When you’ve found your dream house—or your compromise house—or your investment property—what then? How do you reach a binding agreement with the seller? The process resembles a tennis game. The homeowner makes the first serve, a public offer to sell the property at a given price. Now the ball is in your court. Local customs differ, with some areas using a system of bids or offers and counteroffers. Final contracts can be written by attorneys, brokers, or even buyers themselves if no agents are involved (as in a FSBO situation). The key thing to remember here is that everything is negotiable: price, terms—you name it, it can be written into an offer to purchase and countered by the sellers. Depending on how creative you or your agent get, negotiating tactics will determine whether the sellers take you seriously. In most locales, you start things off with an offer to buy, which includes not only a price but many other provisions. The document you present to the seller is a written purchase offer; when the seller accepts it exactly as you presented it, it becomes a binding contract, which may be known in your community as a deposit receipt, contract of sale, or agreement to buy and sell. Time frames for a response from the seller are usually written into your offer. If that time elapses and no answer from the seller is forthcoming, the deal is usually deemed dead or (silently) unaccepted in most areas. All real estate contracts must be in writing in order to be enforceable. (Translation: “Oral agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.”) If, in front of 20 witnesses, a homeowner said she was willing to sell you the property for $225,000 cash and took your deposit check—you still could not legally hold her to it. The written contract supersedes any oral agreements; if the sellers promise to leave the refrigerator, make sure that the contract specifies it, or you could be out of luck. |
