Why is it beneficial for you to be working with a
licensed professional real estate agent when you decide to sell or buy a home.
The real estate contract is a document that you
sign when you agree to sell your home or when you agreed to purchase a home and
in Maryland, that contract can be
anywhere from 30 to 50 pages depending on the type
of home and the inspections that you decide to do for that property.
It's very, very important for you to understand
what you're signing. Your agent will draft up the contract and these days we're
sending most of them out for electronic signature
it's very important though for you to get a pdf
copy of that contract.
Go through it, understand what you would be signing
and discuss all of the provisions in the contract that you don't understand 100%
with your real estate agent because your real estate agent is a professional
who can help you to understand what exactly are you agreeing to do or not do.
Your real estate agent can also help you understand
where are the points in the contract where the other party could void the contract
without your consent. That's called unilateral release from the contract.
So for example if you are a buyer and you have agreed
to purchase a property the Maryland, contract gives you a certain number of days
to make application for your real estate loan, for your mortgage loan, and then
it gives a certain number of days for that lender to give you something called
a written loan commitment document and there is a provision in the contract that
says if you do not provide that loan commitment to the listing broker by a
certain time, the seller has the right to unilaterally void the contract.
So these are the things that you need to understand
because you may be working very hard to do everything that you need to do and
yet if you only have 20 days to do something that takes 30 days to do, you need
to make sure that that provision is in your contract in a way that benefits you,
so you need to work with your real estate agent on that.
Please ask for paper copies or pdf copies of your
contract. Review them ahead of time maybe even before you make an offer because
in a fast seller's market, you don't have two or three days to review all of
the paperwork that you need to sign to make your offer, so review it ahead of
time with your agent, understand what provisions you are willing or not willing
to do so that when your agent writes your offer, all of those things are
already built in and you understand them.
Then review the document quickly on a pdf before
you sign it and then work with your real estate agent to comply with all the
provisions of that contract. We're very excited for you whether you're selling
or whether you're buying.
If you need more information, please feel free to
reach out to me.