If you’ve ever bought or sold a property in the past you know things never go as planned. Rarely does a property close on time, it takes longer to move than you thought, your next property isn’t ready to move in yet, or any variety of other things. It’s great advantage to have a flexible closing so if these things come up you are prepared. When you work with an investor or cash buyer they have the capabilities to be very flexible when they close which is great for a seller.
1031 Exchange
This a tax strategy that allows an investor to “defer” paying capital gains taxes on an investment property when it’s sold as long as another similar property is purchased with the profit gained by the sale of the first property. A flexible closing is a big advantage in this situation because you need to identify another property within 45 days and close within six months of closing. If you are struggling to find a replacement property you can push back the closing a few weeks to give you more time. Otherwise you could get taxed or just buy something you don’t really want.
Moving
I’ve never met anyone who enjoys the moving process. Yes, moving to another home can be exciting but packing and lifting boxes gets old quick. And it almost always takes longer than you think, movers don’t show, you have more stuff than you thought, or your friends/family don’t help like they said they would. That’s where a flexible closing comes in handy. If this happens which it will inevitably will, the buyer can just hold off the closing until you get everything in order. Or if you need the money to move sometimes a cash buyer can close and give you a few days after closing to move out. When you don’t have to deal with banks, you can do what you want.
The Long Close
If you’ve lived in a property for a long time then you accumulate a lot of stuff. And all that stuff is very hard to go through with a short timeline. Most of the time when someone wants a slower escrow to move out we do a 60-90 day closing and say it will close on or before which allows us to close early if the seller would like. It is totally up to them. They can take as long as they would like.