November 4th, 2024 at 1:34 pm
Fact Pattern: A seller and buyer are in a pending sales transaction using C.A.R.’s Residential Purchase Agreement (RPA). The seller provides the buyer with a Transfer Disclosure Statement (TDS), as required by law. The listing agent inserts nothing more than “AVID to follow” in the listing agent’s section (Section III) of the TDS. The buyer then removes all contingencies, based on the advice of the buyer’s agent. A few days later, the listing agent submits the listing agent’s AVID.
Question: Can the buyer cancel as well as recover the amount of the buyer’s deposit? Yes or No? (more…)
October 28th, 2024 at 2:12 pm
Multiple Choice Question: A seller in a pending sales transaction has provided the buyer with the seller’s Transfer Disclosure Statement (TDS), as required by law. The listing agent, however, has not provided an Agent Visual Inspection Disclosure (AVID). Is the seller’s disclosure package complete? Pick the best answer:
A. It depends on whether the listing agent’s AVID will reveal any new disclosure items.
B. It depends on whether the seller gave the buyer the TDS before the buyer wrote the offer.
C. It depends on how the listing agent’s section of the TDS was completed.
D. All of the above. (more…)
October 21st, 2024 at 2:08 pm
Fact Pattern: You are a listing agent for a new listing. You are using our company’s standard-form Addendum to Residential Listing Agreement (ARLA) to get the seller’s authorization to pay 2.5% to the buyer’s broker. But instead of agreeing “to consider paying” 2.5%, as stated in the ARLA form, the seller wants it to just say that the seller “agrees to pay” 2.5%. You make that change on the ARLA form, and you advertise that the “seller will pay 2.5%,” as the seller instructed. You eventually receive an offer. The seller enters into sales contract with the buyer, but the seller only agrees to pay 2% to the buyer’s broker.
Question: Can the buyer or buyer’s agent come after you for the 0.5% difference, based on a claim of false or misleading advertising? Yes or no? (more…)
October 14th, 2024 at 12:19 pm
Multiple Choice Question: Why do people frown upon seller counter offers (SCO or SMCO) that ask for buyers to submit their “highest and best” price? Pick the best answer:
A. The law requires the essential sales terms to be clear.
B. It’s an NAR Code of Ethics violation.
C. It doesn’t move the parties closer together in the negotiations.
D. The buyer can just accept the seller counter offer as written. (more…)
October 7th, 2024 at 3:17 pm
Question: Let’s say that a buyer and seller enter into a C.A.R. Residential Purchase Agreement (RPA). After close of escrow, the buyer discovers that the seller took away items that should have been left behind, including the drapes, blinds, and pool equipment. What should the buyer do? (more…)
