For Sale By Owner – Documents / Paperwork
Pretty soon, potential home buyers may be showing up at your door! One key to making a sale is acting quickly when you have an interested prospect. As you probably know, any delay can cause the buyer to lose interest or grow impatient and look elsewhere.
To help make sure you don’t miss out, we’ve compiled a list of some of the information and paperwork you’ll need to have assembled and ready before you receive an offer.
As you probably already know, unfortunately we live in a litigious country. As a result there are some very stringent disclosure requirements that you will need to become familiar with.
Our best advice to keep you out of harms way is:
- make sure you have a detailed contract that fully protects you and doesn’t allow for misunderstandings or reneging;
- when it comes to disclosures, over disclosure. Disclose everything about the home and environment, past, present and future, that could be of any significance to a buyer. Remember something that might not be important to you, could be important to the buyer.A comprehensive and accurate set of disclosures read and signed by the buyer is your protection against future liability. Don’t leave yourself open to lawsuits with incomplete or faulty information!
Below are a list of the documents at a minimum we would recommend including as part of your real estate sale.
Contractual Documents / Disclosures
- Contract for the sale and purchase
- Contingency removals as appropriate
- Notices to perform if needed
- Addendum’s for terms / repairs, etc
- Sellers Property disclosures
- Lead Based Paint and Lead Based Paint Hazards
- Local disclosures
Others as needed for trusts, rentals, etc.
Where can I get the forms I will need?
If you search the internet for “For Sale By Owner Forms” you will find various offerings.
While are unable to make recommendations on the suitability of contractual documents you find we’d recommend checking on how often any 3rd party forms are updated, and making sure you’re using the most forms possible from a reputable legal source. Better yet, have an attorney review the documents you plan to use.
Our attorney’s update the documents we use several times each year based on changing legislation, buyer and seller disputes and litigation. This hopefully gives you and idea how often thing change. You really do want to be using current contracts and disclosures and make sure you understand what you are completing.
Why can’t you provide me with the forms?
As mentioned above, the documents we use are created and updated by our association of realtor attorney’s. These documents are protected by copyright law and are only for use in a real estate transactions where we are acting as fiduciaries or are in some other way involved.
Other Options
If you would like our assistance just to write the contract, assist and provide the necessary disclosures and process the sale through escrow to closing, please give us a call.