Closing the contract

[Elise Chen]

Hi BP community! My partner and I are total newbies, buying our first home in Brooklyn NY (which also happens to be a duplex multifamily). Hoping to ask your advice! Our offer has been accepted, we've had an engineer inspect the place who gave the OK on the place and we're ready to close the deal. However it seems our lawyer has been going back and forth with the sponsor's lawyer for over a week now...they won't budge on the following addition that our lawyer is pushing for: "The principal/owner of the selling corporate entity (an LLC) will be personally liable for all the contractual terms of the executed contract of sale." Ie. Our lawyer is concerned the developer may turn out to be a shell corporation that they will close once the house is sold so we have no recourse against them if anything goes wrong. Is it common to require this clause in the contract? Does anyone have any experience with this? Any advice or tips? Thanks so much, really appreciate any insight here. We have no idea whether this is something that should break the deal... Best, Elise & Tim

[Christine Wong]

Hey Elise Chen we're currently buying in Brooklyn as well from a sponsor (Dyker Heights/Bath Beach border). I don't recall out lawyer pushing to get this particular condition into the contract.

Similar to what others have said, it doesn't hurt to get a second opinion, but I recommend consulting another real estate attorney instead 😄. Our attorney is Jeff Ehrlich (he has a Court St office), and we loved how he navigated us through BS versus the norm.

Best of luck! Can't wait to hear the success story out of this one.