Terminating the Sale of a Home

Added July 22, 2006 by Ilyce R. Glink

Print Articles

Summary: A buyer 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. Unless the agent is an attorney, she is not qualified to tell you whether you are legally required to move forward with this deal. Buyers should consult a real estate attorney for questions about contracts and legal obligations.

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.

Published: Jul 22, 2006

See more articles on this topic by clicking on the "RELATED ARTICLES" above and to the right.

We have over 5000 articles on Real Estate Advice, Personal Finance Advice and Consumer Advice on our site. We encourage you to look at these articles. As always, if you have a comment on our articles, don't forget to post your comment below. We thank you for coming to ThinkGlink.com.

© Ilyce R. Glink. All rights reserved. This content may not be used, distributed, syndicated, compiled or excerpted in any medium or form without written authorization from Think Glink, Inc. For information on syndicating ThinkGlink.com please contact us.

Previous article Next article