The Buying Process - Part Two

You found a home!  Even with blizzards raging, you found a home!  Of course, you say, you need to get it for the right price and under the right conditions.

Assume right now it's a normal sale....you have no other house to sell before you can buy this one, there's nothing very different about your mortgage - conventional or FHA - so you can go ahead and write the offer. Your Realtor - let's make it me - says let's meet and do it!  Sometimes I meet people at the office and we have access to the scanner so I can e-mail it afterwards to the other agent.  Sometimes I choose Panera Bread in Fairmount because 7/8 offers I've written there have gone through.  I've written offers in the house being sold, on the hoods of cars, sitting on park benches....I believe that when you, the buyer, wants a house we need to write it up and get it done!  ("If you snooze, you lose!")

That also goes for pricing.  Yes, my job is to get the house for you at the best price possible.  I generally come armed to a serious showing with comparable sales in the area.  If I've been with a buyer in a specific location for a while, we both know what has sold and for what price.  But if you see the home you want, and the price isn't unreasonable, buy it by going to the list price.  There are no rules that say you must get it for less... Today each $1,000 in price represents about $5 per month in mortgage payments.  Coming in $5,000 off the price means $300 will be saved in 5 years.  Rates are going up - waiting for another house you can get for less may mean paying more to begin with - and if this is the home you want, then buy it.

There are contingencies to any offer.  Written into the contract we use from the Central New York Information Service is a paragraph stating that your attorney has three days to review the signed offer and can, with no reason having to be given, disapprove of the contract.  This "out" is rarely used, but it is used. He/she can also add further contingencies.

Purchases may also be contingent on a home inspection and radon test, as I noted in Part One.  These are generally done within 7 days of signing by both parties - the quicker the better - and then you can have another day or days to negotiate.

So say you make it through these, but you are financing.  After you have applied for your mortgage, then the appraiser goes into the house.  The appraiser's job is to "guarantee" to the mortgage company that the house is worth what you are paying for it.  There are no guarantees, but the appraiser puts his/her name on the assertion that the house will not lose the bank money.  Appraisers do say no, at times.  As far as the purchase offer goes, you can say that any repairs that the appraiser wants done must be made by the seller, or you can offer to pay for them.

Abstracts (the history of the house) and surveys follow.  The attorneys - buyer, seller and bank attorneys - check the house for liens, judgments, and issues with the land being purchased under the house.  There have been several homes that I know of in which the house was actually part of a neighbor's property.  Not a good thing to find out....especially after closing!  Have a survey done - please!

Other contingencies are well and septic tests.  Certainly you want sufficient potable water and a septic system that works.  The seller, in our contract, is responsible for testing them.  I loved the gardens of my first home in Skaneateles;  yup, the septic had failed under it and those gardens were "fertilized."  The seller paid for a new one.

All these contingencies are in the offer you have written.

The CNYIS purchase offer is 7 pages long, plus you usually will have disclosures from the sellers about the house to the best of their knowledge, a lead-base paint disclosure for houses built prior to 1979, and sometimes other information such as the MLS sheet, your pre-approval from the mortgage company, and possibly an old survey.  You submit it through your Realtor to the listing agent and you wait - for a counter, an acceptance, a refusal - usually no longer than 24 hours.

Check out Part Three (coming soon!) to see if you get your offer!