Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Illinois
I am in Illinois. I made an offer on a house, and it was accepted. The house is in an estate, and the prior occupants sister is the executor. The offer and acceptance was done about 3 weeks ago, and the home had been on the market for about 6 weeks at that time. I got a call from my realtor today telling me the house may be a short sale. There was nothing ever mentioned about anything being owed. What recourse do I have ? I don't want to miss out on the house, but I don't want to wait for 6 months while the bank drags their feet on settling this issue. I was originally told closing would be Dec.10, then was told today that the executor just found out about the financial woes last Friday. The executor did not exercise due diligence in finding any financial info about this. Is this a binding contract and if so, how soon can I expect to close ?
2 Answers from Attorneys
Hire an attorney who can review the contract. If there ever was an attorney approval provision this is most likely long since expired. And there are short sales and there are short sales - if the price won't pay off the existing mortgage, the estate may have to come up with the cash to close. OR it may mean they are trying to get the mortgage lender to take less than what it is owed, which is more the current understanding of what a short sale is, and if there was no such contingency in the contract, the sellers may be stuck.
I agree with Mr. Messutta. If you don't have an attorney to do the real estate transaction, you absolutely need one.
You can probably get out of the contract since the deal was misrepresented to you, but an attorney would need to make that determination.
If you want to go through with the deal, there's not a whole lot you can do but wait out the negotiation process with the seller's bank. That could take a lot of time.
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