Attorney Issues / NEED HELP

[Luiz Souza]

A to C transaction. Buyer was fine with zero cc. I negotiated 3% and plan to collect this amount in order to release my Notice of Option. We are planing to close this coming Wednesday. Last Friday I forwarded to the closing attorney a Realease of Lien/ Notice of Option Cancelation Form. Just received the final HUD and the amount mentioned above is slashed by more than half. The attorney is using the cc that the buyer never asked for to pay taxes and some additional fees he came up with. He also forwarded the HUD to me for approval, as well as the Realtors who really don't have a say in the final HUD. This is exactly what the attorney told me, "the excess funds are being paid to XXX LLC for the release of its option on line 508 on page 1 and were all the funds leftover on this one." How should I approach this?

[Jon Holdman]

CC=closing costs, I think. When you say "Buyer was fine with zero cc." do you mean the buyer agreed to no contribution from the seller to their closing costs? If you said this same wording to the attorney, they could well have interpreted it as "buyer pays zero closing costs", which is how I first read it.

Tell the attorney to put more money on the buyer's side so the net to you is the amount you expect. Sounds like the attorney is charging you for pre-paid expenses that would normally be paid by the buyer. Perhaps that's a misunderstanding, and they buyer thinks you agreed to pay these. You think you agreed to pay costs, but not pre-paids. Perhaps you thought you weren't paying closing costs at all, but the buyer was requesting them from the seller. Sounds like a misunderstanding somewhere.