Terminating the Sale of a Home
REM #A709
By Ilyce R. Glink
Summary: A reader had made an offer on a home but had trouble getting the seller to agree to repairs. He issued a termination letter but is unsure of his obligations on this deal. Ilyce encourages him to hire a real estate attorney.
Q: We're in the middle of purchasing a house, and the seller has been less than quick in agreeing to repairs we requested based on our home inspector's report.
Since we weren’t getting anywhere with the seller, we sent him a termination and release form signed by my wife and me. Once they received our termination letter, they decided to counter by agreeing to make all of the repairs we had originally asked for.
We were told that by signing this document, we were free and clear to end this deal. However, our real estate agent now tells us that we are legally required to move forward with the deal.
Is this true? Why shouldn't we be able to cancel the agreement when they did
not agree to make the repairs to the property? Do we have any legal right to
get our earnest money back?
A: What does the contract for purchase that you signed say about termination?
Many contracts require that you terminate your contract in writing. If you terminated
the contract in writing, and followed any other requirements of the termination
paragraph in your contract, then you should be done. The seller can't come back
and say, "Okay, I now accept your terms" and force you to agree.
Your biggest problem is that you're taking legal advice from a real estate agent.
Unless your agent is an attorney, she is not qualified to tell you whether you
are legally required to move forward with this deal.
Please speak to a competent real estate attorney who can review your documents
with you tell you whether you need to proceed or can walk away from this deal
and collect your earnest money.
NOTE: This column is distributed by Real Estate Matters Syndicate, PO Box 366, Glencoe, Illinois, 60022. This column may not be resold, reprinted, resyndicated or redistributed without written permission from the publisher.
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