The call comes in about a week before closing. Your buyer needs more time.
Your stomach drops, because the movers are booked, you told your employer a date, and you have already mentally left this house. Take a breath. In most cases this is a scheduling problem, not a sale falling apart. Buyers who have spent months and thousands of dollars getting to the finish line are not looking for a reason to quit.
What matters now is knowing which kind of delay you are actually dealing with. Some resolve themselves in a week. A few are telling you something. This is part one of two: here we cover why extensions happen and what to do in the first day. Part two covers your actual options and how to protect yourself.
Why buyers ask for more time
Underwriting is slower than pre-approval promised
This is the most common reason by a wide margin. A pre-approval letter is a lender's early read, not a final decision. Underwriting is where every document actually gets verified, and underwriters routinely come back late in the process asking for another pay stub, another bank statement, a letter explaining a deposit, or a fresh employment verification.
Nothing is wrong. The file is moving. It is moving slower than the contract date allows.
The buyer's credit picture shifted
Buyers are told not to open new accounts or make large purchases before closing, and every so often somebody buys furniture for the new house on a store card, or finances a truck. Lenders re-pull credit before funding. When something changed, the file goes back for review and the timeline stretches.
The appraisal came in low or came in late
Appraisers get backed up, particularly in busy stretches. And when a home in an area with a wide range of comparable sales appraises below the contract price, everyone goes back to the table. The buyer may need time to bring extra cash, appeal the value, or renegotiate with you. All three take days.
Title turned up something
Title work is where old problems surface: an unreleased lien from a paid-off loan, a boundary or easement question, an heirship issue, or a clerical error in a decades-old filing. These are usually solvable, and in Central Arkansas they are common enough that experienced title companies handle them routinely. But solving them takes calendar time.
Their own sale is dragging
If your buyer is selling a home in Conway or Bryant to fund this purchase, their closing has to happen before yours does. When their buyer's lender slips, that slip travels down the chain to you. You are now one link in somebody else's timeline.
Inspection repairs are still in progress
If you agreed to repairs, the delay may be on the contractor's calendar rather than anyone's paperwork. After a spring hail season, roofers in Pulaski County are booked out, and permits and reinspections add their own days.
Life happened
Job changes, a death in the family, a medical event, a military move. Human reasons are real reasons, and they deserve the same clear-eyed handling as financial ones.
The three things to do in the first 24 hours
1. Find out the actual reason, and get proof
"They need more time" is not enough information to make a decision on. Your Realtor should be on the phone with the other side that same day getting specifics: what is outstanding, who is working on it, and what date the lender or title company believes is realistic.
Then ask for documentation. A letter from the lender stating what remains. A title update. A contractor's scheduled date. This is not being difficult, it is standard, and a buyer who is genuinely close to the finish line will produce it quickly. A buyer who cannot produce anything is giving you useful information too.
Chase says it this way: "Speed overcomes a multitude of sins."
The faster you get the real facts, the more options you have. Delay in getting information is the only part of this that is truly avoidable.
2. Put everything in writing
A closing date is a contract term. It does not change because two people agreed over the phone that it should. Any new date, and any condition you attach to it, belongs in a signed amendment with copies to everyone, including both Realtors, the lender, and the title company.
Verbal understandings are where sellers get hurt. Sign the amendment or the original date still stands, and that ambiguity helps nobody.
3. Price out what the delay actually costs you
Before you agree to anything, do the arithmetic on your own situation:
- Another mortgage payment, plus taxes, insurance, and utilities
- Continued upkeep, lawn care, and the cost of keeping the home in show condition
- Rescheduling movers, storage, or a rental truck
- Whether your own purchase on the other end has a date you now cannot hit
- Whether your rate lock on the next home is at risk
Write the number down. It becomes the basis for what you ask for in return, which is exactly where part two picks up. If you want to see how a shift in timing affects your bottom line, our net proceeds calculator will run the updated math in a couple of minutes.
The mindset that serves you here
Most extension requests end in a closing. A buyer who is asking for two more weeks has an appraisal paid for, an inspection behind them, earnest money at risk, and a lender who wants the loan to fund. That is a motivated party, not an escape artist.
Stay calm, get the facts in writing, know your number, and then decide. We walk sellers through this constantly, and it is one of the reasons we put so much weight on how a contract is structured on the front end. Our guide to selling a home in Little Rock covers those early decisions in depth.
Next up: your three real options when the request comes, and how to say yes without absorbing the cost.
Let's Do The Deal!