ladynimue -- to answer your question, whatever the buyer and seller agree to in the contract as far as possession is what will happen. You'll read a lot on these boards from buyers that will never allow a seller to stay past closing. In some areas of the country allowing the seller to stay a prescribed time after closing is the norm. The details can be worked out to the satisfaction of the buyer and the seller. As t-mac-mo indicates if you want to stay past closing you do limit the pool of potential buyers that will allow that, but there certainly are some that will. As a buyer if the seller requests to stay after closing and it's agreeable with you, make sure you get funds to cover principal, interest, taxes and insurance for the days they'll be occupying the residence past closing as well as a substantial amount of money put in escrow to cover any damage the sellers do while living in the home past closing, or any damage done at move out. You'll also have two walk throughs of the property, one right before closing and one at the time the sellers move out. To help protect yourself against the sellers not moving out on time, have a clause in the contract specifiying that if the sellers don't move out on the agreed upon date that their costs will triple, etc. or escalate and be deducted from the money held in escrow. If the sellers don't want to put a large sum of money in escrow, then don't agree to let them stay past closing. I've heard many stories of buyers that wanted possession at closing and then closing was delayed and/or the buyer didn't show up at closing etc. At that point the seller has often moved out or incurred additional expenses. As a seller you should protect yourself from this happening. If the buyers want possession at closing, make sure they've put down enough earnest money to make it difficult for them to walk away from the deal.

Yea, only earnest money I'd ever heard of..was one in which was just applied to everything in the end. And refunded if something changed with the inspection, financing,etc. I think because she's selling it FSBO right now..she didn't know what kind of rules there were, kwim? I hadn't even thought about something like an inspection going wrong. Which is a very valid point. All the work she had done, was because of some MAJOR subfloor rot and mold issues. (we were going to buy this house, but opted not to for these reasons. bought elsewhere) I constantly think about something with that coming back to bite her in the end. So, yea..to ask for money and SPEND it. Not being able to pay it back if the deal falls through..is sounding dumber all the time, lol. I just didn't have a clue. I'll pass these thoughts on. TY!!!

Our contingent offer went kaput (long story) which was fine with us because there was no sign that his property was going to move anytime soon (there's a lot of inventory in his town and his house is OK but nothing really special and did not seem aggressively priced) and that was just making things difficult for us. The week after that contingency tag went up we had two showings - one generated the offer from the bargain-hunting nutjob - the two weeks after that we had had one showing per week, and then last week we had NONE. Nada zip zero. The calls had dropped to nearly nothing too. I was beginning to get very frustrated and it really was impetus to tell the guy to take a long walk off a short dock when he began to get difficult. I think he thought he had us over a barrel and he didn't. We signed the offer release Friday morning, dropped it off at the realtor's office at noon and asked his assistant to put it right into the system so we knew it would get done! Within hours of the contingency tag being removed, there were multiple calls, and we had two showings within 24 hours . More showings today and I'll bet there will be more calls on Monday. We're hoping for a busy week and plenty of warm bodies through the place at the open house scheduled for next Saturday since we'll be at 60 days on the 23rd. :-p We've decided we're not accepting any more sales-contingency offers. Maybe if they have a binding contract on their property, passed inspections, the whole works - and even then it had better be a very good offer. We learned our lesson, lost weeks of prime selling season! Oh, and when we looked at a couple more houses in the last few days I asked the selling agents if they showed houses with contracts with kickouts to their clients. One said only if the client found it him/herself and asked to, the other said no, especially in this market where there are plenty of other houses to look at.

My kitty, 18, was not happy either. We started the bathroom in July 09 and continued the kitchen and new master bed/bath after that. He spent about a week shivering and very upset and after that just seemed to relax about the whole thing. He did have some amount of sneezing on the dustiest weeks. I talked to the vet and she thought it would be more stressful for him to live somewhere else. He's hyperthyroid and very thin so any weight loss is a bad thing. He's survived just fine. One benefit, he's lost all stranger anxiety. Now when the door bell rings or someone comes in he no longer runs and hides. Just yawns and goes back to sleep. The demo part is the worst of it, although the drywall stuff is pretty darn close. If they can do things like sawing and tile cutting outside, that's best - although your neighbors may hate you :)