Offer Accepted-Inspection Problem (contingency, clause, fee, price)
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Thanks momma bear for the rep. I think everything is open for negociation until the papers are signed at closing and everyone scatters to the four winds. The crickets chirping will be the only recourse I have with issues after that.
The solution (thanks in part to you guys) is to ask the seller to credit the amount equal to a 5-7 yr home warranty. That would cover the major components which, as the inspector stated, "are a miracle each day they continue to operate".
I think that is excessive. One year is $300ish. Why would the seller want to credit you $1500? Get a year and get it done.
You are wrong about everything is negotiable up to closing. A contract has all the provisions contained within. You follow your contract or risk being sued for breech, or worse.
I think that is excessive. One year is $300ish. Why would the seller want to credit you $1500? Get a year and get it done.
You are wrong about everything is negotiable up to closing. A contract has all the provisions contained within. You follow your contract or risk being sued for breech, or worse.
An Inspection report suggesting that all major systems are on borrowed time rates a settlement. That does not however rate new systems or the equivalent.
Note that with all good respect to the Inspector I would bet two out of three of those systems go another 5 years. The ones that get that old tend to go on and on and on...
So maybe a quarter or a third of replacement cost. Bring the house up to parity.
Good point Olecapt. I'm not asking for new or equivalent, however. I'm taking 1/3 of the average life expectancy of the combined systems which is 5-7 years. That's great if one or more of the systems continues to run, but they are +20 years old with an efficiency rating equal to Fred Flintstones' car.
Extending the Home Warranty not only gives the sellers a cheaper solution, it covers the numerous minor items that were deficient. This seems like a good idea, anway. It's fair to both parties if there aren't objections.
I think that is excessive. One year is $300ish. Why would the seller want to credit you $1500? Get a year and get it done. You are wrong about everything is negotiable up to closing. A contract has all the provisions contained within. You follow your contract or risk being sued for breech, or worse.
Aye-Yie-Yie,...I hope you're not the sellers agent or I'm going to be Scrooby-Doo'd.
Thanks momma bear for the rep. I think everything is open for negociation until the papers are signed at closing and everyone scatters to the four winds. The crickets chirping will be the only recourse I have with issues after that.
The solution (thanks in part to you guys) is to ask the seller to credit the amount equal to a 5-7 yr home warranty. That would cover the major components which, as the inspector stated, "are a miracle each day they continue to operate".
I don't think of things as negotiable until closing. The only things that are negotiable upon inspection are DEFECTS. An old house having old stuff in it does not constitute a defect.
The contract on our house is an "AS IS" with the right to inspect. The buyers can walk upon inspection but they need to take the property as it is. I like that type of contract as it allows the buyer to walk if there are defects, but does not allow them to nickel and dime us for things they "want". I intend to use the same type of contract when I buy also.
I'm a little confused. OP didn't learn until the inspection that the systems were old? This is usually something you can learn during your own walk-throughs at 1st or 2nd showing, or by asking your agent to double-check with seller. I would have already negotiated 'antique' systems into my offer, not made it a bone of contention during the inspection. IMO you can't expect the seller to replace systems that are fully functional (prior to putting the house on the market) nor to give you full replacement value as a condition of inspection. Just my opinion.
P.S. I'd also turn the A/C on just to see if it works.
I agree, didn't you realize this in the walk thoughts? I recently sold my house and had the buyers raising a stink as the A/C and water heater were old (clearly obvious just by looking at them) but magically dawned on this during inspection. They demanded new stuff and it really upset me i wanted to tell them to shove it, but bended with 1K off and a extended warranty.
I would NOT ask for that much off as like me, the seller may get very anger and give you nothing, or cancel the deal.
Zillow also is not a reliable source for getting home values. 9 times out of 10 it lists homes very overvalued.
