If I pursue suing a seller for changing their mind about a fully furnished home?
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If I pursue suing a seller for changing their mind about a fully furnished home?
I am under contract to buy a home, the house was advertised as fully furnished. However, now the seller wants to keep a lot of furniture we had not agreed upon. If I pursue suing her, how long will it be before closing? Would this add over 10 months for me to close? I ask because I need to make a decision by 8 pm tonight and our lease ends in 6 weeks, so we need to close before then. Our realtor told us that it could take up to a year before we closed if I want to pursue suing her. Is this true? I just need a sort of timeline on how long this cases typically take.
Asked on October 15, 2018 under Real Estate Law, Colorado
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 6 years ago | Contributor
Does the *contract* say that the house is fully furnished? If it does, you can try to enforce the contract ahead of time, to get a court order than she leave the furniture, but to do that in any reasonably short time frame ( couple of weeks), you'd have to bring the legal action on an "emergent" basis (think: urgent or emergency), which is more precedurally complex--and it is also more complext to seek an order for "specific performance," or that the other party actually perform as per the contract (as opposed to suing for monetary compensation only). You would almost certainly need to retain an attorney to help you seek an order forcing them to leave the furniture, but could, as stated, get it done in a few weeks, albeit at a higher cost (more procedural complexity essentially always translates into higher legal bills).
Alternately, you could sue the seller after the fact for "breach of contract" for monetary compensation--i.e. for the value of the furniture they should have left, but did not.
If the contract does not specifically state that the furniture is being left, you'd have to sue them for fraud, for the false advertising. That could only be done for monetary compensation, so you could do it later; you cannot get a court order that they leave the furniture behind with a fraud case.
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