When a seller wants the kitchen sink – and the kitchen
Jan 5, 2015, 12:26 PM | Updated: Oct 10, 2024, 2:03 pm
Some sellers want to take more with them than a favorite light fixture or curtain rod. They may want to move entire rooms to their new home.
That’s what Cindy Jones recently encountered when she saw a listing that noted the seller wanted to take the entire kitchen with them.
“How do you explain to the underwriter that the kitchen doesn’t come with the house and expect to get a loan that includes the value of a kitchen?” she wrote in a recent post on ActiveRain.com.
The Los Angeles Times recently featured an article on sellers who may want to take too much with them when they move, and how it can derail a deal. In some cases, sellers don’t tell their agent of their intentions beforehand.
For example, Lenn Harley, a broker at Homefinders.com, says she had a transaction once where the seller removed a crystal chandelier prior to closing. Her buyers noticed the switch during their pre-closing walk through, and ended up receiving a $2,500 credit for the missing chandelier.
“When a seller starts keeping things that should stay with the house, I guarantee that the contract negotiations will be painful,” said agent Eve Alexander.
Other agents share that some sellers try to swap fixtures at the 11th hour. Others say they’ve had clients try to dig up plants and trees from the yard that they wanted to take with them. Mark Arlow of Keller Williams said he had a client who wanted to move the home’s front door with him. It was the door to the family farm where he had grown up.
“When they sold the farm, they kept the front door as a reminder of the farm, and now the door goes with them wherever they go,” Arlow said.
It’s difficult to determine what sellers are planning on retaining from their home, so real estate professionals must have upfront conversations with sellers about what stays with the house and then get those items in writing. If homeowners plan to take a certain fixture with them, they may be better off removing and replacing it prior to the home being listed.
