Buyers Worming Out of Contracts
We realize that developers aren’t at the top of everyone’s popularity list but we’d say that buyers are looking like the slimeballs in this situation…According to a New York Times article this morning, buyers who put down deposits at the height of the market are using a 1968 law designed to protect country bumpkins from…
We realize that developers aren’t at the top of everyone’s popularity list but we’d say that buyers are looking like the slimeballs in this situation…According to a New York Times article this morning, buyers who put down deposits at the height of the market are using a 1968 law designed to protect country bumpkins from outright fraud to wriggle out of their obligations. Lawyers are combing through condo filings and other paperwork to find some box or other that developers neglected to check and using that as an excuse to get back hundreds of thousands of dollars for their clients. The statute was never designed for purchasers of luxury condominiums in urban areas to get out of contracts because of changes in the economy, said Bruce H. Lederman, a lawyer defending developers in two of these cases in Long Island City. It was designed to protect unsophisticated out-of-state purchasers like Jackie Gleason in ‘The Honeymooners’ from Florida swampland schemes. Rough.
John,
Don’t think any of the developers in question are advertisers–we would have disclosed that. Like Ishtar, we think there’s a sense of moral obligation here.
To clarify, I intended my comment to indicate that I side with the buyers in this case. As the NYT article points out they’re not all wealthy and loosing their deposits might mean financial ruin.
Slimeballs? That seems like an overly perjorative term to apply to people who are using the law and developer sloppiness to avoid being put hundreds of thousands behind the eight ball. I’ve used that word before for people who can afford their mortgages but choose, for expediency, to renege on their commitment but its use in this context seems to say more about which side of Brownstoner’s bread is buttered than the morality of these buyers.
All of them would, bob marvin, and I would side with the purchasers if the roles were reversed. There is an element of moral obligation in there too, but I do understand that no one wants to lose their money. Your average buyer can’t afford to and developers would have a hard time financing projects.
Exactly, Bob.
How many developers would refrain from using legal loopholes to “worm out of” commitments if it were to their economic advantage?
I agree, dibs. LOL
I feel dirty for siding with developers on this.
Most buyers of Manhattan condos ARE as unsophisticated as Jackie Gleason in “The Honeymooners.”
moral highground is a LUXURY cause now is definitely a “every man for himself”