The offer we received on one of our listings was "Contingent upon receiving a fully executed contract on buyer's property by August 15th" in this offer it was also stated that closing day for our property was August 11th. I have to admit, this one took me a while, to me executing a real estate sales contract means Closing. So my initial thought was, they mixed up the two closing dates. Meaning seller (our buyer) will close on their property 8/11 and on our 8/15. But no, that was not it. Long story short, what the buyer was trying to say and that is also how the seller understood it, was that the buyer will only go ahead with the purchase of our listing if he has received and accepted an offer on his current property before closing on ours. Well if we close on the 11th than how can I have a contingency for the 15th? It all ends at closing, so, what are they thinking? They will buy on the 11 and if they have no offer by the 15th on their property, they just give it back? So this was the first mess, but we are not done yet, in the buyer's and seller's mind "a fully executed contract" was actually an offer. (Well, in my mind a fully executed offer becomes a contract, and a fully executed contract is closing) I will spare you the rest of the story and what it took to straighten out his mess; I just want everybody to understand. Sellers, buyers, none of them are lawyers. It is one thing to fill in the blanks or add standard addenda but please when you add your own "thought" to a contract to purchase real estate, make sure you know what you are doing or saying, if you only have the slides doubt, call a lawyer. In this particular case, buyer and seller went out of their way to create this mess, if they had listened to my agent we could have simply used the standard addendum, "Contingent upon sale of buyer's property"
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Maybe you should give the buyers agent a date book as a closing gift. They sound pretty confused. Good luck!
I don't know why it is that everyone seems to think they have a better understanding of the contract than the people who deal with them every day. I had a seller recently who didn't want to allow us to have a walk-thru after they moved their belongings out. They (and their realtor) thought it was sufficient to have a walkthru 4 days prior. Their interpretation was that the walkthru must be within five days prior, neglecting to understand that the property had to be delivered free of personal belongings and "broom clean." Well, "it will be delivered free of our belongings and clean..." (we just don't want to let you inspect it!) My thought then becomes, what on earth are you hiding?
The seller's agent actually had the gaul to say the following words to me:
"Brendan, I've been in this business for 30 years, and it's the way I've always done it...and I've never had a problem..."
To which my hot irish temper responded:
"OK, I must congratulate you on your good fortune that you have been doing business this way with no incedents, or lawsuits...you are incredibly lucky. I know you've been in the business for thirty years, but in those thirty, you've sold 1/6 of the homes I've sold in the last 10. I will never leave my clients open to that sort of liability...read your contract...we'll be there the morning of settlement for our walktrhu."
I wonder what is going on in the minds of some people...
Brendan; That was a very good and restrained response for having a hot Irish temper. I've heard too many nightmarish stories regarding doing the walkthrough too far in advance.
As for clients who have unique interpitations of realty contracts, I find most of them are operating from a point of misinformation. Usually they come around to understanding logic. Usually. ;)