From NYTimes.com
By ROBIN FINN
How Fights Over Fixtures Can Derail a Closing
Even at their smoothest, residential real estate closings are not for the faint of heart. At stake is nothing less than the roof over the buyer’s head, but the repercussions can be primal when, just before the culmination of a deal worth hundreds of thousands or, in many instances, millions of dollars, weeks of negotiations unravel when the buyer and seller suddenly squabble over who gets custody of something as inconsequential as a $150 ceiling fan. “It’s the real estate version of road rage,” said Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens.
There is a chronic dynamic at work here. Sellers are wary of having parted too cheaply with a profound investment, their residence. Buyers are leery of having paid too dearly and often are already punch-drunk from the trauma of the financial frisking endured during co-op board inquisitions or mortgage applications.
With the stage preset for regret and recrimination, and with lawyers at the ready to advocate in different directions at the drop of a dollar sign, nothing brings the process to a screeching standstill like a quibble over an inanimate item — a dusty chandelier, a sputtering air-conditioner, a wobbly Ikea shoe rack — that incomprehensibly assumes trophy status in the calculations of both buyer and seller.
“Closings are such a heightened emotional event,” said Lindsay Barton Barrett of the Corcoran Group. But their immediate prelude can be just as hazardous. “You can literally have a multimillion-dollar deal fall apart at the last minute, in my case over a dining-room table,” she recalled.
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