Let a buyer in before closing and play with fire

See you in the new year. . . Happy holidays!

One of my favorite posts.

When buyers insist on moving into your home before they own it, the temptation to find a way to comply with the request or demand can be overwhelming.

My very best advice is to win the battle against that temptation without restraint.

That’s because the opportunities for problems to arise are manifold–for example:

PSO is an acronym some buyers better learn

Post-settlement occupancy can result in an unwelcome tug-o'-war between seller and buyer. (Flickr photo by tj.blackwell)

The technical term is post-settlement occupancy, or PSO.

In all those syllables is a basic situation: Sellers remain in the property after the buyers complete the purchase. Ownership has changed, but occupancy has not. Yet. (It is the opposite of another kind of PSO–pre-settlement occupancy, about which I wrote a couple of weeks ago.)

You easily can imagine some of the reasons that sellers might make the request, e.g.: