Q: I recently sold an apartment building in which several tenants were behind in rent at the closing.
We prorated the collected rents at the closing. The buyer is now claiming I (the seller) have no rights to any portion of the uncollected rents, and he is now actively attempting to collect the entire delinquent rents from the tenants with no intent of remitting me my share. Furthermore he is demanding that any rents I collected after the closing be given to him with no proration at all. I feel I should be entitled to delinquent rents as they are collected (if they are collectable). Of course I have no claim to any sums that end up being uncollectable.
What should happen in this case? The contract simply said rents shall be prorated at the closing with no further detail specified.
To respond to Mr. Jaap's questions, the property was titled jointly with my wife and myself; there was no company involved. Am I following Mr. Jaap's line of inquiry correctly; if it were titled to a company and the entire company was sold, then I could imagine the result might be different.
A: It would depend on how the property was titled -- in your name, or in the name of a company, and if that company was sold or not. Talk to the attorney who represented you in the sale. If there was no attorney, then these problems can be difficult to resolve without getting an attorney now. Use the Find a Lawyer to retain a local real estate attorney to review the contract and all the facts, and then advise you of your options.
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