On 6/13/2018 we won a bid at Auction.com to purchase a house located in Staten Island. The next day, we signed the contract and wired $23k deposit to Seller's escrow/closing agent. It's an all cash deal and we chose to use Seller's title, so all we had to do is wait for the title to be cleared.

The seller's closing agent (let's call her MDM) started to follow up on this case with only two days left before the closing date (7/20/2018), which is too late to do any meaningful title work. No extension was provided because someone at Auction.com misread the closing date. She thought 'COE expires on 7/30'.

The contract has a "time is of the essence" clause, I quote word by word, "all deadlines are intended to be strict and absolute. The Agreement shall terminate automatically and without notice, if the transactions are not concluded by the Closing Date or any extension thereof." But we did not raise any question of breach of contract or blame their being late. We thought since we were determined to buy, why create an unnecessary confrontation?

All of a sudden, on July 30 Ms. MDM sent an email to all parties, saying "I am working with title to see if we can close this tomorrow so we can fund by EOM." I was little surprised. Starting August 1, my family and I would travel to California for a week. We planned the trip a month ago, even before the seller signed the contract. If we did not close on July 31, my next available date would be August 9. So I tried my best to cooperate with them. I canceled my next day follow up appointment to see a hand specialist (I was hospitalized the week before due to a hand injury). By the end of the day, I received the last title report. They said they are clear to close tomorrow. However, I found that in the title report they missed a few unpaid ECB violations. I emailed a request to the title company for explanation and hoped they could solved this the next morning.

The next day they just ignored my request and insisted they were clear to close. Ms. MDM warned me if I didn't close 'today' I would be in default and the seller would keep the down payment. We went back and forth until I eventually found the images of the violation tickets from the City website. After receiving the images, they finally admitted these violations were new and needed to be reviewed by an clearance examiner. By that time it was already late afternoon (3:05 pm, July 31). I then wrote an email asking the seller to extend the closing date to Aug 9.

In the morning of August 1, the seller's listing agent called us to inform us that the seller decided to cancel the sale because we were not 'cooperating'. They had refused to answer my calls or emails since.

(Ms. MDM finally responded to my email on August 21. She simply said we defaulted. Auction.com has been completely silent during the whole process)

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