Closing was a Close Call

With our offer accepted, Sue and I made plans to return to Tronadora in June to close on the purchase. Having observed Heather's Spanish communication skills (including hand signals and Google translate), we decided it would be very beneficial to have her along to help as our 'translator' (jajaja!). Thankfully, she was willing and available.

At some point before June, Sue and I had to initiate wire transfers of money to Yalta (our lawyer). We did that and Yalta kept checking her bank account but no money was arriving. Days... weeks... no money in Yalta's account. We arrived in CR and still no money. Yalta went to her banco and asked the manager about it. Apparently there's a lot of delay and checking to look for money laundering. Sue's money arrived, but mine got returned to the source account. argghhhhh!

I re-initiated the transfer and provided a bunch of documentation to prove the source of the money. Yalta took that to the banco manager and we waited. In the meantime, we re-scheduled our flights home one week later. Now it was a race against time - the closing was scheduled for Monday and we were leaving the next day. Every day Yalta checked her account and finally the money was there! 

David had told Yalta that he would pay off the mortgage once he got our money, but she was firm that SHE would pay the mortgage and give him the balance. Monday the three of us met Yalta at her office and then walked to Coocique ('koo-SEE-kay', the mortgage company). Yalta had a conversation with a clerk and learned that David was 13 months in arrears on his payments! Worse than that, Coocique had recently sent the house to the foreclosure court!!

Things were getting tense - remember, we were leaving the next day! We went back to Yalta's office to regroup. She had requested that Coocique's lawyer call her so she could ask him to remove the house from foreclosure. While we waited for the call, David arrived and Yalta filled him in. He said that he was supposed to have made a payment by a date aligned with our original closing date, but the wire transfer delay caused him to miss it. He never told us he had a deadline - when Yalta had asked for a week extension, she said he had agreed as if it was no problemo. Apparently it was a mucho grande problemo!

Sue let David know in no uncertain terms that she was upset that he had not told us he was behind on his mortgage and that he had not told Yalta sbout the foreclosure deadline. From that point for the rest of the day, David would not do business with Sue. Tico men do not like to be spoken to that way by women I guess.

The whole thing went on for most of the day, but long story short, Yalta convinced Coocique to take the house out of foreclosure, David came back to her office, and we signed the papers!