Fish in the Attic

As you know, Anne and I are moving. Very soon, in fact. Well, unless these asshat buyers screw it up.

In case you haven't bought or sold a house before, here's how it usually works:

1. You spend two weeks tromping dirt through dozens of houses people have paid other people to make presentable (because the way you keep your house is just not acceptable).
2. You make an offer. The seller gets a better offer.
   
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until the seller accepts your offer.
4. Once you have a signed offer, you are "in contract". Money is on the line. You follow a set of steps until everything clears and you own your new house, which you promptly depreciate by moving in.
5. One of the steps along the way is that you, the buyer, have a certain amount of time (say, three weeks) to release all of your contingencies. After this point, if you back out, you lose your huge deposit. During this time, you can have all the inspections done that you want, and if anything turns up, you can back out, no problem.

Well, the date for releasing contingencies on our house was the 28th. The buyers had three weeks to have any inspections done. They had none. The day before the deadline they asked if they could come by the house with their contractor friend and take a look. No problem. Except the contractor friend flaked. So they asked for a week extension.

Grudgingly, we accepted. We are in contract on our new house, and would very much like this to go smoothly. And it is, in fact, a buyer's market.

Here we are a week later. Not a peep from the buyers until today (the day before the deadline), and they want another week extension to have half a dozen inspections done - some of which we already had done, to save them the trouble.

I don't care how much of a buyer's market it is, there are other people interested in the house, and we can't wait forever. These screwballs are just pushing us to see how far we'll bend. Their realtor, who is also our realtor, has repeatedly told them about the deadlines, and offered to get any inspections done, which they failed to take advantage of.

This extension is going to cost them (if we agree to it at all). Any ideas?