How Fights Over Fixtures Can Derail a Closing - NY Times

Tales of buyers and sellers at war.

Even at their smoothest, residential real estate closings are not for the faint of heart. At stake is nothing less than the roof over the buyer’s head, but the repercussions can be primal when, just before the culmination of a deal worth hundreds of thousands or, in many instances, millions of dollars, weeks of negotiations unravel when the buyer and seller suddenly squabble over who gets custody of something as inconsequential as a $150 ceiling fan.

Here's the crux of the issue - is the item truly a fixture, that is, something attached to the realty that cannot be removed without doing harm to the premises?

With the stage preset for regret and recrimination, and with lawyers at the ready to advocate in different directions at the drop of a dollar sign, nothing brings the process to a screeching standstill like a quibble over an inanimate item — a dusty chandelier, a sputtering air-conditioner, a wobbly Ikea shoe rack — that incomprehensibly assumes trophy status in the calculations of both buyer and seller.

  In the NYC market, all these high priced players can't avoid that catastrophe from happening!  It's not better in New Jersey.

To get the full gist of what nightmares may exist read the full story here.

For your next commercial real estate transaction, house purchase, mortgage refinance, reverse mortgage, or home equity loan, contact us. We can help. Located in Fairfield, NJ, we are the title insurance agent that does it all for you.

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