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I have read threads in the past where the buyer or seller had some many days to meet a contract deadline. A good example is buyer's inspections where the contract reads "inspection to be performed within 10 days and buyer to submit needed repairs to seller in 14 days". There is then discussion does this means calendar days or business days, does it include holidays ,ect. It seems to be ambiguous.
We have our home on the market now and I think it is much clearer to specify specific dates rather than days. "Inspection must be completed by June 1, 2014".
Is there any issues writing your contract this way? If not, why don't more people do so?
Well ours defines days as business days. Our contracts even specify that you start counting on the next business day from mutual acceptance. It isn't hard to crunch out when the deadlines are. I think it is very clear.
If offers could be settled on the day they were made then actual dates would work. These things often go back and forth forever so an actual date specified on the day of the offer could have passed by the time the clowns involved come to terms. Not practical in the bad-boyfriend-timing world of real estate offers. You know, "I'll be at your place in 15 minutes." Not!!!
If you are willing to 'fill-in-the-blanks' with actual dates after you receive an offer, there is probably no problem. But, if you are thinking about a standardized form, with actual dates already included,it may require more predictability than you can 'get your contract around.'
I am guessing they use 'days' in case it takes an extra day or two for the last person to sign (and date) the contract.
^^^^^
This primarily. I've had Sellers take up to two weeks to sign an offer (after indicating they would sign). If there are multiple owners, that can take extra time, too. In those cases, using specific dates simply doesn't work out. Besides, I've always read "in 14 days" to mean exactly that. It would need to specifically state "business days" to mean other than calendar days, IMO.
A Buyer making an offer never even knows whether an owner is going to agree to sell. Dates can work out...but inserting specific dates does not encourage an owner to sign a contract quickly. Time is of the essence! With terms based upon days, the quicker the Seller signs the quicker they can close.
I suspect the biggest reason is that the dates for later events may be dependent on earlier dates. Take the inspection example you raised. The time for the buyer to reject the property based on the findings of the inspection is generally a fixed number of days from the inspection. If you insert a fixed date instead of a time span then you could be giving the buyer two or three weeks after the inspection, if the inspection is earlier than expected, instead of the week or ten days that you might want to give. There may be other internal dates like that.
On the other hand, the contracts I've seen generally have a set calendar date for the closing, and maybe for the financing commitment (not that they can't be changed).
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