By: Jim Hart

The home buying and selling season is fast approaching and I will be giving out a series of tips for home buyers and sellers in the weeks and months ahead-tips that will help you protect your legal and financial interests. Buying or selling a home is a BIG business deal composed of people, emotions, contracts and cash-all the ingredients for legal and financial pain if you don’t know what you are doing and most people don’t. When you are doing a real estate deal, you are surrounded by sales people who have an economic interest (called a commission check) to manipulate you into spending as much of your hard earned cash as possible. Keep your eyes on my column over the next weeks and months, especially of you are a home buyer, because real estate agents legally represent sellers and NOT buyers (.)

Here’s a few basic tips I like to refer to as the 10 commandments for home buyers and sellers.

1. BUYERS: real estate agents legally represent sellers, NOT buyers…their job is to get the highest possible price for the property. They are not “your agent” and what you tell them may be used against you. Learn how to take control of the relationship.

2. BUYERS: avoid giving more than $100.00 when you write a purchase offer on a home. In this way, if you cannot complete a transaction you have less money at risk. Large good faith deposits do NOT guarantee you will get financing. Why risk your money?

3. BUYERS: arrange your home financing first, BEFORE you look for a home. Doing so gives you the same power as a cash-buyer. Our home buyer products show you how to use your pre-qualification to SAVE THOUSANDS when buying a home.

4. BUYERS: When you sign a purchase offer, make sure that you write above your signature the clause “subject to buyer’s attorney’s approval”. These 5-magic words can get you out of a bad deal if your attorney does not approve.

5. BUYERS: remember; a purchase offer becomes a legally binding contract when accepted by the seller. Fully understand the legal details before signing

6. SELLERS: avoid signing long-term listing agreements with any real estate agent. Keep the listing contracts limited to 90-day increments so that you can review performance.

7. SELLERS: Avoid signing a listing agreement with part time agents. Use only full time agents so that you increase your chances for more professional representation.

8. SELLERS: Interview multiple agents before signing a listing contract. Make sure that you write above your signature the clause “subject to seller’s attorney’s approval”. These 5-magic words can get you out of a bad listing contract if your attorney does not approve.

9. SELLERS: avoid signing purchase offers with unqualified buyers. Doing so removes your property from the market while waiting to find out you are dealing with a dud.

10. SELLERS: Make sure your agent presents you with an itemized marketing plan detailing the selling activities that will be performed during the listing agreement.

Planning on buying or selling a home? May I humbly suggest you visit our website? Smart Books Publishing specializes in representing consumers, people like you, who are planning on doing a real estate or business deal and you should know that this resource is available to you. Why? Because people are like lambs among wolves when buying or selling a home! Agents are trained in real estate principals, practices and some law. How much training have you had? Ever heard the term: caveat emptor? That’s legal jargon for “buyer beware” which is a fancy legal way of saying cheating is okay. The agents are on commission, the mortgage brokers on are commission and it’s a “good old boys club” which you are NOT a part of. Visit the site and get smart fast!

My E-Report: 101 Tips For Home buyers, Sellers And Money Borrowers will help you with more information regarding this article-go to smart Books website, send us an email requesting a copy and we’ll send it to your email address within 24 hours-absolutely free! (limited to first 20 responders-make sure you say you saw it on Ezine!). Another Ezine Exclusive! Until next time…
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In addition to the requests to fix this and that, the new offer had an amendment that referred to our termite problem. Basically, it said they wanted the right to back out of the purchase at any time “due to structural damage”. Well, that just wouldn’t work for us, we want time to buy a new house too and I told our realtor that.

It dawned on me that we’d be out of town starting the day after the two week inspection to see if the termites are dead. So we’d have to wait three weeks and that means we’d have to leave the contract open-ended until then. I decided to get on the phone with Terminix. Thank heavens I had that warranty, they have been really good about this whole thing.

I asked them if, since I was leaving town and this was holding up the sale of my house, would they be willing to open the wall to look for damage before the normal waiting period. They obliged. So I set out to round everyone up to come over and watch them open our wall.

I thought this would be best, we’d see it there was structural damage now and get a firm commitment to the contract. My instincts told me that the damage was cosmetic, I just knew it would come out good.

So, everyone arrived at 6:00 p.m., we had the buyer, her agent, my agent, Brent, me and the contractor. We all sat around the living room while the contractor cut big holes in my wall and ceiling. Just as I thought, there were no termites and there was no damage. Now that’s not to say that termites hadn’t been there, there were mud tunnels all over the sheetrock and on the studs. The contractor checked the studs, they were solid and there was no damage.

The buyer’s realtor however, she must be an idiot. She kept on and on, “what about on the other side of that piece of wood?”, “what about upstairs on the other side of that piece of wood?”, “what about on the other end of the room, there were tunnels over there?”. I could just choke her. The buyer could see there were no problems, she was calm and sane. It was her agent that was a nut.

Finally it was over. The contractor said he’d be back on Saturday to fix the holes. There was no sign of termites present. There were no signs of damage to the wood in the wall. The contractor will be replacing one decorative board on the front of the house. The only problem seemed to be matching the paint after he makes the patches. We have never painted that room and there would be no way for them to match and make it look good. It sounds like painting the whole room isn’t an option.

So, no big deal, we’ll paint the room. As we were talking to our agent after the buyer and her crazy agent left, we got a call. The buyer wants the house, she’s satified that there was no damage. They will remove the section about the termites from the contract and we’ll have a firm commitment by the time the option period is up, which is Thursday. YEA!!!!

We just needed to come back with a counter offer in regard to the repairs, we were not going to give them $2700. So, we countered with $500 and our really nice, huge, only 5 year old refrigerator. I’m thinking they will need one since they’re coming from an apartment and they won’t find one this nice for less than $1300. We paid $1600 when it was new. If they take it, we won’t have to move it, we won’t have to store it, and we can get a new one!

I’ll let you know if they accept. In the meantime, we’ve either repaired or are going to repair more than half the things on their list.