Property A started out as a multiple offer situation on a bank owned property. This is annoying, but often unavoidable when it's a really good deal. Nevertheless, we got it under contract. When doing the inspection, the property tested positive for meth. We told the bank to do remediation or cancel our contract. They canceled our contract.
Note: there are different levels of meth contamination. If someone is cooking than the house is wasted. If someone is smoking it, then the levels may still pass legal levels. This contamination is not as serious and can be solved by simple remediation. The levels on this property were barely past legal.
A week later the property was back on the market with no mention of meth in the listing. So we called the city and gave them the results of our meth test. The property was suddenly back off the market and listed as one of the cities "meth" houses. Essentially, the bank had tried to list it knowing it was uninhabitable. We got a call the next week from the listing agent wondering if we wanted to submit another offer. We submitted the offer requiring the bank to do the meth remediation and it was accepted.
I'd like to tell you we closed and everyone lived happily ever after, but not true. In fact the underwriter for our loan went out of town and the lender would not transfer the file. We couldn't close on time because we couldn't secure financing. At the last minute we switched loan officers and the new one was able to close the loan in a week.
Unfortunately we were past the contract deadline requiring us to pay $1,000 per day we went over. On the day of closing the listing agent wanted another $1,000 even though he was the one that held us up the last additional day. We threatened to sue for non-performance (failure to close). He allowed us to close.
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Oh yeah, meth can screw up everything. Property and people.
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