Are contingencies being accepted again?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are people waiving the HOA contingency? The HOA was the reason we waived the inspection contingency - we knew we could do an inspection anyway and just use the HOA to walk away if we needed to. It's why we didn't accept the low dollar, no contingency on our own home.

Inspection appointments have to be approved by seller's realtor (not that they are picking inspector, they just have to allow house to be entered into for that purpose) you can't sneak an inspector in

People inspect before making an offer

[Anonymous]

We were under contract for $100k over list in 48 hours in Bethesda. This was April. We took the second highest offer (lower by $5k) but the buyers waived all contingencies, showed they had financing lined up (our realtor called the lender), and had a huge deposit. The higher bidder had a financing contingency. Most of the bidders did pre-offer inspections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To waive the financing contingency essentially means that you're paying all cash?

No. It means that if you're financing falls through you don't have a legal way to void the contract and your deposit or EMD is at risk of not being returned.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op - our contingency would be on the sale of our existing home. Assuming that would make our offer not as attractive.

How do you pay if you don’t use the sale of an existing home?

In this market, unless the home has been on the market unsold for 30++++ days it is HIGHLY unlikely that a home sale contingency would be accepted. Highly unlikely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are people waiving the HOA contingency? The HOA was the reason we waived the inspection contingency - we knew we could do an inspection anyway and just use the HOA to walk away if we needed to. It's why we didn't accept the low dollar, no contingency on our own home.

Can't waive the HOA contingency. I mean you can say you are, but it's meaningless because it's not legally enforceable and any decent listing agent will know this. And your strategy of using the HOA to walk away only works if the listing agent doesn't already have the HOA doc's in hand. Again, if it's a good listing agent they will have the HOA doc's delivered to you the day you ratify and not allow the inspection for 3 days.

[Anonymous]

Not on anything nice.....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To waive the financing contingency essentially means that you're paying all cash?

No, not at all. It just means that you are very confident that there is no chance your financing will fall through. We waived financing contingency and most definitely could not have paid cash, but we had very stable jobs and very healthy bank accounts.

Just adding here that this is mostly correct but if for some reason your financing does fall through you would have to pay cash or lose your earnest money deposit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are people waiving the HOA contingency? The HOA was the reason we waived the inspection contingency - we knew we could do an inspection anyway and just use the HOA to walk away if we needed to. It's why we didn't accept the low dollar, no contingency on our own home.

How does this work? If you waived inspection contingency, the seller doesn't have to let you in for an inspection, do they?

They don't have to, but they're likely to let you in if you want to bring your contractor by to start getting estimates for replacing the cabinets/finishing the basement/etc. Wink, wink.

[Anonymous]

We had two offers within days of listing our house. One was substantially higher than the other but was contingent on the sale of the buyers’ home. We went with the higher contingent offer and closed last month.

[Anonymous]

Appraisal contingency is the one you need to waive if you are doing any kind of escalations, as your offer has no backing to it if the appraisal comes in low. Void only inspections aren’t too bad for a seller or do a pre-inspection if you can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are people waiving the HOA contingency? The HOA was the reason we waived the inspection contingency - we knew we could do an inspection anyway and just use the HOA to walk away if we needed to. It's why we didn't accept the low dollar, no contingency on our own home.

How does this work? If you waived inspection contingency, the seller doesn't have to let you in for an inspection, do they?

They don't have to, but they're likely to let you in if you want to bring your contractor by to start getting estimates for replacing the cabinets/finishing the basement/etc. Wink, wink.

Okay, and at that point what grounds would you have for pulling out of a contract? Especially if you've already signed off on any HOA docs.

[Anonymous]

We did a void only inspection and waived the appraisal contingency and beat a higher offer that wanted a full inspection and refused to waive appraisal. The appraisal came in at $50K above our offer (which was $50K above list).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are people waiving the HOA contingency? The HOA was the reason we waived the inspection contingency - we knew we could do an inspection anyway and just use the HOA to walk away if we needed to. It's why we didn't accept the low dollar, no contingency on our own home.

How does this work? If you waived inspection contingency, the seller doesn't have to let you in for an inspection, do they?

They don't have to, but they're likely to let you in if you want to bring your contractor by to start getting estimates for replacing the cabinets/finishing the basement/etc. Wink, wink.

Hey Mr Wink Wink:

No good listing agent is letting you in the house if you waive the inspection contingency but still are not through the HOA contingency period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op - our contingency would be on the sale of our existing home. Assuming that would make our offer not as attractive.

How do you pay if you don’t use the sale of an existing home?

We sold our house first with free rent back before buying. We got lucky in that the timing worked out for us. It was very stressful though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op - our contingency would be on the sale of our existing home. Assuming that would make our offer not as attractive.

How do you pay if you don’t use the sale of an existing home?

We sold our house first with free rent back before buying. We got lucky in that the timing worked out for us. It was very stressful though.

We can afford to carry two mortgages and our lender knows we'll recast as soon as we sell our current home, which should be pretty easy in this market.