Find yourself an estate attorney ASAP. Do not depend on an overburdened public attorney to be your advocate; with the best willingness in the world, they don't have the time. Fees for an attorney on a probated estate are set by law; you will pay a set percentage based on the worth of the estate. The majority of the fee is paid **by the estate**, not by you, before the estate is released from probate court. You will have to pay a deposit, I believe, but that is a set percentage of the overall fee. Do not get a "friend of a friend". I once went through two estate attorneys on my sister's estate, a very simple one with no RE holdings, until I found a third attorney who wrapped the whole thing up in a month. The previous attorney had been twiddling his thumbs - the first thing you learn about probate law is that NOBODY is in any hurry, in or out of court - but after 16 months we were getting tired of the run-around. Obtain referrals from the CA bar association and check out the referral names' references. Do it now, and don't delay! You don't know what the other half-owner of the triplex is doing or what the legal arrangements were. Who's paying the mortgage currently? And if the finances were set up 50-50% the deceased's portion of the rents should be going into an escrow account as of the day of death, along with the estate paying its proportionate share of the mortgage every month.

They will attend the closing & sit next to you. They will glance over the closing documents looking for errors. They will explain a term or number if you don't understand. That's about it. They SHOULD request the closer to forward a copy of the documents prior to your actual closing so they can review them. Assuming they've done that...any potential errors should have already been caught by your counsel. Closing documents today are computer generated. Sometimes, there IS a mistake (garbage in - garbage out). Usually, there is not. They will then shake your hand, congratulate you on your sale and/or new home & leave. It's easy money. Ask your counsel if they will even attend the closing...some don't if they've previously reviewed the docs. Once in a "blue moon", there will be a surprise at a closing. A buyer or seller will suddently introduce a previously unrequested demand & closing stalls. If that occurs, then counsel must earn his/her money by resolving the issue to your satisfaction. Or, something like this may happen... Our last closing went like this: We closed on our existing home Thursday night at 5:30 p.m. Everything went well. We all exchanged pleasantries & went on our way. We arrived at our new home's location (out-of-state) later Thursday night. We stayed at an Inn we'd stayed at previously about a dozen times. The owner's knew us & had a beautiful fruit/cheese/wine basket in our room congratulating us on our new home purchase. We were scheduled to close Friday at 9:00 a.m. immediately following our final walk-through with the seller's agent. Walk-through goes well. We arrive at closing. Closer has a look on his face that immediately screams, "Houston, we have a problem!" Our seller had a second mortgage through a hard-money lender (that's a lender that breaks your kneecaps if you don't pay). The lien amount greatly exceeded our seller's net proceeds. The lien holder refused to release. We signed all the paperwork while the seller's counsel tried to resolve the little "issue". In the meantime, our furniture was on its way to our new home & scheduled to arrive at 1:00 p.m. Noon arrived & there was no resolution. We had no choice but to phone the moving company & have the truck turn around & head back to their original location. They put the entire truck with our furniture on "ice" over the weekend at a cost of $3,500. By 5:00 p.m. on Friday there was still no resolution. The seller gave us a written 3-day no-charge lease on the property & we camped out over the weekend...very unhappy since we now had no place to live. Monday morning - 8:30 a.m. DH goes back to the place of closing. I remain at home in case we close & I can call the movers back. It's about a 2-hour drive for the truck. DH took control at the closing table & phoned the hard-money lender direct at his home. Much ado transpired over the next 30 minutes. Lots of loud voices, language you wouldn't have wanted your children to hear. Result: the lender agreed to transfer excess debt to another property that the seller owned. Hard money lender issued a release & faxed it to closing around 11:00 a.m. DH phoned me & said, "Honey, fetch the furniture." It took another 10 days, or so, to get the original release. So, yes things CAN be unpleasant & I was gratful DH is an attorney. Our closer said it was the nastiest residential closing they'd ever done. This type of thing is NOT normal but it CAN happen. If you are squeemish...it's a good thing to have counsel. In most cases, you won't need it & the money you spend will end up being just a "belt & suspenders" type of thing. Tricia

