In a housing market desperately short on inventory, with prices spiraling toward the heavens, sellers can demand almost anything these days. They can even take the toilets. Toilets, particularly expensive self-cleaning ones with bidets, are among the hot items ending up on moving vans, as sellers flex their muscle to squeeze the most out of a sale. Sellers are taking their appliances, too, and not just high-end Viking stoves. They are claiming midrange refrigerators, stoves and dishwashers to avoid shopping for new ones at a time when such items can be back-ordered for months. Then there are sentimental demands, like fireplace mantels and backyard fruit trees; one Manhattan couple insisted on keeping the sink where their daughter learned to brush her teeth 50 years ago. Buyers, beaten down from relentless bidding wars, shrug and slog along. What else can they do? This is a seller’s world and we’re all just living in it. “Look, sellers have become more greedy,” said Chase Landow … [Read more...]

Q: After my offer on a Westchester house was accepted, my broker told me that the sellers wanted to keep the dining room chandelier and the bathroom sconces, and replace them with building-grade fixtures. This seems so strange. I thought fixtures were part of the house. I don’t want to lose this house over a couple of sconces and a chandelier, but packing them up and taking them away seems petty. What if the sellers decide they want to take more items out of the house before the closing? A: The sellers are not obligated to include chandeliers or sconces with the sale, but they should have made their intentions clear before they listed the property. The sale of a house is an emotional process — sellers may feel attached to fixtures they carefully selected and want to hold onto them. But a buyer is also making an emotional decision, based in part on the décor in the rooms. Find out later that these things were not really part of the house, and you may feel hoodwinked. “I’ve lost … [Read more...]