CONTRACTUALLY SPEAKING…
There are many contracts and documents involved in purchasing a house. The stack is more than an inch thick. Unless you’re a real estate lawyer or title agent, these documents will be foreign to you. Yet, they require detailed and accurate completions. Buying a property is not necessarily a “fill-in- the-blanks” transaction and a mistake, let’s say in title work, could haunt the buyer
well down the line after purchase. This very situation happened. A property that sat on a double lot was put on the market. The neighbor bought it to carve off a bit of the second lot to expand his own yard. The seller then put the home back on the market and it sold. Months later, through a property tax notification, it came out that in preparing new deeds for the properties, the expanded yard area was correctly in the name of the neighbor; however, the house had been transferred to the home buyer. The new homeowner now owned both houses and the neighbor owned his expanded driveway and yard. Fortunately, they were good neighbors and settled the matter with a few signatures. A real estate agent deals regularly with these contracts, conditions, and unexpected situations, and is familiar with which conditions should be used, when they can safely be removed, and how to use the contract to protect you. YOU WON’T NECESSARILY SAVE MONEY The point of not using a real estate agent would be to save money, right? Otherwise, why turn down professional assistance in finding a home to the buyers’ liking without their own effort and dealing with negotiations and the many attendant home-selling duties?
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