August 17th, 2020 at 9:48 am
Answer: Probably so, but it’s not altogether clear. Under the Residential Purchase Agreement (RPA), the seller would be required to leave the bathroom mirror if it were a fixture or otherwise identified as included in the sale.
Fixtures are items of personal property that are attached to the land in such a manner as to be considered part of the real property. Whether something is a fixture or personal property is decided on a case-by-case basis by a judge, jury, or arbitrator, not by us, based on factors such as the intent of the annexor, the method of annexation, and the difficulty in removing the item.
In this situation, a court or arbitrator might not consider the bathroom mirror as a fixture if it simply lifted off a nail and the seller intended to take it. Moreover, the RPA does not expressly identify bathroom mirrors as included in the sale. However, just to let you know, bathroom mirrors are specifically included in the current working draft of the upcoming 2021 version of the RPA.
The arguments you made are still good ones. The buyer may be able to use those arguments to perhaps persuade the seller to at least give the buyer a credit at close of escrow in lieu of a bathroom mirror.
Next time, if a buyer wants a bathroom mirror that looks like it could be hanging on a nail, just identify it in the RPA as included in the sale, regardless of whether it appears to be a fixture or personal property.
-Thank you to Kellye Patterson (Ventura Office) for suggesting this week’s legal tip.
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