Edgewood, WA Real Estate Blog

I’ve reviewed hundreds of purchase and sale agreements.

Some good, some not so good. Helping new agents was part of what I did as assistant manager at my former company. I didn’t expect new agents to be experts at drafting contracts at first. When they needed to write a clause addressing a particular issue not contained within standard contract forms, they often tended to be vague and overly general.

But I didn’t expect the same from veteran agents.

The other day I received a purchase offer wherein the buyer wanted a new roof. As written it simply said “seller to install new roof”.

I don’t like surprises in real estate transactions so I rewrote the paragraph as follows: “Seller shall, at seller’s expense prior to Closing, install a 3 tab asphalt composition roof guaranteed for 25 years (same color) over the existing single layer roof.” (The seller was knowledgeable about roofing and knew they could go to three layers.)

Guess what… The buyer was expecting an architectural grade roof and a tear off of the existing roof. In this instance the seller declined given how far below the offer came in relative to the asking price.

But what if we had accepted the buyer’s offer with the new roof clause as written? Can you imagine the resulting ‘mess’ as the transaction proceeded?

Obviously, I too could have been more specific. Had there been time I could have obtained a bid, including specifications of the roof, and referenced it in the paperwork.