Mary Beth H.: Hi. This is Mary Beth Harrison with Dallas Native Voice, and today, I want to talk about the portion of the contract that talks about the option period.
The buyer is giving the seller some amount of money, needs to be pretty substantial for the unrestricted right to terminate the contract for any reason within blank number of days. Well, as fast as the market’s moving right now, most of us have about seven or eight days in there, and that’s about as much as you’re probably going to get from most sellers.
It says we’re going to go give you, for example, $200 for the unrestricted right to terminate this contract for any reason within seven days. If you move forward to closing, then that money will be refunded to you at closing. If you don’t close because you have that many days to do your inspections, do whatever you want to do, find out what you want to find out about the house, you don’t have to do inspections during that period, but it’s a smart thing to do, and then if you don’t like anything about the house, it doesn’t matter, you don’t owe the seller an explanation, you get to terminate within those seven days. That’s the way the contract reads.
From the seller standpoint, when you come back after inspections, and you’ve got a laundry list of things you want repaired, for example, you need the disposal fixed and the toilet fixed and the air conditioning serviced, for example, the seller doesn’t have to agree to that, but again, the choice is yours whether you move forward with the contract or whether you terminate. The seller has choices during that period of time, and you have choices during that time.
A lot of times, buyers will come back and ask for all kinds of small little things, and at the end of the day, would that really keep you from buying a house? From the seller standpoint, if they’re big items, then they’re things they probably need to fix for you or for any buyer that comes along, or just maybe at the price you came in at, they’re not willing to get those things fixed. They felt like they gave you a really good price on the purchase price, and that that would take care of repairs. A lot of different ways to handle it, but you get a choice as a buyer, and the seller gets a choice as to whether they fix whatever it is you’ve asked them to fix if you’ve asked for anything at all.
I hope that clears up the part of the contract that’s called the option period and the option fee that gets delivered. If you keep watching, we’ll have more information on contracts and things that work for you and maybe they don’t work for you as a buyer or a seller. We’re where you are, so you can find us on all social media platforms or at dallasnative.com. Thanks for listening.