What To Look For In An Offer On Your FishHawk Ranch Home

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What To Look For In An Offer On Your FishHawk Ranch Home

You’ve worked hard to get your FishHawk Ranch home ready to sell. You’ve done a top to bottom cleaning. Thrown out or donated unneeded items. Staged the home and with the help of your expert, REALTOR® have it perfectly priced to sell for the most amount of money possible. Now you just got your first offer or multiple offers. An offer for your home is much more than just the purchase price. Let’s take a look at some of the most important items to look at in the offer.

Offer Type

There are generally two types of offers you may receive and you as the seller can dictate part of this.  The two most popular offer types are a Traditional offer or an As-Is offer.

The biggest difference between the two offers is whether or not the seller is obligated to make up to a predetermined dollar amount of repairs of the property, should any items be found prior to closing. With a traditional offer, the seller is obligated and agrees to pay for a certain amount of repairs. See the Seller Costs section of this article for a detailed explanation of this offer.

With an As-Is offer, the seller is not obligated or required to make any repairs. The buyer agrees to purchase the property in its current condition. The buyer does have the right to inspect the property and they have the right to cancel the contract and get their EMD back during the inspection period for any reason if they feel the home does not meet their requirements. With this type of offer, the buyer can request repairs to be made but the seller is not obligated to make those repairs.

Both offer types have some positives and negatives for the seller. In general, as a seller, you would prefer an As-Is contract if you were not familiar with the property or knew that it may need some repairs.

Purchase Price

The amount of money a buyer is offering to purchase your FishHawk home. For most sellers, this is the most important part of the offer.

Earnest Money Deposit

The Earnest Money Deposit or EMD is the sum of money the buyer gives in advance as good faith that they will complete the terms of the agreed-upon contract. If the buyer defaults on the terms of the contract they run the risk of losing the earnest money deposit. This is an item you want to look at with the offer. The more money the buyer has set toward the EMD the stronger the offer is. If one offer has $100 as the EMD and another offer has $10,000 towards the EMD which buyer is less likely to just walk away from the contract?

Down Payment

A down payment is the amount of money the buyer will put down toward the purchase of the home that is not financed. The larger the down payment the more likely the home will close. If a buyer has a 50% down payment they are more likely to get approved for a loan than a buyer with no money to put down on a loan.

Financing

There are many different types of financing that you may find in your offer. It could be a cash offer, FHA loan, Conventional Loan, or even a USDA loan. A cash offer that waives the financial contingency will always be your strongest offer. Offers that need financing typically involves a financing contingency. The purchase contract has a default of a 30 day (can be changed) loan commitment period to get loan approval from the lender on the loan. During the loan commitment period, the buyer is required to notify the seller in writing with either the loan approval letter or written notice that the buyer was unable to obtain financing. If the buyer provides the written notice that they were unable to obtain financing within the loan commitment period they are entitled to a refund of their EMD. Sometimes as the seller, you need to weigh the risk vs reward of two or more offers. You could have a situation where you end up accepting a cash offer for less money than a financed offer.

Closing Date

This is the date the buyer is requesting to close on and take ownership of the home. Cash offers, in general, can close fairly quickly. Most offers that need financing will require 4 – 6 weeks to complete the financing. If the closing date is sooner than that on a financed offer please request a letter or email from the lender to ensuring they can close by that date. If the closing date is more than 6 weeks from the offer date, you should question that as well. You really do not want to be waiting for 3 months to close. If you choose an offer with a long closing time frame ask for a larger, non-refundable Earnest Money Deposit.

Seller Costs

Starting on line 72 of the traditional Florida Contract For Residential Sale and Purchase is the Seller Cost section. There are two items to be aware of and look for. The first is the Repairs and Permits. On a traditional offer, the default repair limits are set at 1.5% of the offer price of the home. There are three different areas these limits refer to. Warranted Items, WDO or Wood-Destroying Organisms, and any possible Permit Issues. A quick example would be if the offer for your home is $300,000, you would agree to repair up to $4500 for each of these items. In a worst-case scenario, you could have to repair up to $13,500 for repairs. Keep in mind that these default limits can be adjusted up or down. If the repairs come in higher than these amounts for any of the items you could negotiate with the buyer on how much over the contracted amount you are willing to repair. If the buyer is not happy with that amount, they have the right to cancel the contract and receive their Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) back.

Also in the Seller Cost section on line 80 is Other, a fill in the blank section. Anything can be written in there so make sure you look for it. Some buyers use this section to request seller contributions toward their closing costs.

Make sure you review this section of the offer carefully. It could potentially have some important and high-cost items in it.

Inspection Period

Buyers are granted a time period to complete an inspection of the property. Usually, the default time period is 15 days from the effective date of the contract. This date can be adjusted so look for it. The longer the inspection time period the longer a buyer has an opportunity to cancel the contract. There should really be no reason to have an inspection period of more than 15 days but try to keep it at 10 days or less if you can.

Additional Terms

This is a very important section! Anything can be written here. Make sure you look for it and read through it carefully. You will see items like contingencies and requested seller contributions.

Contingencies could have a huge impact on the sale of the property. A big one could read: This contract is contingent on the buyer selling and closing on their property at 123 Any Street, Lithia, Florida 33547 by June 15, 2025. If the home does not sell and close by the specified date this contract becomes null and void. I’m sure you can see where this may be an issue getting your home sold.

A seller contribution would look something like this: The seller agrees to contribute up to 3% of the purchase price of the home towards the buyers closing costs and prepaid items. For a $300,000 purchase price, this contribution could be up to $9000. So an offer of $300,000 is a net offer to the seller of $291,000!

I hope you can see that the offer for your home is much more than the purchase price. I hope this article was helpful. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.

Note: Other states will have different items on their contracts. For this article, we are referring to the Florida Association of REALTORS® CRSP-13 contract. From time to time this contract is also updated.

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