Let's start from the end this time. After difficult negotiations and concessions by the buyer to all the seller's demands, still after two months the sellers had not managed to bring all the documents and approvals required to carry out the sale, and the buyer, our client, simply found another apartment and bought it.
And now let's go back to the beginning of the story.
Noam booked a consultation call on Romania matters, and stressed that he intended to buy an apartment in Romania and asked that the call focus on that.
When he arrived at the meeting, Noam said that he had visited Bucharest several times in the past year, studied the city and its neighborhoods, met quite a few Israeli and local brokers and marketers, but so far had not yet found the apartment that suited the needs and goals he had set for himself. At the same time he noted that he had heard and read a lot about all the conduct required when buying an apartment in Romania, but he preferred to get all the information in a consolidated manner from a professional who knows Romania and how things are done there.
A few weeks after our meeting Noam contacted me a second time, and announced that the broker to whom he had received warm recommendations from me had managed to locate an apartment for him and that he was flying to see it.
Two days later he called to praise the apartment. It was a 3-room apartment in a central location in the city, in an old building (with no risk of collapse in an earthquake), which had been renovated a few years earlier, and whose price matched the budget he had set for the investment. Noam asked that the local partner begin an initial check of the property while he negotiated to improve the commercial terms of the deal.
The next call from Noam was less enthusiastic. It turns out the apartment has several defects that require attention. The sellers are a group of Israelis who bought the apartment jointly, and therefore the negotiation on the commercial terms was going at a snail's pace and without flexibility on the sellers' part, and despite the difficulties and defects Noam decided to buy the apartment. Now it remained for the sellers to complete various documents and present approvals so that we could move forward to completing the purchase.
A week passed, two weeks passed, and each time the local partner called to check when we could receive the completed documents and move forward to signing the sale agreement, he was put off with answers like “a few more days,” “any minute now” and so on. After a month Noam informed me that he was starting to look for an alternative apartment to buy, and if in the meantime the sellers completed what was required and the deal could be completed - we would carry out the deal.
As in Israel, so too when we buy an apartment overseas we expect the parties to the deal to show transparency and fairness. In Noam's case, as far as I understand, after a conversation with the broker, it seems the sellers had not managed to reach agreement among themselves on the sale price, and so one of the sellers did not provide the documents required from him and thereby thwarted the sale. Precious time and also costs would, presumably, have been saved for Noam had a complete picture been presented to him from the start, since it can be assumed that he would not have waited a month at all.
It is also important to remember that buying real estate abroad sometimes involves bureaucratic delays. In Noam's case, lack of cooperation on the part of the sellers led to significant delays. Therefore, one should prepare for possible delays and plan the timetable accordingly.
The saying “blink and you miss it” is true for sellers as well and not only for buyers, and it makes no difference whether it is a purchase in Israel or a purchase abroad. In the case of multiple sellers, as in Noam's case, one must make sure there is full agreement among all of them on the terms of the deal, because otherwise, if the time to complete the deal drags on, there is a reasonable chance that the buyer, as Noam did, will go looking for another alternative to buy.
Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.
Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית