Investor · Sarasota, FL · Member since 2008 · 17k+ posts · 17k+ votes
A friend of mine is looking to buy a personal residence in California (it's a hot market and most sellers refuse inspection contingencies in contracts, so buyer due diligence needs to be done upfront prior to contracting with seller).
My friend sent me an email from his agent that sounds a bit fishy to me, and I wanted feedback about whether this might be a California thing, some NAR thing or some legal thing I'm not familiar with (though I'm not looking for legal advice, of course).
Anyway, here's the relevant part of the email (note this is from the Buyer's Agent):
The big thing that strikes me as incorrect here is the part about the Buyer's Agent being required to disclose any found defects to the Listing Agent. Especially ridiculous that this buyer's agent thinks that defects communicated verbally by an inspector can/must be treated differently than defects communicated in writing.
Then again, perhaps I'm the idiot...
Is this a CA thing? Is there some law or NAR-related ethical standard I'm not familiar with? Or is the buyer's agent just smoking crack?
Both the seller and the seller's agent have a separate duty to disclose anything that would materially affect the buyer's decision to buy, with a few small exceptions. And there are statutory disclosure forms for exactly that purpose. Assuming both the seller and seller's agent aren't hiding something, it's not clear to me that they aren't in this case, they may be afraid you would come up with something that they don't know about and the ultimate buyer might not discover, if that is the case they would have to disclose your discovery, because now they know. The part about verbal disclosure being okay is nonsense, if the seller becomes aware of something negative, they need to disclose, regardless of how they came upon that knowledge.
That's my understanding anyway, having had to take that agency and ethics refresher course a bunch of time through the years.
Btw, there is a way with the CAR form to write with no contingencies and still effectively have a contingency, if you want to go down that path.
@Account Closed Yeah I suppose if your offer is no contingencies and you get it ratified without a deposit, you have those 3 days. But in many competitive situations, most people include the deposit check with their offer.
But what I do notice is that some deals that are no contingency/all cash/close in 15 days magically get extended once in escrow. In other words, to be competitive a lot of people write that way to get excepted, but then try to weasel in a bank loan, or resolve an abatement issue, etc. This happened on a 4 unit I liked here in SF. I knew the competing terms (I dropped out eventually). Well that baby was supposed to have closed 3 weeks ago! Still pending. It'll also be interesting to see what the actual selling price was...And how it compares to what I was told was the accepted high bid.
A copy of the check or actual check itself? From what I've seen contracts are emailed including a copy of the check, with the actual check delivered (or not) to escrow within 3 days.
Sure, a 15 day close is pretty much a joke, things always pop up.
Rental Property Investor · San Francisco, CA · Member since 2013 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
12y
@Account Closed Yeah you're right, it's a copy of the check. So you can easily weasel 3 days easy until they really insist the check is at escrow. Games, games, games!