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When is the Purchase Offer Accepted for a Sacramento Home?
You will find veteran real estate agents in Sacramento who do not know the answer to when do sellers and buyers have a purchase offer accepted? What is the date of offer acceptance? Moreover, what date is the date of the purchase contract? Even Bank of America does not know the answer to this question, but at least it has picked a method by which to determine the date, even if it is incorrect, according to California law.
I had a conversation with a short sale negotiator at Bank of America yesterday about its SSPCA, which is a form used in a short sale. It specifies and references the date of the California purchase contract. This particular negotiator said that bank policy is to pick the date the real estate agent typed the offer, the date that appears in the upper right hand corner of every page of the C.A.R. Residential Purchase Agreement. This date may or may not be the date on which the buyer even signed the offer. It is definitely not the date of the purchase contract, even if it is the date the buyer signed the offer.
But I can see Bank of America’s point of view. It needs some sort of conformity in its short sale processes, thank goodness, and its lawyers probably decided that since the laws in all states are different, and their lazy ass wants to use only one form nationwide, then the lawyers would just make up their own rules. Nobody cares about short sales much anymore.
When it comes to a home buyer in Sacramento, though, the date of the purchase contract is extremely important because it establishes the contingency period date. Purchase contracts contain contingencies for all sorts of things such as home inspections, appraisal and loan approval. Those time periods, typically 17 days by contract default, start the day after the purchase contract is ratified, fully accepted.
The date the contract is fully accepted, the date of contract acceptance, is the date it is delivered to the party named on page 8 in the first paragraph (subject to counter offers, if any). If it is the buyer who is named, then it is the date that the buyer receives the fully executed contract. If the name is that of the buyer’s real estate agent, then it is the date the buyer’s real estate agent receives the fully executed contract. It is “delivery” and receipt of that delivery that starts the clock ticking.
For example, if a purchase contract is signed by the buyer on October 16th, accepted by the seller on October 19th, but not delivered to and acknowledged by the buyer’s agent until October 21st, then it is October 21st that is the date of delivery and the official date of the purchase contract.
Give the Seller Time to Accept Your Purchase Offer
When you’re buying a home in Sacramento — or anywhere else in California, for that matter — you should give the seller enough time to accept your purchase offer. This sounds like a simple concept, but it’s not. It’s more complicated than you might think. There are two things going on that affect the legality of your offer acceptance. You’ve got the time period in which the seller can accept your offer before it expires, and you’ve got the person to whom your offer needs to be delivered to be considered “in contract.”
You can easily lose a home over offer acceptance and offer delivery. In our California C.A.R. purchase contracts, this acceptance and delivery is discussed in paragraph 29. If an agent does not insert his or her name as the agent for delivery, the purchase contract is not considered delivered until the buyer receives the offer in his or her hands. If you want the deal to be done quickly — over and sealed — then the agent’s name should be noted in paragraph 29. But most important, give the seller enough time to accept the offer. Because anything can and does happen in real estate.
In the old days — the days of bellbottoms and stinky patchouli oil — agents used to write offers that expired “on presentation.” Sellers had all of 3 seconds to decide whether they wanted to accept an offer. There was no sleeping on it or I’ll get back to you. It was Take it or Leave it.
Today, we seem to be a much gentler bunch and, by default, our standard purchase contracts give sellers 3 days to ponder whether to accept, counter or ignore an offer. However, when those 3 days come and go, the purchase offer has expired. If you’re in the midst of buying a home in Sacramento, you don’t want your purchase offer to expire. Neither does the seller.
My sellers of a regular home (not a short sale) in the Sacramento area put that home on the market just before leaving for vacation. They figured this would give buyers plenty of time to view their home, without any inconvenience on the sellers’ end. The MLS comments to the buyer’s agents informed those agents that all offers would be reviewed on the day the sellers came home. That day is clearly noted in MLS.
So far, the first 5 offers will or have expired. We will be staring at expired offers when the sellers come home because the buyer’s agents did not give the sellers enough time to accept the purchase offer. Nobody read the MLS comments! If you’ve recently signed a purchase offer to buy a home in Sacramento and haven’t heard anything from your agent, read paragraph 29. Maybe your offer wasn’t rejected. Maybe it has expired.
