Emotional Rollercoasters

AKA: A Rant About Rule Breakers
Saddle up with your favorite snack, because this is gonna be a long one.

What a difference 48 hours can make. After my last post on Tuesday morning, I got to torch for a good solid 5 hours. I was able to finish up some orders that were on my plate far longer then they should have been. I rocked out to tunes on the radio as I worked. I was picking paint colors in my mind for my new house. It was a truly delightful morning.

I got a confirmation call from the bank that our mortgage commitment went through. Our awesome rep at the bank faxed it to everyone and we were officially "all set"! I called our realtor and he heard his fax machine doing off as we talked on the phone. I think you can imagine I had a grin from ear to ear.

Over these past few weeks, we have gone up and down emotionally more times then I can count. Well, I probably could count if I stopped and thought about it, but I do not want to go back up and down those hills again. I have the biggest hill on the ride in front of me at the moment and I need to focus on what to do about this one.

Tuesday afternoon, I got a strange call from our realtor. He asked "when did they serve you the bump notice?" Um, Sunday... "Yeah, but when?" Late afternoon... why? "Do you know when?" I would say 2:30ish... why? He went on to say that he had just gotten a fax from the realtor of the couple selling the house. It said that since we hadn't responded to the bump notice by 4/14 that he considered our contract terminated. WHAT? We are supposed to have until Tuesday at midnight... that is the 15th. Turns out, that when we signed the bump notice on Sunday, we just used the date that the couple wrote above. It was Saturday's date (the 12th). Oh crap.

We called our lawyer. He assured us that we should be alright. We had done everything we needed to. He said not to worry about writing the wrong date. He said they know when they served us the papers, so it shouldn't be an issue. (Insert a slight sigh of relief.) But then the phone rang again. It was our realtor, again. He said he wanted to let us know that everything was to everyone. But... (insert intake of the sigh above... I hate the word 'but') that he had spoken to the realtor of the selling couple. She said they assumed we would have everything to them by 3pm. Our guy said "according to who? The serving agent said midnight." She said regardless... her clients would probably be putting up a stink about it because the new offer is "considerably" higher then ours.

Yesterday we had plans set with friends to spend the day at Letchworth State Park here in NY. It is the "Grand Canyon of the East". A positively beautiful park to visit on a picture perfect spring day. The kids are on Spring Break this week and it was our adventure for the week. We thought about cancelling but decided we needed the break from the stress. We called everyone before we left... leaving voice mails with our cell phone numbers to be sure that the minute there was news on anything, we would be called.

The morning in the park was wonderful. Then the phone rang as we were settling into our PB&J lunch. It was our realtor. He had just been sent faxes from the attorney of the selling couple. It said that they were ready to pursue legal action to get out of the contract with us. That the new offer was $7,000 more then ours. And technically, we hadn't removed all the contingencies from our offer because the bank was requiring an appraisal for our mortgage. We reached the top of the hill and get ready for the ride down...

We tried calling our lawyer from the road to no avail. I am sure we called no less then 10 times! We left 3 messages... nada. But then, all we had was the office number. I had left he cell number at home. Letchworth is about an hour or so from home. After a little more hiking and playing, we headed back and was finally able to get a hold of our lawyer about 5pm. He had been in court all day. He hadn't seen any of the faxes. But, he had looked everything over the night before. And sent a few faxes of his own. He confirmed that we had met all the terms of our contract. We were in the right... it is legal and binding.

Now our new decision... are we willing to pursue legal action ourselves? We will need to get a civil attorney. We don't know yet how much it might cost, and there are no guarantees that we would win for sure. Our lawyer says, he has seen these situations before and they usually aren't pursued because of the costs. Ugh. Hopefully we will find out more today.

It used to be that you shook hands and a deal was made. I know those times are long gone but we have a legal binding contract with someone and even now, that isn't enough. Maybe it comes from being bullied as a child, but I just can't stand it when people don't follow the rules. It eats me up. I hate we people get away with things/rule breaking. If some one says no you can't do that... I don't. And it drives me crazy when I see someone else doing that same thing. Doesn't anything have consequences anymore? We are in the right... but because this couple is being greedy, we have to back off or pay an arm and a leg to enforce our rights.

I know I sound like a five year old but, it is just not fair.