Important Deadlines to consider when buying or selling a home!
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Today, we’re going to talk about deadlines. It’s one of the most important things of a real estate transaction because all of the different dates in the contract really effect the outcome of the contract.
So let’s talk about the first deadline, you make an offer or you get an offer from a buyer and there’s an expiration date that that offer needs to be responded by. The expiration date is determined by the buyer in the initial offer. There are quite a few agents who don’t give a lot of time to respond, and that’s because they wanna secure that house for their client. And I always say, if a seller wants to sell and a buyer wants to buy, let’s put it together quick, why do we need to wait?
So that’s the first deadline, and if the seller misses that deadline, the buyer has the right to go find another house unless you have an extension in writing. And I’m not a big fan of extensions because why do we write an offer, we do we write in dates in the contract if we’re going to keep extending them? So that’s really the first date.
The second date that’s important is the earnest money. Earnest money, if it’s not given to your agent when you make the offer, it has to be receipted within a certain amount of time. Often, we see buyers put 24, 48 or 72 hours to have their earnest money somewhere. Sometimes it’s 96 hours if the buyers live out of town. If you don’t have the earnest money to where it’s supposed to go, like the title company or a real estate office and receipted in that amount of time, technically the offer’s void because that was something you were supposed to do. If that happens, the seller can actually take another offer, so it’s really important that we make those deadlines. So that was number two, and probably they’re hand in hand, but a pre-qual letter is number three. So sometimes a pre-qual letter comes with a contract, and sometimes it says upon acceptance by five p.m. that day. So if you didn’t do that, again, you’re out of contract.
Number four and five I think could be argued that they’re probably the most important, but who knows, everyone has their idea of what’s most important. And I’m talking about the objection deadline for number four. So you have to have all of your inspections done by that deadline, and ask the seller what you want to have repaired. So if you’re on the seller side and you don’t get objections by then, the buyer is taking it in as is condition. If you’re the buyer and let’s say the roof is bad, and you don’t get your objection in by then, you’re taking the property in as is condition, like I said, and you can’t ask for a roof. I mean, you can try, but a lot of times, people aren’t going to do that. So that was number four. Let’s say you did ask for repairs, and now there’s a resolution time, so it’s the time between the objection deadline and the resolution date that we have to go back and forth to make sure that we have come together in agreement of what the seller’s gonna fix. If we don’t come to an agreement or the seller doesn’t respond, even by that resolution date, you have to back out of the deal unless you’re willing to take the house in as is condition. And you can’t go past that resolution date, so you have to make sure that you follow the dates.
Obviously you have a real estate agent that’s helping you through this process, but I tell my clients, you want those dates in your phone, in your planner, on sticky notes on your fridge, on your computer screen, whatever you do to make sure that you do not miss those dates. One deadline that’s not talked about much is the date that the title is received by the buyer and the days that the buyer gets to object to the title. And of course, the last date in the contract is closing. Obviously we have to make the closing date, and that’s kind of dependent upon your lender and appraisals right now because the appraisers are so behind, it’s a refinance boom and there’s lots of people buying. But that’s another topic for another time, so remember, we would love to help you with making all of your dates in your contract. We want you to love where you live, see you soon.
