Today’s market is much different than it was a year ago…contracts must be entered into with extreme care and caution. Now that buyers have room to truly negotiate with a seller on the purchase of a home, contracts must be read over with a fine toothed comb. I was reading today about how the timelines in a contract should really be looked at closely. I believe this is very important because as negotiations occur the timelines can actually extend further than originally planned.

It is important to remember that the timelines and dates don’t actually start counting until after the contract has had everything signed and initialed in all areas…what we agents label “mutual acceptance.” Many times…mutual acceptance actually occurs several days after the offer is originally submitted.

Timelines in a contract are generally set up to make the process flow smoothly as well as protect both sides of the transaction. Ultimately, as a Realtor, I look over all of the timelines in order to make sure that everything is synced up to a) protect my client’s interests and b) make sure the transaction will flow as smoothly as possible.

I do encourage my clients to read through the contract so that they will have realistic expectations as to what will happen during the process. I spend time going over each timeline with a client in order to help them understand what I will be doing and what steps they will need to be taking as well. It is nice when it gets to the point with a client when I say, “Sit back and relax for a couple of weeks until you have to sign the documents.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Buyers, Sellers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.