What Every Ulster County Homebuyer Needs to Know About Writing a Contingent Offer
If you are ready to buy a new Ulster County house, it can be incredibly stressful if you still need to sell your current house. If you don’t want to end up making two mortgage payments, you might be thinking of placing an offer on the house you want to buy and making it contingent on your current home selling. A contingent offer seems like a good deal, but how does it work exactly?
Understanding a contingent offer
When you make a contingent offer, you are providing the seller with an offer on their Ulster County house, but leaving yourself a way to back out of the deal. You are basically promising to buy the house from the seller for a certain dollar amount once your current house sells.
The good news is this kind of deal protects you from being forced to close on the new house when you are still paying on the old house. The bad news is, you could end up losing the house that you want to buy.
Can the seller walk away from the deal?
While you like the comfort of not having to move forward with the deal before you are ready, this isn’t the best deal for the seller. Depending on how the contract is written, they may be able to accept another offer in place of yours. It’s important that you carefully read through your contract and understand what you are agreeing to.
Some contracts include a clause that allows the seller to notify you if they have another offer they would like to receive. You then have just 72 hours to remove the contingency from your offer or they are able to accept the new offer. Other contracts allow you to have up to 30 days to provide proof of your loan commitment before they are able to cancel the contract with you to accept another offer.
In fact, many sellers will continue to show the Ulster County house until you are able to move forward on your offer. All buyers that are looking will know that there is a contingency offer in place, but that won’t keep all potential buyers away.
Should you use a contingency offer?
If you are in the process of working with a buyer and they have given you no reason to doubt that there will be a problem, then it might be in your best interest to not use a contingency. However, if you are leery of the buyer that you are working with, or if you don’t yet have a buyer, a contingency could save you from getting in over your head.
When you are in a hot seller’s market, many times sellers are receiving multiple offers. If your offer is the only one that includes a contingency, it will most likely make the seller choose another buyer. Seriously consider if you need the contingency before including it.