We Have a Contract!

HB - CONGRATULATIONS!!!

For me personally - I do a home inspection BEFORE I list my home - this way I am prepared for what's coming and what could be a deal breaker.

I don't know the buyers - but on important stuff - like roofing or AC/Heater - yeah - if you don't budge they may walk...but think about it - would YOU want to buy a home that had major problems?

being prepared is the best you can be!!

We are going through this now as well. Last month we had an accepted offer on our house; that is, until the inspector came thru with the couple and totally scared them off! That was the last we heard of them. We just had another inspection done last week for a different couple, and the outcome was much different - we agreed to split the cost of some minor repairs with them and the deal is proceeding as we speak. So, yes, it does happen - our realtor says she sees it all the time - people get freaked out over the idea of having anything "wrong" with the house they're buying, and then either walk away or want to negotiate the price down even further. You CAN say "no" to certain things, or give a small credit for repairs at closing, but if there are any structural problems they will need to be addressed immediately. It doesn't sound like you will have that problem, though, will such a young house (ours was built in 1926, so, yeah, there are lots of quirks to it). Unless you are selling your home yourselves, it is usually left to the lawyers to hammer out all the final details so they can be included in the contract. Best of luck! I know first hand how nerve-wracking it can be!

It is my understanding that you are only required to fix things that are safety issues (eg, not having heat would be a safety issue in the winter, a leaking roof is a safety issue b/c of mold, etc). Anything cosmetic - they can ask you to fix it, but you can say no and it is not legal grounds to break the contract.

That said - my understanding comes from having bought/sold 2 houses but I am far from an expert, and the laws may be different in different states.

We had a garage door opener at our 1st house that we never used. It came with the house when we bought it, but it wasn't even hooked up. The garage was really narrow (built in 1946), so we just used it for storage.
That was one of the things that came up after the inspection. She wanted us to put in a new garage door opener.

We had already come waaaaaaay down in price because it was January and there weren't a lot of people out there looking. We were starting to worry about having 2 mortgage payments, so we accepted her offer, but we were pretty irritated about the garage door opener- especially since we never even used it ourselves. We weren't about to go out and buy her one after we already got so much less for the house than we could have gotten had it not been the dead of winter. We were pretty confident she wasn't going to back out of the deal because she had to buy 1 garage door opener...Thankfully, we were right. :)

When my husband and I bought our house we were pretty nice (I think). We did do a radon test and found out that the house had A LOT of radon activity or whatever you want to call it so of course that was our number 1 priority and the old owners put in a really nice system, but they kind of had to, now that they were aware of the problem. If they turned us down they'd have to now tell future buyers.

One of the garage doors wasn't working properly so they fixed that and the AC wasn't working. Supposedly they had that fix but that didn't happen and we had it fixed after we moved in.

Everything else was just minor things that I didn't really care.

I had a bad experience with my first time buying a home. We got in to a mortgage we couldn't afford and ended in foreclosure. Talk about a lesson learned! Anywho... when we had the inspection we used the guy that worked with our realtor so thought we were doing the right thing, ha! He said all was great so here we go! Yeah right. The air conditioner wasn't strong enough to handle both floors so it was a sauna up there, there was a leak that caused over half of the sheetrock to fall off the ceiling in the kitchen and that was just indoors! The in ground pools pump was on its last leg and we found out when it was time to use it and 3000 dollars later it wAs finally swimmable! Nightmare! Moral of the story, please be honest. We got took bad and the homeowners knew it. Be up front and if there are issues help the new owners if possible. I sure wish we would've gotten at least that!

I have bought and sold 4 homes in the last 8 years and we have never had an inspection make the deal go south. Most people want to make it work, they signed a contract becuase they want your house. If there is nothing major, it should all be good. Expect some hiccups, we had to do some what we thought were silly repairs, but it never crossed our minds to say no to jeopardize the deal. Congrats!

Unfortunately people now a days think because it is a buyers market they can haggle on the price and then be complete idiots when or if the inspector finds something wrong. However it can go both ways. You can hold your ground too, if you are willing to take a chance. We recently bought our home and just as the inspector left, a HUGE rain storm hit. The rain was blowing sideways. We were standing in one of the bedrooms and noticed the window was leaking! Our realtor was still with us. I called our inspector and told him (there was no way he would know unless he sprayed water at the window) and he put it into his report. Well....the owners tried to tell us it was as is and we said it was never listed as is and we wanted the window fixed. We did not ask for it to be replaced, because we did not want to be idiots. They said no and we said - Good-bye! They called us the next day and said they were having it fixed, and they did. We did buy the house. They wanted to be jerks and we were in the position to walk away.

If you have a major issue come up from the inspection, be prepared to fix it or give a credit to have it fixed. If it is a little thing, find out if the buyer was really serious in the first place. They are not buying a new home and even then, no home is perfect.

Good luck!

They can walk at anytime if they don't like something in the inspection. They will probably make some demands too, so be prepared for that. They might want a home warranty. That is what we had to purchase for the buyers for our house when we sold it. We sold it in 5 days, because we had already bought another house, and we didn't want to dilly dally around on it, so we bought the warranty and everything turned out OK. It is a big headache while you are going through it though. Just make sure everything is cleaned up REALLY good. I mean vacuum under the hot water heater and everything!! Make sure everything shines, and is in good working order, change all your filters. You know what I mean!! Good luck to you, and congrats on selling your house!!

Usually it's stated in the contract what are the (excuse me) "deal breakers," and what items are the responsibility of the seller.

Seriously, something major (like a furnace crack, etc.) will have to be addressed or negotiated before ANYONE will buy it, right?

Good luck!