whispercricket since she's on her way home at the time.
Paperwork is wrangled. Our agent says that he will call when he can come to pick it up, probably after 5:30.
At 5:20 we miss a call from him. There is some telephone tagging.
That turns out not to be our agent calling to say when he'll be picking up the documents.
That's our agent calling to say that their agent says that the seller does not approve this P&S.
We spend some time trying to figure out how to kill them with our minds. And trying to get in touch with them to sort out this crazy bullshit.
Eventually I send our lawyer a note saying "We haven't gotten this signed yet because..." Our agent gets us their agent's contact info.
Our lawyer sends us a note this morning along the lines of "I have no idea why they caused such chaos, as I certainly wouldn't have sent you documents that were not finalised."
We finally get a "You can drop off the documents here. The seller will get to them today."teinedreugan does so.
We got a receipt.
Dated.
Signed.
And timestamped.
And that's where things stand right now.
That was soon to change.
The inspection actually went reasonably well, for interesting values of 'reasonably well'. Because the incompetent evil sellers are flippers, we expected a double-handful of couple-hundred-to-a-thousand-dollar issues with the place, and indeed, this was what we found. (Remember that the chaotic stupid sellers had lived in their place for like seventeen years and had done minimal maintenance on it, leading to "SURPRISE SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS IN REPAIRS!" on top of the usual handfuls of niggling stuff one would want to fix up or change in a new house.)
Of course, the double-handful of issues were kind of fascinating. Like, 'half the electrical system doesn't appear to work right' fascinating. Like 'the laundry room doesn't appear to have a drain for the washing machine' fascinating. Like 'there are bare electrical wires dangling in the garage next to the iron plumbing stack which, if the electrical system were functional, would electrify the plumbing in the house' fascinating. And some minor termite damage, a bit of mold, some sticky doors, and a cabinet mysteriously nailed shut in the renovated kitchen.
Also, we couldn't figure out how to make the shiny new intercom system work.
Basically, almost all of it stuff that any buyer would go, "Shit, WHAT?" about, except for the trivial things. Which left us in a decent position for sorting through the situation, we felt. So we worked on composing our response to them.
Meanwhile our agent did what he generally does, and went to the town to check on the permits that they said they had taken for the work they had done (primarily two of their big selling points - the new roof and the new heating system).
Here is where we take a sharp left turn into the farcial.
On Wednesday, I believe it was, we got a phone call from our agent, which I will summarise as "I ACCIDENTALLY AN ENTIRE FIRE MARSHAL WHAT DO I DO?"
So he had gone to get a look at the permit for the boiler installation. "I'm the agent for buyers looking at a property here, the sellers say they had a new oil furnace installed, converting from electric, could I have a look at the permits?"
"Sure, what's the address?" He gave the address. "I ... don't have any record of work at that address," said the secretary, and ran into the marshal's office to fetch him.
The conversation with the marshal went something like:
"THEY WHAT."
"... installed a new oil heating system ..."
"THERE IS NOBODY LIVING IN THAT HOUSE RIGHT NOW, RIGHT?"
"... no ...."
Our agent is not a weak-willed person. I get the impression that the marshal bullied him a bit, and when he spoke to us he was tremendously flustered by the entire situation. He had also eventually managed to convince the marshal that he really needed to be dealing with the sellers and their agent, not him, because they were the ones that had the legal right to deal with the property and all. (He can't fix the issues the inspector saw when he got let in to see things, after all, as he's neither the seller nor associated with the property owners, or the buyers....)
But the property is apparently currently deemed unfit for human habitation. By accident.
In around this the sellers suddenly swapped from "We are totally not going to do any work on this place, who are you kidding? We are flippers with an entitlement complex, and we Must Win!" on our necessary repairs list to, "... let's meet up and talk, shall we?" At noon on Friday it had been "we're not going to bring in an electrician, we don't want to extend the inspection period, we're meeting with the town on Monday, everything they want done will be handled", and then it was a phone call to work out the details of what work these people would do, with noises suggesting they might cave on everything.
For some reason.
Possibly having to do with accidentally calling down the Wrath of Andover upon their heads.
Getting away with doing work without building permits and inspections works much better if the local authorities don't notice, you see.
The only permit our agent found? Was for the electrical work involving the installation of the intercom system.
Which, as far as we can tell, does not work.
(Take a break to laugh it out.)
So we are trying to get them to agree to let our electrician in to have a look at the clusterfuck that is their wiring job and they refuse categorically. But then the attitude swap button gets hit, and it's "Show up on Saturday at ten to sort this out. Bring your contractors if you must. We will bring ours."
Our agent is poleaxed. Not that they're actually starting to make noises about talking - but because in real estate it is just not done to imperiously declare a time for a meeting, one asks if something works and negotiates about it. Fortunately, he can cancel his scheduled stuff for that day, and we are all available at that time, so we say "mutter, grumble" about the authoritarian attitudes and continue, in good faith, to try to make this damn deal work.
