Putting an offer on a home........(law ?)

love11

To make a long story short- Last Saturday, we put an offer down on a house. Then Sunday and Mon. we did some research on Mortgages and decided that we could get a better rate of interest if we waited till next spring to buy a home. Then we could go FHA.

When we made the offer, the real estate lady said that the house already had a verbal offer on it and the other company has it listed on their board as sold. However, at the time I wondered if that was true and the real estate people were just trying to get us to put a high offer on it. Well, my dad came and said to bid low and so we did. The agent said that the other agent saw the offer and laughed. But I told my husband to not tell the agent that we had decided to wait to buy until this spring because then it would look like we defaulted on the contract. I wanted to wait till the offer expired (this Sat.) to tell her that we were going to wait. Well my husband agreed and then he went upstairs to tell her that we weren't going to see anymore properties because we were waiting, instead of saying that we wanted to wait on seeing more homes until they deny our offer. My dad says that we could be sued now for defaulting on the offer. Now me and my husband are fighting terrible and I told him that if we are sued I am divorcing him. I don't know what to do. I feel sick about the whole thing. And to top it all off, my husband went upstairs and shut the door so I wouldn't hear what he was telling the agent. Why couldn't he just explain that he had a different opinion on what to do? Why did he have to do it in secret? And I just finished telling him that I didn't want to say that because I was afraid we could get sued, so I thought the smart thing to do was to say that we didn't want to see anymore properties until they tell us that they did not accept our offer. My husband said that he told her just so she wouldn't keep bugging us all week to see more houses.

Does anyone know how we can solve this? Do you think we are going to be sued? My dad said that if the seller can't sell the property then they could come back on us and say that they would have taken our offer but weren't given the chance to say. Help!

EvilForce

Well technically yes you can be sued if you do not buy the house. Usually you forfeit the security deposit (earnest money) you put down. And usually you can get 1/2 of that back. Have they turned you bid down???
And not to be judgemental but if you put an offer in to buy the house....you should go through with it or compensate the homeowner for taking it off the market. And if it's a "low" offer and you like the house why don't you just buy it? Interest rates are like crystal balls....they could go down 1/2 or 1 point by next year or go up by 1/2 or 1 point.

Odrade

Besides which, private mortgages often offer better deals than FHA if your credit is good.

kls

If you really check out a FHA loan you will see as time goes on your interest payments go up and are locked in for only a certain amount of time ,i know because this is how we bought our first home and the FHA loan with it's rising interest almost killed us.

And yes Evil is exactually right about the earnest money and yes they can sue.

Scully

You might have a couple of other loopholes to squeeze through.

A lot of real estate purchase contracts come with an escape clause that allows you to change your mind after the vendor has accepted your offer, conditional upon (1) financing, and (2) your satisfaction with the property inspection.

Assuming that your mortgage is approved by the financial institution, it's always a prudent move to have the house inspected by a qualified and certified Home Inspector (check the American Society of Home Inspectors to find someone local who meets their standards). Make sure you get a written list of deficiencies for the property. A lot of buyers use this kind of report - especially if there are a lot of expensive issues with the house (like foundation issues, replacing the roof, etc) to either have the vendor fix the problems before finalizing the deal or to bail on the offer, saying that they don't want to get involved in a money pit if they can avoid doing so.

Good luck. Hope it helps.

Buster

(from the "Not a Lawyer but I've done this before" class)

Couple-o-points

- Your offer may be good until Saturday. But that means only that they have until Saturday to respond. If they deny you, then the offer is instantly no longer valid.

- Which brings me to the next point. I think I see at least two responses that you can construe as offer rejections. 1. When you learned that the property was listed as 'sold' you have every reason to consider that a rejection of your offer. 2. When the Real Estate agent laughed at you offer, you may consider that a rejection. You are entitled to rely on their Real Estate agent.

I think you should ask your agent to draft a quick note to the other agent that says you consider your offer rejected because of the above point. That should be the end of that. And if your agent doesn't enthusiastically cooperate, get another one. The new one will.

garybuss

I can't figure your post out. Was the offer accepted? Was there a sunset clause? If there was a sunset clause has the offer's end date expired? Why don't you ask all these questions to your agent?
Is there a problem? What is it?
Are you in the USA?

love11

Sorry for not explaining everything well.

We had an appointment to see the house at 10 am Sat. When we got there, she said, "I have some bad news for you. Someone made an offer, but nothings in writting yet, it's all over the phone, so technically you can still bid on the home if you like it. It was our second time through, my dad said, "Just to get your feet wet and see how it's done, why don't you put an offer on this house, make it really low since the house is probably sold anyways." So we did. Then after looking into mortgages, property taxes, down payments, etc,. I thought it would be best to wait until next spring because we are expecting some more money coming our way by then anyways.

Our real estate lady immediately said, "Their agent laughed at the offer, so I think we should keep looking. " She wanted to set up more appointments this week.

We decided that we should just tell her, that until we get proof they rejected our offer we'll just blow her off until this Sat. when the offer is void. Then we'll tell her that we are waiting till the spring.

After deciding that, my husband, without talking it over with me told her that we decided to wait until the spring. I was upset because we signed a contract and my word was at stake. If he would have just waited I'm sure they would have denied our offer, but now it's all up in the air.

EvilForce

Love....you need to get an OFFICIAL denial letter. It sounds like "everyone" doesn't think your offer is valid so that's ok. But make sure you are free and clear first.

lucky

I was under the impression (at least in our state) that even if your offer is accepted, you have 24 hours to change your mind about signing the contract.

If you HAVE already signed the contract, having recently gone through a hellish house-selling experience in which three subsequent buyers backed out of their contract with us (and we only received the deposit on one of them, and only then after we took him to small claims court), I can say from experience (at least in my state) that the law is definitely in favor of the buyer. Another option, if you have already signed the contract, (less than ethical, in my opinion, but it was used on us) for you is to go ahead and pay for the house inspection, and make sure that the inspector finds something unacceptable with the house. You can either flat out refuse to buy the house because of the defect (depending on what the defect is - this will probably be listed in the contract and may include pests or repairs over a certain dollar amount) or you can demand that the homeowners fix the problem. If they refuse, you can legally back out of the contract. Not pretty, but it was used on us (the inspector said that the house had "massive" pest damage, (which was later confirmed by an actual pest inspector to be non-existent), and the buyers sent us a letter saying they were no longer interested in buying the house. We had no legal recourse against the buyers and we didn't get to keep their deposit.

I know from experience that buying a house can be a big strain on a relationship. My suggestion is to go make up with your hubby and not stress too much. I think it will all work out ok...

Putting an offer on a home........(law ?)

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