Tim Bell covers three contract essentials: limiting buyer access to occupied properties, where to hold earnest money, and setting offer deadlines. He recommends using a title company for earnest money and keeping deadlines short so sellers can't shop for higher offers.
Okay. Section number eight says upon acceptance, the buyer shall be granted unlimited access to the property for marketing and inspection purposes. Now this is another kind of a throwaway. It is nice to be able to get into the property, but occasionally you're going to receive some objections from the seller in terms of allowing you unlimited access. If the property is vacant, it won't be that big a deal. But if the property is occupied, they may say something like, well, wait a minute, we, we don't want you walking in on us in the shower at 7:00 in the morning, you know, by granting you unlimited access. And so at that point you can modify this. You could say something like, with an hour notification or a two hour notification, something like that. Okay, so that's how you could do that. Now, number nine says the earnest money shall be deposited by the buyer upon acceptance. Acceptance means signing by everybody, by all parties at. And then the. This is where I recommend you put in your title company or title attorney's office. Okay. I like having control of that and you will too. Even though title companies are theoretically neutral third parties that are not supposed to show favoritism to one party or the other, the truth is every single title company is populated totally and entirely by human beings. And of course human beings do show favoritism. So if possible, I like to be able to have that earnest money deposited at my title company. Because if I have a dispute between me and the seller and there's a dispute as to whether or not I am deserving or I am entitled to receive that earnest money back having in a failed transaction, I'm much more likely to be able to get it back from my title company with whom I have a relationship than some strange title company that I've never met or seen or dealt with before. And again in a future session, we're going to talk about building relationships with your team members and of course your title company. Your title attorney's office is one of those teams. So we'll talk about that. Now the last one here says this offer shall remain in force until. And then you put a specific time in there. And if not accepted by said time, this offer shall be deemed rescinded and deposits shall be refunded. Now, if the seller is ready to sign, right now, this is you and the seller sitting at their kitchen table. They're ready to sign, you're ready to sign. Do not fill that in, leave it blank, or put n A in there and then get the signatures. That's ultimately what you're trying to do is get the signatures. Okay, you're trying to get them to sign now. Occasionally they may not be ready to sign right now. They may say something like, we need to think about it or I've had people say we need to sleep on it. I've even had people say, well, we need to pray about it. Okay, that's fine. How long is it going to take? And then if they're not ready to sign right now, for whatever reason, I'm going to put in a date and a time in there that is as soon as possible. For example, if they say, well, we need to sleep on it, great. What time do you wake up in the morning? Well, we wake up in the morning at 8 o'. Clock. Okay, let's put 8:30 in here for tomorrow morning. The idea is you want it to be as quick as possible. You want it to be as short a time frame as possible. Why? Well, because you want to give them as little time possible to change their mind. And more importantly, if you give them too long a deadline, they may try to slide another offer that's higher in underneath you. Okay. They may try to bring in another buyer that will pay a little bit more than what you'll pay for the property. So you may miss the property. So again, if they're ready to sign right now, do not fill in a date or a time in there. Just have them sign. If on the other hand, they're not ready to sign right now, then you can put a date that is as close to today's date and time as you possibly can get as soon as possible. Because again, you don't want to run the risk of them trying to sell the property for a little bit more money to somebody else. Now you can see the last parts here on this page. This does print off on 1 8.5 by 11 page is places for the buyers to sign and date. That would be you. And places for the seller to sign and date. Okay. There may be two sellers.
