As of Tuesday night, I still hadn't received the builder warranty information. And frankly, I was perplexed. How hard was it to put the seller contact information down on a piece of paper, telling the buyer who to call in the unlikely event a pipe (on a brand new home) bursts sometime in the next two years? The selling agent assured me there was a "package" coming my way and all was good. She would have it to me that night.
At the same time, Tuesday night, I called Dee. "Do you want me to continue championing this?" I asked. "If we delay closing, they will have to redraw your loan docs and you may have some significant fees associated with this." Dee said she understood and wanted me to continue. She also said she would walk away from the sale, no matter what, if she didn't get this. Fair enough. So, with nothing else on my calendar Wednesday morning, I pulled out the big guns, warmed up my Big Girl Designated Broker Voice(tm) and then nobody was happy.
In Arizona Real Estate, we have this little document called a "Cure Notice." In simplistic terms, a Cure Notice alerts one side of a transaction something in the contract isn't exactly being followed by the other side and and please fix whatever teensy issue might be happening. Thankyouverymuch.
In real-life terms, a Cure Notice is the ugliest of the ugly. It tells an agent their side has screwed up royally and there is hell to pay. It allows the aggrieved party to cancel the contract if the colossal screw up isn't resolved in three days. And by the way, getting one of these notices is considered a huge insult--a professional slap across the face, if you will. They are handed out sparsely and one never wants to be on the receiving end.
I have never been on the receiving end of one. However, one time when I was representing the buyer there was a loan officer who was causing all sorts of trouble, and I expected the selling agent to issue a cure notice--and was shocked when one didn't come. That said, I have issued four cure notices in 17+ years in the biz, the latest one was Wednesday morning. It went over as well as one could imagine. But it wasn't like the other agent hadn't been warned.
About ten minutes after the cure notice went out, cc'd to everyone involved in this sale, along with directives from me to the title company saying, "We will not close on this sale while this is an issue and we expect the seller to act in good faith," I got a single slip of paper with the warranty information. It was the same slip of paper I had been asking for since April 25. I guess threatening to to make this sale go away finally made it real.
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