Good morning everyone. Hope you made it through the snow if you are East coast! Wanted to let you know that a new real estate sales contract will be put in place and be used by the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors effective Feb. 1. What does this mean for you the buyer?
Personally, I like the current contract, it’s only 6 pages and simple. It’s been in place for quite sometime now and was recently updated last fall, to what I thought was an excellent real estate sales contract. Now we are going to be changing to the South Carolina contract. I can only speculate why and won’t call any names but I know for a fact a number of the big listers in Greenville nearly had a hissy fit over the last version of the contract. I understand it got rather nasty. The biggest reason I think was that the buyer had the right to walk away for any reason within the due diligence period. Well, there’s some listing agents out there that think it ought to be very difficult for a buyer to walk.
Here’s my response for what it’s worth. I think the buyer should be able to walk within a reasonable time frame. Why, well the seller holds all the cards on a home the buyer really doesn’t know anything about. So although there may not be anything major with the home, there may be a lot of little things that cause the buyer to change their minds.. Little things add up into big things. So, as long as it’s a reasonable period that the buyer and seller both agree upon, it should be allowed.
For whatever reason and again I’m not here to call names we are going to a much more complicated real estate sales agreement. The basic agreement is now 8 pages and if you want the right to withdraw you have to add an addendum and pay for that right. That’s right folks, you now have to put in a dollar amount you are willing to give up to the seller in case you change you mind. Also, there are a lot more details in the sales agreement that have to be specified, especially concerning completion dates like appraisal, bank financing, loan approval.
Why am I telling you all this? If you think you may need a buyer’s agent on your side before, you really need one now. You know, it’s just very aggravating to me. You have something simple that works and it must be made more complicated with increased paperwork.
I’ll be real interested to see how this all plays out with all the new real estate agents in Greenville. We’ll see… Ya’ll take care now and call me if you need help buying.
