Contract Nerdiness

They say when the real estate market is good, everyone with a pulse gets their license. I am starting to believe there is a truth to this. I have a listing. It is my second listing in the past few weeks where the agent is asking for odd things for their client.

This agent has been licensed for a couple of years. She has sold a considerable amount of homes, given she has only been practicing since 2016. I give her credit for her hustle.

When I got the list of repairs her client wants though, I raised an eyebrow. There is a disconnect here.

The contract states the buyer has 10 days to perform all inspections necessary to make sure this is the home they want. If they find some sort of latent defect or something they "disapprove" of, they can ask for this to be remedied. I equate it to buying a used car from a person off the street. The terms and conditions are negotiated. But then the buyer takes the car out for a test drive and finds out there is a soft tire. The condition of the tire is discussed, not a new price. The car buyer can't go back and ask for custom rims or other accessories that weren't on the car to begin with. Plus, if the buyer doesn't find anything wrong, they can't ask the seller to take it to a mechanic at the seller's expense to see if the buyer missed something.

So, back to the house sale. This buyer's agent is asking for a few items that blow me away. First, they want rain gutters installed. The house doesn't come with rain gutters. The buyers knew this when they put the offer in. But now they want rain gutters. DO THEY NOT KNOW THIS IS ARIZONA? By the way, the sellers will not install rain gutters, a swimming pool or an East wing.

Next, the buyer wants the seller to have a HVAC technician evaluate the AC unit to see if anything is wrong. If something is found, they want the seller to fix it. They don't want to have their own HVAC company look at the unit. Nope, they want the seller to perform the inspection. Why on earth did the buyer's agent let this happen? Never mind.

Finally, the buyers had a roofer go to the house. However, the roofer did not provide an inspection report and when they buyers turned in their list of demands, they didn't include an inspection report. However, they want the sellers to hire their own roofer to evaluate the roof and then have the sellers do whatever their roofer says needs to be done.

All of this is can be addressed. In fact, it will be addressed. But there is no easy way to write the seller's response without making the buyer's agent look like a clown. To cover my seller's I need to say something along the lines of, "Because the buyers did not provide the sellers with a roof inspection, the sellers have nothing to fix."

Of course the back conversation goes like this to my sellers: "Hey, if there is something wrong with the roof, you might want to fix it, because if you don't do it for this buyer, you are doing it for the next one." But I am not telling the buyer's agent that.