Schrodinger’s house
We've been waiting for the court to look over the terms of the house purchase and approve it. (The court's approval is necessary because the house is in foreclosure.) I've been under the impression all along that the court was going to compare these two numbers:
- The price the sellers originally paid for the house five years ago
- The price I'm paying for the house now
It seemed clear that the court would notice that the latter is about 30% more than the former, and thus that the original loan could be paid off in full by accepting my offer, and would rubber-stamp the sale.
Apparently that's not what happened. The court did compare two numbers, but they were:
- The price the sellers originally paid for the house five years ago plus a whole bunch of attorney fees and other costs related to the sellers' bankruptcy and such
- The price I'm paying for the house now
And they've found that the former is in fact a bit more than the latter.
Which means that the sale can't go through as-is.
One might wonder why the court couldn't have determined the minimum acceptable price ahead of time, thereby saving everyone a lot of time. But I guess things don't work that way.
So apparently the sellers are talking to their lawyers and such to find out if they'd all be willing to reduce their fees slightly to bring the two numbers into line.
Apparently if that doesn't work, then the sale doesn't go through, and the sellers' original lender takes possession of the house. They'll presumably want to sell the house too, so we could tell the lender that we want to buy the house from them (I suppose it's even possible that the price would be lower), but apparently foreclosures in California are long drawn-out processes so it might be some time before that could happen.
The whole process is deeply mysterious to me, and I've probably misrepresented what's going on; this wouldn't be the first time that I misunderstood some details of this sort. But the key point is that from my point of view the house is in a sort of limbo state, with no clear notion of what'll happen to it.
And yes, I hate it when authors misapply the Schrodinger's Cat thing as a metaphor, and yes, that's exactly what I'm doing here. My only excuse is that it's a catchy title.