There is a ton of corruption in the housing and finance industries and has been for a very long time. Lax enforcement, and collusion, have allowed it to worsen to the point now where it may do serious damage to the entire economy. For years, various consumer groups and even some inside the industry have been yelling about this. It's only getting press now because Wall Street lost money. This isn't about home buyers being irresponsible though that certainly was a factor; this is about outright corruption by the industry and government. Without that there couldn't have existed the toxic loans and lax standards that lured irresponsible buyers along with buyers who were actually duped or had documents forged, etc. What's partly so irritating is that the people pulling these scams fought tooth and nail to keep government regulators out of it until they lost money. Then, all of a sudden, they want the government to help them out of this mess that they got themselves into. I also see the government as part of the corruption because if laws were enforced and agencies doing their jobs when problems began, it would not have gotten so out of hand. Now, millions of people will be financially impacted even if they personally took no part in any of this insanity. Any government "help" is going to be funded by tax payers, and will go straight to the pockets of the industry crooks, even though its' being pushed as consumer help. Bah! consumers are already losing their houses, there is no help coming for them in any timeliness to work. I'm glad that I didn't buy during the bubble and I'm glad I sold when it was at its peak. If not for some pure luck I could've easily been among those now trying to sell a house that just isn't worth what the "professionals" in the industry said it was. I feel sorry for people who put their trust in this industry. It was misplaced, as if they'd put their trust in the mob. It's very possible that the only reason I knew the housing industry was a sham was because of research I did during those years to battle a bad homebuilder. Had it not been for my house case I might've been ignorant that there was so much corruption, too. "There but for the grace of God go I," as they say. However, I have no doubt that people in the industry committed crimes and should go to jail. Instead, they will maybe pay fines that amount to peanuts for them, and they'll be back to business as usual the next day. VERY disgusting and really has made me quite cynical about our whole artificially supported corrupt economy. It'd be easier to just slip into denial or apathy like so many do, but that's not an option at this point! Seen too much!

Patrick, Here in NC, we use a Due Diligence Period as you are aware. The appraisal is not REQUIRED to be performed during this period. However, it is very wise to do so, because if it comes back low, the seller has more incentive now to do nothing. The buyer still has to perform per the contract, or he/she will be in default. The buyer, if they do not move forward to purchase the home at the sales price, will be in default and the seller keeps the Due Diligence Fee, AND the Earnest Money Deposit. These funds are looked at as compensatory in nature and not punitive, therefore the seller would still have the option for mediation against the buyer for the breech. Personally, I let my client's lenders know exactly what the Due Diligence date is and they know for sure that we expect the appraisal to be completed, AND delivered, at least 24 hours prior to this date. It costs about $400 for an appraisal, far less than the cumulative costs of the survey, the inspection, attorney costs (which they will charge prorated even if there is no closing), moving fees, and not to mention the emotional stress of waiting until the end to find out if the home appraises. So the arguement for waiting until the end in order to save funds is silly. Patrick, in our contracts, there is no conventional financing contingency... But, if the buyer's appraisal comes back low, and it is performed during the Due Diligence Period, they have the conventional options that would come with a financing contingency. Your buyer's agent and lender is putting your buyer at risk by not having the appraisal done during this time. They also lose all leverage to negotiate with the seller to lower the price to match the low appraisal, because the seller knows that the buyers have to perform, unless they want to lose their fee and deposit. Yes, as of 2011, when we switched over using the Due Diligence clause, the buyer will lose the Earnest Money Deposit and the Due Diligence Fee if they back out of the deal for any and or no reason except for a seller default. As far as how to entice the buyer to get the appraisal soon, you would first have to find out why they have elected to wait to do it until the very end. My guess is that their agent and their lender just dropped the ball and do not understand the repurcussions if it does come back low outside of the Due Diligence Period.