Odd request from buyers lender
We are selling an inherited home, the closing is in less than a week and a few days ago we were bcc’d on an email from the closing atty back to the buyers lender.
The buyers lender was asking to move the closing date out 10 days, bringing the closing into June, and stated if we don’t accept, the buyer will back out stating they can’t get funding and the deal falls through.
There is a financing contingency so that part is completely understandable, what is odd to me is this request coming directly from the lender to the closing atty.
We’ve sold 3 different inherited homes plus our own home over the last 5 years and always used the same realtor and same closing atty and never had a lender reach out to directly to the closing atty to change a closing date.
We reached out to the realtor who reached out to the buyers broker and buyers, buyers were unaware of the request to change the closing date or the lenders statement that not accepting the date means they will back out of the sale.
They need to be out of their rental by end of this month, they absolutely want the house and were both furious and shocked by the request and that they were hearing about it from our realtor and not their lender and got on the phone with their lender immediately.
I’ve never seen a lender go direct to a closing atty with a request to move a closing this close to the date before, I know closing dates change, this feels deceitful in the way it was done.
My assumption is the lender dropped the ball and needs more time and had we accepted, they would have blamed the delay on us, making it seem we are the ones to cost the buyers to have no place to go and costing them thousands in storage and hotel fees.
We didn’t accept and we didn’t deny, the closing atty instead asked why the buyers needed an extra 10 days to close and after pushback from the closing atty and the buyers to the lender, the lender responded saying the buyers have a conditional approval and the closing remains on the original date. We don’t know what the conditions are and it’s not our business, we aren’t concerned about them getting financing, their finances are strong.
Is it odd for the lender to go behind the buyers back this way or is this normal and we’ve just never experienced it before?
We have absolutely no reason to believe the buyers knew about it, they have literally no place to go at end of month so extending the date doesn’t benefit them and they’ve been totally upfront about everything to date.
Is this most likely a lender dropped the ball and trying to manipulate everyone to cover their mistake?