Gap check misses Mechanic's Lien and Chaos Ensues

A precautionary tale that with some hopefully nuggets of wisdom at the end.

Our seller is a hands on kind of guy that picks out his own pool service company. He has already moved out of town and is handling things remotely. I don't know how he picked out this particular pool person but it wasn't someone we knew or recommended.

It is apparent that there was some altercation between the seller and the pool person, there was a storm and some tree limbs fell into the pool, the pool needed a new liner. The cost of this was around $900.

The pool person called us and was worried that he was not going to get paid and "was thinking" about attaching a mechanics lien. We told him not to do so as the property was set to close in a week and we had his invoice arranged to be paid at close.

The home closes yet we find out a day later that a mechanic's lien had been filed a day before the close which the gap check missed. Ostensibly, the pool person's intent was to file the mechanic's lien to block the close and "punish the seller." His invoice was dated the 13th, the close was only ten days later.

The mechanic's lien includes the cost for filing the mechanic's lien and consultation with an attorney, an additional $600 over the original invoice.

Our title person is calling the seller but as the deal has already closed, the seller doesn't want to hear about it and doesn't return her calls. As the title has already changed hands, the mechanic's lien now has become the buyer's problem.

Conclusions:

* This pool cleaning company will never get business from anyone in our office. The guy was a little paranoid and didn't trust the counsel and advice from a realtor. An attorney is going to lean toward filing a mechanic's lien because he probably can't get paid for counseling the contractor not to file a mechanic's lien.

*The buyers' title company will probably end up eating the cost of the $600.

*Gap checks don't seem to do the job they are supposed to always.

*We might have given a headsup to the title company that he was thinking about filing a mechanic's lien despite the fact that we advised him not to.

*Sellers can cause problems for themselves by not using reputable contractors or people that are used to working with realtors on real estate deals. Our seller was lucky that the mechanic's lien was missed, it would have probably cost him and additional $600 to get the deal closed.