Patience check: slow seller after signed LOI, when does it become a red flag
For those who've done seller-financed deals with older, semi-retired owners, how long did it realistically take to get from a signed LOI to a substantive seller response?
Curious to calibrate against the group's experience. I submitted a signed, seller-financed LOI a few weeks ago. I've stayed responsive on the smaller follow-up items as they've come up, but I haven't yet gotten real engagement on the overall terms, and there's no formal counter. The seller is an older owner who's semi-retired in mindset, and his CPA hasn't finished the most recent reviewed financials yet, so diligence hasn't started.
I'm not in a rush on my end and my read is that this is just a slow, unsophisticated seller plus unfinished financials, not a cooling of interest. But I'd value a gut-check: for those who've bought from this kind of seller, what's normal here? How long did the gap between signed LOI and a substantive response run for you, and at what point did you start treating slowness as an actual red flag versus just the pace of the deal?