A Good Team is a Great Idea – Buying a Home in Chicago
Had a weird one Friday. My clients were closing on the purchase of a South Loop townhome. And for the first time in more than ten years of being a Chicago real estate yenta the selling side of the closing table at Chicago Title sat empty.
It was, as they say in the hallowed halls, crickets. Actually, I don’t know who in the Chicago real estate community says that, but crickets is about the noise level emanating from the chairs that cushioned no gluteals.That is until the lawyer for the selling side decided to pick up the phone from wherever he was and speak through self-same gluteals.
Ah, few things less satisfying than a lawyer opting to speak through his derriere. But that’s what happened. Bottom line, bottom speaking as this chap did wouldn’t have been so bad except that he did it for such an extended period of time. How long? The closing started at 12.30. The closing ended at a few minutes shy of 7pm.
God, grant me the serenity…
Now there may be certain things that necessitate closings to stall for so long. None of those things, though, were in play yesterday. Instead we had a bathtub bubble blower who failed to provide a survey as stipulated in the contract (actually, every contract in Chicago). And like Wimpy telling Popeye that he will gladly pay us Tuesday for a hamburger that we provide to him today, this attorney tried to assuage our concerns about the lack of a survey by saying the sellers had one in the back of a moving truck and they would be glad to give it to us in the next few days. The survey, from 1999, had as much heft as a used tissue and would place the buyers at complete risk in case of any encroachments that might have occurred since the ’99 survey was done.
First things first, in real estate transactions I am not my clients’ attorney. I am their Realtor, assisting them to see the landscape of possibilities with respect to their search parameters related to homes in Chicago and the North Shore. And on the basis of location, type of property, price point and size I help my clients find what they tell me they want to find. And then I diligently work to ensure we get the best deal. But getting the best price isn’t the end of my job.
Buying a new home is an emotional exercise. It is also necessarily a team effort with my buying clients having their overall interests served not only by me but also by an attorney, a home inspector, and a mortgage broker. A smart and professional team ensures that our clients have the fullest and most possible advocacy.
Mind you, we don’t bank on something going wrong. But we work assertively and aggressively to proactively preserve and protect our clients’ interests. And so the home inspection is conducted to edify the buyer of the home he is purchasing. If the inspection is an unholy mess the buyer, in consultation with legal counsel, will determine whether the deal lives or dies. The lawyer also works closely with the mortgage broker related to funding contingency periods.
In essence, a good lawyer is the same as Gary Cooper showing up in the Western wearing the good guy’s white hat, ready to stare down anybody looking to bully, badger or BS her client. And that’s just what our attorney, Dina DeLaurentis, did yesterday and every other day she represents a buyer or seller.
The home buying equation is pretty straightforward. We want to get what we think we are buying. That’s so simple it sounds like early Woody Allen or Marx Brothers. But somehow from the attorney review period the selling attorney lost sight of what his clients agreed to and tried to rewrite the terms of agreement to the disadvantage of my clients. The absurd beauty of this misguided hero was the bombastic manner he adopted to fall woefully short of his goal.
To cut to the chase what the sellers got for their shilling, stalling and screaming (by their attorney) was an inability to close on the home they intended to purchase with the proceeds from the town home sale. It took six and a half hours for us, but our funds transmitted, we got the terms that we had to demand because of the other attorney’s obduracy, and we got the keys to go home while the sellers had to go find a hotel room.
Funny thing, after everything was said and done one thing remained the same – the chair on the selling side of the table was still empty.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment