Grr, Another SNAFU.
The latest in the roller-coaster ride of our relocation! So where was I?
The inspection report actually seemed to came back better than I expected, but since the buyer is a veteran and getting a VA mortgage, there was a list of mostly safety-related things to fix--a few electrical things, stair banister wobbly, that sort of thing. Most of it I could have done myself, but the contract said it needed to be done by a licensed contractor, so we brought in an electrician and a carpenter. The carpentry has taken a few days' work--he's here today finishing up, as a matter of fact. But after that, we'll be all set for the repairs.
In the meantime, we'd gotten the date we can take possession of the home in RVA--June 5--so we'd made our plan for closing and moving. The wife and I were going to drive my car up to her parents' place in VA Beach, and take along some pets--we're giving them our parakeets, and we were going to leave a cat or two with them for the interim. We'd spend the night, go to RVA for the final walkthrough and closing the next day, and then go back and leave the car at her parents' while we fly back down here. Since I'll be driving the moving truck when we go, getting one vehicle up there ahead of time would be good.
We felt good about the plan, which should naturally have been a sign that it was doomed. Once we got the move-in date for Richmond, we let our realtor here know so she could pass it along to the buyer and we could work out the leaseback agreement. But because our realtor here frankly leaves something to be desired, the news came as a surprise to the buyer, who are adamantly opposed to us being in the home after closing. They said they don't want any liability issues. Whatever, boom goes the plan. Sigh.
We don't want to be homeless for 3 weeks, not to mention what would we do with our stuff in the meantime? But we also have to close on the sale here before we can close on the purchase there. So our only option seems to be to push both closings back--push the close in Richmond to the date we can take possession, June 5, and then push the closing here to as close to that as possible. Actually, our tentative plan now is to get the moving truck on May 30, load it up, and drive to VA on May 31. Then we can do the closing remotely on June 1, which should leave plenty of time for the first closing to process before we do the second one. We'll get a furnished AirBnB or something for the week, and our stuff can stay in the truck until we get into the new place after closing. So we'll have the additional expenses of the AirBnB and a few extra days on the truck, but not too bad. It beats moving things into storage for a few weeks, or trying to line up an apartment for that time. It's just.. can nothing be easy?!
And even this is tentative--we're hoping to hear from both sides that the delayed closing dates are acceptable. We don't know if the buyer will be insistent on our original date (at this point I would not be surprised), or if the RVA seller needs to close before she moves out. So we'll see. I don't really have a plan B, though, so..
Wish us luck, we seem to need it!