Rebecca

To my friend in MI...
I know that the reason the bank pushed back our close date was because there is a penalty fee off $100 plus $30/day if we don't close by our close date IF its OUR fault. But the way I understand it, is if its their fault, we just have to eat it! Sounds like you have the 10 day period from when the contract is signed, where as our is an actual date. (the 19) This is our second house we have bought, but our first house was back east and I am finding things are a little different out here. Nor did I deal with a bank owned prop back east, so this is all new and a little confusing to me! Good luck to you. - Tue May 13 2008, 11:58

I spoke with my agent today, and we are just gonna move ahead and start inspections. Kinda scary that we can't open escrow yet though. The bank wanted to pick the title company, and has yet to let us know who! We did sign an AS IS addendum. Which brings amother question to mind....we are going FHA and I have always understood FHA to have tighter regulations/guidlines. I was under the impression that with FHA you had to have the inspections done by a licenced contractor. now that we signed the AS-IS addendum, I am being told it does not have to be a licenced contractor, and I don't HAVE to have one done (kinda like if we went conventional - its optional). And the only reason I bring that up, is I have a close friend that is a contractor, and have been doing it for 50 years, but he is not licenced anymore. I totally trust that he can do an inspection for us, and may even be a little more honest with me since he is a friend. My understanding is that even if we do find anything (major) wrong, we can't fix it until after closing anyway. Does anyone know what the deal is with this?? THANKS - Tue May 13 2008, 11:40

Thanks, to clear things up, I did go back and look at the dates. On the original offer, it did state 10 days after contract acceptance, and on the counter offer sent from bank, it says May 19, which would have been the original 10 day period. After reading other peoples questions/answers, I am concerned that since we have not heard back from bank or their agent since we accepted their counter, if we just go ahead and start the inspections, and then some how they say we are NOT in contract, or somehow have made an agreement with some other party, we'd be out that time and money. We have not received anything from the bank stating we are now in contract, and I believe my lender needs that to order the appraisals,etc.
I expected a bank owed property to take a bit longer, but it is being sold AS IS with no repairs, which thankfully does not need anything major (that we can see without in depth inspection) but they are offering a $1500 buyer incentive towards cosmetic repairs (carpeting). From what their agent told us when we put in an offer, the seller was ready to go. In the counter, they did push back the close date from march 29 to "on or before june 20" incase we did get hung up we would not have penalties. Should I and can I move forward without having a signed contract in my hands? - Mon May 12 2008, 23:46

We did not counter back, we accepted THEIR offer, the day we received it. Should we have put a date on THEIR counter to get back to us? - Mon May 12 2008, 23:16