Buyer Delaying Closing

[crowser]

We signed a binder with a buyer to purchase our property back in early August. The verbal agreement and the binder stated that it would be an "as is" cash purchase with a closing on September 30. Our lawyer drew up the contract based on the binder and verbal agreement and mailed to the buyer in late August. We gave the buyer's attorney ample time to review the contract before our attorney contacted them. His calls were not returned. After several more phone calls from our attorney to the buyer's attorney and my making repeated phone calls to the buyer we finally received a signed contract in mid October. The Buyer had made two very important changes 1) a mortgage contingency had been added and 2) the closing date had been reset to December 1. Well December 1 has come and gone and to this day our attorney has continued to make repeated phone calls and to send faxes to the buyer's attorney asking for updates and to set a closing date and he has never once received a response from the attorney. At this point we are financially stretched because we have moved from our home to another state because of a new employment opportunity and have had to pay mortgage and rent. My question is what recourse do we have? We have been contacted by another prospective buyer (a developer) who is very interested in buying the property (in fact is offering cash and closing within two weeks). Can we cancel the contract with the buyer or are we obligated to give him a certain amount of time to close. My attorney says that because the contract says on or about December 1st that we have to give the buyer 3-4 weeks before we can even send the time is of the essence letter. And that after we send the letter the buyer has 10 days to respond. If he still does not give us a closing date at that time my attorney said that we can then choose to terminate the contract but with the risk of drawn out litigation by the buyer against us for breach of contract. My fear is that if we wait much longer we are going to lose the house because we cannot continue to pay expenses in two places. HELP!!!!!!

 

[bryan]

Did you sign off on the changes the buyer made to the contract?