Here’s To New Experiences 

We’ve all had our experiences and stories about dealing with a municipal building department office when trying to get certification for housing. Whether trying to get original certificate of occupancies for new construction or existing ones, or getting certificate of completions for additions or renovations, the bureaucratic process and paperwork involved, not to mention the time lost, is usually very nerve-wracking. 

There are always new experiences to add to the old ones, some mundane, some unusual enough to raise an eyebrow or two or even elicit a “you’re kidding” from the person you’re telling your story to, but I must say, the newest story I have to tell really takes the prize of all the stories I’ve told or heard in years past.

I recently had the experience of selling a second home to a customer living in Israel. Now, this is not a common situation since Israelis, at least the ones I’ve met in my life, do not typically buy second or vacation homes in the Five Towns.

When we first went into contract with this customer’s home purchase, the actual transaction seemed very simple. He lived out of the country, a mortgage was not involved. Setting the closing date was really the only important issue to work out as part of the contract.

Since we needed to coordinate the closing date here with a closing date on one of his properties in Israel so the funds would be available, the closing dates were synchronized accordingly, very similar to the way a buyer and seller would synchronize a house they were buying and selling in the same manner here, so everything would flow smoothly on both transactions.

A few weeks prior to the scheduled closing, an unusual situation popped up—one I had never experienced before and one that neither of the two lawyers in the U.S. had ever dealt with either.

In Israel the equivalent of a certificate of occupancy is a Tofus 4. Any house that is sold there whether new construction or existing must have this certificate produced and signed off as in effect before any monies from the sale of a house can be released. If the local municipality building department does not sign off on the Tofus 4 prior to a closing on a house, the monies must be held in escrow and cannot be released until such document is produced.

In any event, a call came in from the buyer’s attorney on the house that was ready to close here in the Five Towns, that his buyer needed to postpone the closing due to a situation in Israel beyond his control, which caused the monies from his closing there to be frozen because a Tofus 4 could not be signed by the local municipality.

The reason for this freeze, he further stated, was that the mayor and some of his staff in the municipality in Israel had been arrested and were in jail, and the remaining staff could not sign off on anything coming out of that office without permission from higher authorities. As such, the buyer had to postpone the closing until the municipality found someone authorized to sign off on the Tofus 4.

To say that I was flabbergasted puts it rather mildly! The seller’s attorney called me and asked if I had ever heard of such a situation since he had not. Naturally, I said I was speechless. The seller’s attorney said that the story was so bizarre that it had to be true, but we needed to find out for sure before extending the closing date. I told him I would make some calls to contacts I had in Israel to check out the possible validity of the story.

I made some calls and got even more bizarre replies such as, “Yes, this is not unusual. Every now and then corruption is found and the police round up the officials in the municipal offices and the others in the office run for cover by not showing up for work until the fervor dies down, and then things go back to normal.”

I have no words! All I can say is that the buyer was granted a delayed closing date, and I now believe our system of getting various certifications from our local municipalities does not seem so onerous. n

Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a Licensed Real Estate Broker (Anessa V Cohen Realty) with over 20 years of experience offering residential, commercial and management real estate services. You are invited to visit her website at AVCRealty.com. She can be reached at 516-569-5007. Readers are encouraged to send any questions or comments by email to [email protected].