Our inspection period technically closes on Friday, but we assume the invitation to bring our electrician means they are not going to be additionally assholes about things. Technically we have until Saturday night to have our list of demands assembled. We had been making a list of "No shit fix this stuff or we walk" stuff to try to get them to deal with that, but we extend the list to "Well, if you say you're going to do most everything we want...."
Meanwhile, the radon report comes in. It's fine. That's nice.
Also meanwhile, the text in their MLS listing goes from "Active: Offer to Purchase accepted" to "Offer to Purchase accepted. BACK UP OFFERS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED!" We marvel.
So we make an appointment with our agent to meet him at a cafe at 9:30 to quickly go over the inspection report so we have our talking points in order, and set up task delegation (I am on toddler wrangling duty, so I do not do most of the walking about). We get there at about 9:15, I order an omelette for breakfast, and
whispercricket orders a waffle.We wrangle with our agent for a bit when he arrives, and gradually the time creeps around to ten, and our food has not showed up. Eventually we sent our agent to the place with
artan_eter, saying we will follow ASAP when we get our damn breakfast. whispercricket goes to swap it to a to-go order, gets told that we are just waiting on the toast! It will only be a minute!Waiting on the toast, people.
The toast.
We get our food, finally, and truck over to the house, which is amazingly full of people: our agent, our electrician, the seller's agent, the seller's electrician, the seller's general contractor.
whispercricket and I grab a mouthful or two of food and then head in with KJ while the electricians and artan_eter inspect the wacky outdoor wiring issues.KJ still loves the house. She loves running up and down its length. She spent a lot of time playing peekaboo around the corners with
whispercricket and me (and then we started shaking things up by moving when she was looking for the other one of us, greatly enhancing the gigglemonster effect as she found people).We are expecting this to be kind of agonising. It actually goes surprisingly well; we go around pointing out things and their contractor (fairly laid-back guy) repeatedly responds with an, "Oh, that. Yes, I see the problem. That's an easy fix."
The seller's agent is shocked, shocked! that there was no permit on file for the boiler installation. She was sure there had been all necessary permitting done. People go down to the boiler room and their guy is immediately listing off ways in which this had not been done properly (and giving the impression that a particular subcontractor may soon be in some trouble).
The electricians at some point go wandering off together.
Their agent started out looking quite tense and agitated, but KJ was willing to be friendly and that seemed to help matters a great deal. (She also made off with her phone at least once.) They sat together on the basement stairs while various things were poked at, under KJ's orders. ("WOWO SIT.")
After they showed us how the fucking intercom worked (it apparently had been fiddled with by too many people coming through at open houses, agents seeing the place, and so on) we broke up the party because their agent had to go get her hair done and run up to Maine for a wedding. That afternoon.
We told her to be safe, because as we all knew there was a hurricane coming through. We had a list that was agreed-to in principle, and that was kind of surprising.
(Because this story really required a natural disaster to spice things up a little.)
The deadline to get the extension signed passes. We become agitated, but remember to breathe. Sunday passes, too. We become a little more agitated.
artan_eter goes and supervises the pest inspection.We hear from the other side's agent! She is sorry, power out due to hurricane, here's the extension. Not actually a crisis, or them trying to fuck with us then. A bit of a relief. She asks for Paul to get the forms in order because the power has rendered her unable to do so, and to extend the P&S timeperiod to 2 Sept. It is extended to 7:30 pm and no later, however, because the seller is enjoying his little power plays.
We get some answers to some of our questions. Our agent asks some of them again because some of them were not answered. Everyone gets testy. We get the pest report on the same day - at 4:20ish - and forward it to the seller, along with a request for a price rebate to cover the necessary work and some refinements of our list.
There is a sidebar in here about how they didn't need a roof permit because it isn't a new roof, only it's a new roof, and then it's everything will be done in order to get a permit, so we are moderately nonplussed, but ... in the long run, whatever?
We get everything done - including actually getting the pest report back on the same day! - and to them with a few hours to go, and then we wait. And wait. And wait.
The deadline passes.
We are required to say "Look, if you're not going to deal with us we're walking away from this deal" in order to not forfeit our deposit. We are informed that it is the seller's children's bedtime at 7:30, and he is unavailable to deal with documentation by that time.
Which he picked. And refused to extend beyond.
We are mindblown.
Eventually we get feedback, frantically hash out our response, and as we send it off get an, "Oh, the seller changed his mind, rather than do anything, how's $3K in cash sound?"
The headdesking, it is immense.
We mostly say something to the effect of "Look, we worked through all this crap and agreed to it already, no."
