Our New Offer To Purchase and How It Affects Our Birkdale Buyers and Sellers

Our North Carolina Offer To Purchase Is Changing, Are you Ready?

At Carolina Living Real Estate, our agents are preparing diligently to give the best possible service by educating ourselves about the new contract forms. The change, for NC Realtors, is BIG!

With the hope of not being too long winded, I will quickly explain the difference.

In the past, our contracts had to options (alternatives) for completing the due diligence for purchasing a home. The most often used (Alternative 1) involved earnest money deposit, buyer obtaining a loan, doing inspections and negotiating repairs. Sounds pretty simple, but there is/was a lot of areas in the contract left to interpretation. This ambiguity resulted in failed deals and the seller having taken his/her home off the market getting nothing in return.

The ah-ha moment has come for the NC Real Estate Commission. We always had another option (Alternative 2) which was seldom used. It involved Option Money, which essentially the buyer purchasing time to do the due diligence. Unlike earnest money, this money is not refundable to the buyer. This protects the seller and gives the buyer the right to terminate for ANY reason without being sued for performance.

So, what can Carolina Living Real Estate do to mitigate risk for our clients?

The first thing we do for our sellers is to go over the risks associated with selling the home with regard to losing a sale during the due diligence period. While assessing the risks, we can advise our sellers how to mitigate the risk by doing some things up front with the hopes of asking for more option money up front. 

Logically, if we have already mitigated some of the buyer risk, then they should in good faith give the seller more option money. (The money does go towards the purchase when they close).

Obviously for our buyers, we have to evaluate the risk and recommend an option amount that supports the risk.

For both buyers and sellers.  This is important and even though it is a DUH comment, it was not always done.  Buyers MUST get pre-approved before writing any offer.  More importantly they should not even be looking without having it done.  We realize that pre-approval is a long way from getting the funds, but at least the buyer will know if they have credit to at least apply!

Hopefully this helps some.  If you want to have a discussion about how to mitigate some of the risks, please feel free to call me at 704-451-7051!