Credit Union Closing Delay

September 21, 2010 8:07 AM

Can anything be done to help a credit union with final closing?

We're selling a home we inherited, our first home sale. The offer/contract states that closing will be by September 30th and we've been doing all we can to manage 'til then. (Things are extremely tight due to medical bills.) Two weeks ago our ReMax realtor told us closing might be expedited. Today, suddenly, it's pushed back to October 5th because "the government ran out of money." The federal loan inspection is done and everything passed. Our realtor says it's a matter of the buyer's credit union dragging their feet, wanting reimbursement of the government loan before they pay out.

We know it's only a week and we're very thankful to have sold the home in this market. I guess I just want to vent a little and ask how common this is, perhaps even whether anything might be done, short of a bribe, to encourage the credit union.

posted by tangram1 to Human Relations (1 answer total)

Best answer: Technically speaking, if your contract states that closing must happen by Sep 30, your buyer is in default of that if it's not closed by then. So you can mention that. However, in my experience, this will get you exactly no where because the buyer's financial institution (in this case, a credit union) doesn't give a flying flip if you yank the house out from under your buyer for failing to meet this deadline. So threaten if it makes you feel better, but it probably won't help.

I hate to break it to you, but in my experience there isn't much you can do to expedite things with the financing bank. They will close when their conditions are met and not before, period. So I suspect you will have to wait until that time.

Last thing-in my experience financing houses, realtors will sometimes blame things on the bank that they didn't get done/didn't realize needed to get done/etc. Not necessarily your realtor, it also could be the buyer's agent. So it's entirely possible this isn't all the credit union's doing. It's convenient for a realtor to blame the financial here because even if you called the credit union up for an explanation, they can't give you one without violating the buyer's confidentiality. There are a lot of little things that have to happen when you are buying a house and any one of them failing to happen can set you back. It's common to miss a step and get held up-either by the bank, the realtor, or yes, the government. I'd stick to being grateful it got sold, pester your realtor to confirm this is merely a delay, not a problem, and try to sit tight.
posted by supercapitalist at 8:36 AM on September 21, 2010