Seller's rarely say okay to this. The liability is too great. I know as a seller, I would not permit this.

We bought a house under construction once. The closing was taking longer than any of us thought necessary on both sides of the table. We asked the builder if moving our van load of furniture was an option? His lender said no. He privately told us we could move the furniture in, but couldn't stay there. We lit a fire under the entity causing the delay.

If the house is empty, move up the closing. That's the best option. Or, try to rent back with a written agreement the first house for a few days.

I am also surprised the seller agreed to it. If the buyer finds something they don't like about the home they can walk away. A house is not sold until the closing. I would recommend never to let the buyer into your house before the closing except for the inspection.

In these situations a legal document called a hold harmless is usually drawn up. This protects the seller from any liability.

We actually did that when we bought our first house. The owners moved to another State and left their Realtor in charge of the house. It was a bad winter in NY and he would check the house every day to make sure the pipe didn't freeze, clear the driveway, etc.

My guess is he was sick of the whole ordeal and when we asked if we could start moving in, he said it was a great idea.

We were living in Manhattan and the house was in a suburb outside the City. Not knowing any better, we started moving our things into the house. We hired painters and pulled up the carpets to refinish the hard woods. We moved in a full month before closing. It was in 1971 and Real Estate was in a bad downturn. I don't remember why the closing took so long.

Not sure if the owners had any idea. We were young and had no idea it wasn't normal!

Jane

Jane_ny, My example above occurred in New York, too. New York State is the hardest place in the world to try to conduct a home closing. Way too many lawyers involved. I've never seen such a mess. I'm still traumatized 20 years later.

Consider your daughter and her family fortunate. I'd never agree to this as a seller.

Some things could certainly go wrong in this scenario but it would definitely be convenient. My neighbor (who is an agent) let the people buying her house start painting, replacing counters, etc. before closing. Can you imagine? It all worked out fine.

We sold our second home to someone we knew and they wanted to start moving stuff into one of our three garages way before we closed or moved out (moved out three months after close). We let them. It all worked out fine. That's different than into your house though. When we moved out of that house we had to move a week before we could move into our new place. We decided to ask the buyers if we could park a truck in the driveway for a week with our stuff while we were waiting to move into our new place.

They said no need to do that - you can use our 27 foot trailer that we're moving our stuff in. You help us move in, we'll help you load the trailer. So we got all our stuff into a couple parts of the house so they could move their stuff in and then we'd move ours out. Turns out they moved all their things in and loaded all our stuff into the trailer before we arrived to help. When we arrived the night before we were going to move out they already had new light fixtures installed and pictures on the walls.

A lot could have gone wrong but it all turned out fine. We did know these people but they weren't close friends or anything. I thought my wicker furniture would be wrecked but they had one guy who had moved furniture for a living so they packed that trailer completely full and everything came out perfect on the other end.

Just had to share that as it's such a crazy story.....

Thanks everyone. So it is unusual but not unheard of, and I'm not alone in my fears. I'm going to trust it all goes well.

I can see this going south. Forget about the seller's agreeability to something questionable like this. I would be mainly worried about insurance coverage for my worldly goods if a catastrophic event (fire, theft) happened. The key to solving this is getting the closing date moved up.

One way to deal with it is to treat it like a really short term rental or lease, and get really short term rental insurance.

I'd ask my my homeowners insurance provider for direct input on this.

Good grief, doesn't anybody have a Realtor here? When seller stays in house past closing, use sellers temporary residential lease. When Buyers move into a property before closing, use buyers temporary residential lease.

Yup - we had a lease when we were in our place post closing. It spelled out exactly who was responsible for what. We had renters insurance during that time. We had no realtor but we did have a real estate attorney.

I let buyers for my Mom's home move in 1 or 2 weeks before close. No problems at all. When we bought this place the family of the elderly lady that lived her asked for an extra 2 weeks to move her out after close. she had dementia and they had some struggles. Not a problem at all, did not charge rent.

Karma is not all ways a b**tch.

kathy-

It's great you were trusting and everything worked out. I agree that the universe is generally friendly, but not always. It doesn't hurt to take precautions, or at least ask questions. The worst time to look into what your policy covers is after a loss has occurred...

Sellers don't usually like it, attys hate it, but they are not asking to move themselves in, just their belongings. Have them purchase a rental insurance policy to cover the belongings for the 10 days. Everyone will be protected.

So who is the "Owner-Occupant" for purposes of obtaining insurance on the dwelling?

My kids moved their stuff in over the weekend. They only had the garage door opener and only had access to the garage. I still didn't ask many questions because I would have hated being questioned by my parents when I was forty something. Thanks for your input.

You sound like a good Mom!

It is against the rules to advertise on the forum, Floyd...

Except in selection of usernames, apparently. ;-)

Go back under your bridge