Is This Contract Voidable (I hope not)

General Real Estate Investing
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I signed a contract in early June for a 6-Unit Commerical Building from a FSBO who was referred to me from a family member…I inspected the place w/my contractor and we agreed to the terms of a Friday for 195k…It was 4 1bdrooms and 2 2br, brick… I returned Wed of the next week and gave him a 2k earnest money deposit and we set the mortgage contingency for July 4th and the close date for July 15th…

The place was a steal and the guy was in a hurry to sell…The bank came out and appraised the place at 220k as is and they were giving me 80k to add separate heating and all new kitchens,baths and windows… I got my commitment letter on the 5th b/c the 4th was a holiday and b/c I had 3 other projects going and some family things going on, I asked for an extenstion on the closing to August 4th…My lawyer tt their lawyer and he said it shouldn’t be a problem but never responded in writing…My lawyer faxed the request over on July 11th again asking for an extension as closing per the contract was for Friday july 15th, still no response… on the 19th of July the sellers attorney responded via fax and said since we missed the closing date they wanted to cancel the deal…We told them to beat it, in writing…
The next day we get a fax that says the original contract was void b/c it was a residential contract instead of a commerical contract from the sellers attny…

Property address, name of buyer and seller, purchase price, and time and date of close was all in the signed contract and he even accepted my earnest money… Is this contract voidable b/c it was all agreed to on a residential contract? Also does the fact I got my commitment on the 5th instead of the 4th make this voidable…

Right now we are filing a civil suit try to sue for spefic purpose and get him to go thru with the deal…Let me know your thoughts…Thanks
It’s a long one…Sorry

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I’m not an attorney.
I think the short answer is it depends on the language in the purchase contract. If the contract that was signed by you and the seller set the settlement date as on or before July 15 and the seller did not sign an addendum agreeing to extend the settlement date, then if this were in PA, you’d have a big problem. The reason being that the contract could be viewed as “dead on its face” – expired. I wouldn’t call it voidable, but rather no longer binding on anyone. I don’t know if the residential v. commercial contract form is relevant. I would say the provisions in the contract are what’s relevant.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I don’t understand why your attorney didn’t take the bull by the horns and schedule settlement for 7/15 since no extension had been signed by the seller–just to avoid this type of scenario happening.

Nancy

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Thanks for the feedback Nancy…My attorney is soft as a twinkie filling, but now I know…I have used him in the past for all of my flips but they are pretty easy deals b/c I work with a pool of investors… In this case any unforseen cirumstances can usually be worked thru…However in this case, he dropped the ball…Hopefully it has not costed me the property