OP, just what do you think a contract is? No, things are not negotiable right up until closing - here, at least (and in most contracts), there are specific deadlines by which certain things have to be done, and once past those deadlines, you can't go back and do a "do over". When you sign a contract, you are legally agreeing to the terms of the contract, as written, with only specific ways to get out of it based on doing due diligence. Having old items in an old house is not a defect that cannot be seen at the time you make the offer, which is what due diligence is for - finding out those things that couldn't be determined by a reasonable person at the time they decided to make the offer and what it would be.
A reasonable person would assume that an old house had old items, and would be pleasantly surprised if they were new.
OP, just what do you think a contract is? No, things are not negotiable right up until closing - here, at least (and in most contracts), there are specific deadlines by which certain things have to be done, and once past those deadlines, you can't go back and do a "do over". When you sign a contract, you are legally agreeing to the terms of the contract, as written, with only specific ways to get out of it based on doing due diligence. Having old items in an old house is not a defect that cannot be seen at the time you make the offer, which is what due diligence is for - finding out those things that couldn't be determined by a reasonable person at the time they decided to make the offer and what it would be.
A reasonable person would assume that an old house had old items, and would be pleasantly surprised if they were new.
Not reasonable. Contract says what it says. As soon as you run into a snag like bad systems you create an exception. If resolved the contract runs...if not the contract is in an unknown state. It does not simply go forward when the time is up on the particular contingency. And you can go back and do a "do over" particularly if a problem is identified and not resolved.
Old items flagged as unusual in an inspection report is a perfectly negotiable item. All "old" ain't the same. Buyers are not inspectors. "old" comes in many flavors. Don't start insisting on expert behavior from the buyer.
It's quite reasonable, olecapt. The option period (here, at least) is to do your due diligence and find problems you can't reasonably be expected to know about when you make the offer. That does not include old systems in an old house. Now, if the systems had been determined to be non-functioning, that would be something else entirely, but here, at least, even in that case, the buyer can ask for repairs to be done, the seller can say yes or no (depending on how outrageous the requests are and how willing the seller is for the buyer to walk, of course), and if the seller says no, the buyer's options are to move forward without the repairs or to walk from the contract and get their earnest money back (and they pay a small option fee for the privilege which the seller gets to keep if the buyer walks, but it's generally small enough not to make a big difference either way). The seller is not required to negotiate the repairs, and the option period is NOT (though some people misunderstand it) a time to renegotiate the price or terms of the contract beyond those kinds of things.
There are also deadlines in our contract for objecting to something found in the survey (the buyer has a certain number of days to object to something unexpected in the survey), the deed restrictions, etc. All carefully spelled out in the contract - there's no negotiation there beyond, "I object to this" and the seller can either fix it (if it's something they can fix) or not and the buyer can walk and get their earnest money back.
No one is insisting on expert behavior from the buyer, just what one would expect from the average person. I wouldn't buy an old house expecting it to be all new - that would be silly and foolish of me. (And I held this same attitude before I was an agent, when we bought a house built in 1959, and when we bought a house built sometime in the first 30 years of the last century.) When the inspector says that the systems are old, but functioning, that's not a big surprise, or shouldn't be, to an average person, and should have been taken into account when making the original offer and during the original negotiations before the contract was executed.
Perhaps it's because I used to be a legal assistant that I understand what a contract is (though it's just as much a part of my job to understand that as a real estate agent and make sure that they understand that they are, indeed, signing a legally binding contract and what the escape clauses are and aren't and what can be negotiated when and when it can't).
Inspectors tag everything, and I mean everything. The good ones make sure to point out that "not up to current code" means that when the house was built, it WAS built to code, and to point out when it's a safety issue and when it's a "the code changed last year, or last month, or yesterday" kind of situation, for example, and when a system is old but functioning just fine versus when it's broken and not functioning as it should. The agent's job is to help the buyer determine what's a serious issue and what's not, from that report, and what's reasonable to ask in the way of repairs (though it would be hard to repair an older system that's functioning as it should, of course).
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