Home buyer gets back his deposit

We are the New Jersey title insurance agent that does it all for you. For your next commercial real estate transaction, house purchase, mortgage refinance, reverse mortgage, or home equity loan, contact us, Vested Land Services LLC. We can help!

What's a home buyer to do when the real estate purchase contract says one thing and the seller says it doesn't?

Some contracts for the purchase of real estate allow the buyer to cancel the purchase due to various contingencies.  The best known is the "mortgage contingency" where, if you don't get a mortgage within a certain  time frame, you, and sometimes the seller, can cancel the contract.

A recent court case involved a more difficult contingency - one where the buyer can cancel if she doesn't sell her present home.

For many attorneys representing sellers, this is a no-no.  But not in RIVERMOUNT DEVELOPMENT LLC VS. LIVINGSTON, et al, where the contract contained such a clause. When the buyer acted upon it, the proverbial stuff hit the fan.

In the end, the buyer won, but I can't imagine the costs to the buyer and its attorney financially and emotionally.

For your real estate purchase or mortgage refinance or

if you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.

Vested Land Services LLC

165 Passaic Avenue, Suite 101

Fairfield, NJ 07004

Tel 973-808-6130 - Fax 973-227-0645

E-mail sflatow@vested.com

@vestedland

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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.

For your next title order or

if you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.

Vested Land Services LLC

165 Passaic Avenue, Suite 101

Fairfield, NJ 07004

Tel 973-808-6130 - Fax 973-227-0645

E-mail sflatow AT vested.com

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E-mail nails down the contract. Watch what you write!

From the New York Times,

“BE careful when clicking “send.” That is essentially the message to brokers and their clients from a [New York] state court, which ruled recently in a real estate dispute that e-mails can carry the same weight as traditional ink-on-paper contracts.

“’Given the vast growth in the last decade and a half in the number of people and entities regularly using e-mail,” handwriting and e-mail should now basically be considered one and the same, according to the decision in Naldi v. Grunberg, which was handed down on Oct. 5 by the Appellate Division, First Department of State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The ruling, which attracted little public notice when it was announced, was appealed on Monday to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.”

“’As much as communication originally written or typed on paper, an e-mail retrievable from computer storage” is proof of a deal, according to the court’s opinion, which was written by Associate Justice David Friedman.”

What’s this all about? It’s about a 300+ year old law called The Statute of Frauds. Every state has one and it basically requires that contracts involving real estate be in writing before they are deemed binding on the parties.

As you can imagine, e-mail wasn’t around in England when the first statute of frauds was developed. States are now recognizing that e-mail may be used to make some contracts binding and that’s what the appellate court did,

“saying that if e-mail can be used for financial transactions like taking out business loans, it should be good enough for home purchases, too.”

“Though e-mail is hardly a new form of communication, uncertainty persists about how binding it is, which means the ruling in Naldi v. Grunberg could bring some clarity.”

“In most cases a disclaimer can inoculate senders from having e-mail backfire, real estate lawyers said. Mario J. Suarez, a lawyer at Thompson Hine who handles many commercial transactions, suggested that the wording might say the communications “shall not be deemed an offer, as no documents are binding unless and until executed.” Kirk Henckels, an executive vice president of Stribling, said he was under the impression that e-mails are “what we used to do over the phone,” and that property cannot truly change ownership until a paper document is signed by both parties. Mr. Henckels said the thinking was, “I can call this off unless I’ve received it back,” alluding to a signed contract.”

Read the full story.

For your next title order or

if you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.

Vested Title Inc.

165 Passaic Avenue, Suite 101

Fairfield, NJ 07004

Tel 973-808-6130 - Fax 201-656-4506

E-mail vti@vested.com - www.vested.com

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