The next day we get responses that are semi-informative along with "We will only provide the credit we promised after we receive and review the pest report" which we had already sent them. There is a lot of faffing about how we don't know what we'll be fixing things with, but we will let you know as soon as we know. And a "We do not do any work before we have signed the Purchase and Sale Agreement" and "We will do all work in a workmanlike manner with all permits required" (all in a kind of huffy 'how dare you suggest otherwise' tone). ... okay, fine, why are you so defensive about this? I mean, aside from the fact that we caught you not doing things with permits?
Eventually they say that they refuse to inform us what kind of electrical panel they were going to use for the work. We are willing to let slide a bunch of their other "we quibble with this", but the electrical panel is a reasonably big deal and we don't want whatever piece of crap they salvaged out of their last flip. We say "Okay to these other terms, but if you're going to not disclose the panel thing we would rather have a credit to the value of half the work." Some backing and forthing later, we finally agree that we will have our electrician do all the work after we buy the damn house, they won't do any, because it makes more sense to have all the work and permits consolidated, and they won't have to do anything except give us a little money. Finally.
Within half an hour after a generalised agreement on all terms and a "We will try to get this done in the spirit of cooperation as exhibited on Saturday", the property was relisted as "ACCEPTING OFFERS! OPEN HOUSE SAT. 9/3 11-12:30PM." Without the notification that it is under legal agreement and cannot accept offers. Our agent comments, "So much for cooperation!"
Meanwhile, they are intensely hardline about how all P&S negotiations must be completed by the deadline, they are totally not extending it. The P&S must be completed Friday.
Notice something about the timing, did you? So did we.
By Tuesday afternoon we get a "This does not have active termite activity! We are not going to pay for a treatment! We do not believe you that it is normal to have termite treatments done when there is any evidence of termite activity! Huff, puff, blow house down! You people are so unreasonable, with your 'clarifications' and your 'now that we have the information this is what's going on', you always have new demands for me!"
Our assumption at this point: he wants to get rid of us.
At this point we lose our shit entirely. We keep coming to agreements, and then they throw a shitfit and try to change the terms. They have done this since our initial offer, and we are sick and tired of being screwed around by this crew of assholes. Our agent thinks we should walk away from this deal. We say "We will compromise as far as a rebate for half the work, but no further negotiations, and if they won't do that, we are walking" to our agent.
He calls them, and suggests that, y'know, he hasn't really talked this through with his clients, but if that's how they're going to be it might be a dealbreaker. Their agent says "... let me talk to the seller."
Within ten minutes the seller calls our agent to invite him to a pity party. Oh how sad, we are going to ruin him, ruin him! His poor wallet! Your clients might really say "No deal" over this? After being so compliant to all of his agreement-changing in the past? Really? ... we'll pay for the termite treatment.
We call our lawyer to work on the P&S.
It is relatively quiet for two days, with a few "how do you feel about this wording" and "have I missed anything"s from the lawyer. We get a message from the fire inspector in the town expressing some crankiness about the nonresponsivity of the sellers, with which we are entirely sympathetic.
Thursday we get a language tweak that binds them more thoroughly to the declarations of the town, with which we are happy to assent, if nonplussed that they suggested it. We get a finalised version of the documents at 2:30, and manage to catch that our agent's name is spelled incorrectly, which is deemed not a big enough deal to do more than hand-correct and initial.
At 2:40
artan_eter's phone rings, and it is our agent, so I answer it. Our agent is, as usual, nonplussed that I answered artan_eter's phone.This is not the crisis you are expecting. (She does not get eaten by the eels at this time.)
It is instead a totally different crisis, as our agent now needs to leave town at 9am to attend a very unexpected funeral in Pennsylvania, and thus we need to have the paperwork prepped and signed to give to him that evening in order to make the P&S deadline the next day. I take on the task of calling everyone and getting the ducks in a row to make this possible.
When
artan_eter gets up from his nap, I have him print out the necessary documents and sign them, and then he takes KJ out to visit his brother. Because I suddenly remember that their lawyer had been a jerk about the personal check vs. bank check thing, I mention this as a thing that needs to do, and that gets handed off to whispercricket since she's on her way home at the time.Paperwork is wrangled. Our agent says that he will call when he can come to pick it up, probably after 5:30.
At 5:20 we miss a call from him. There is some telephone tagging.
That turns out not to be our agent calling to say when he'll be picking up the documents.
That's our agent calling to say that their agent says that the seller does not approve this P&S.
We spend some time trying to figure out how to kill them with our minds. And trying to get in touch with them to sort out this crazy bullshit.
Eventually I send our lawyer a note saying "We haven't gotten this signed yet because..." Our agent gets us their agent's contact info.
Our lawyer sends us a note this morning along the lines of "I have no idea why they caused such chaos, as I certainly wouldn't have sent you documents that were not finalised."
We finally get a "You can drop off the documents here. The seller will get to them today."
teinedreugan does so.We got a receipt.
Dated.
Signed.
And timestamped.
And that's where things stand right now.
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I'm good at generalized whoa. I embrace my inner Keanu.
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