Sellers Won’t Fund Future Home Improvement Projects for Buyers

Sacramento buyers are crazy to ask sellers to fund future home improvement projects.

Every few weeks or so, I run across a Request for Repair from a buyer asking the seller to fund future home improvement projects. This sort of practice is so wild and crazy. It makes me nuts. I can only imagine how the poor buyer’s agent feels when that agent is forced into a corner by the buyer to draw up such an insane document. Well, I can, actually, because I saw one of those documents last week. It was evident to me that the buyer’s agent just threw her hands up in the air and told the buyer to create their own request. Which ended up several pages long. She was obviously at her wit’s end with the buyer.

It’s a terrible spot to be in. On the one hand, the buyer’s agent does not want to alienate her buyer. She does not want her buyer to think, even for one lousy second, that the agent doesn’t care about what the buyers want. Because the buyer’s agent does care. Very much. She just doesn’t know what to make of a buyer who has gone off the deep end. It’s not uncommon. Take a normal person, put her into a real estate transaction and odds are two-to-one, she’ll flip out. Sacramento real estate makes otherwise normal people bonkers enough to believe sellers will fund future home improvement projects.

Or, as the way buyers put it:

It doesn’t hurt to ask.

Sorry, wrong, it hurts to ask. Big time.

It hurts the sellers. Makes them angry, and sometimes a little bit frightened that they are selling a precious home like theirs to such a basket case. It hurts the buyers, too. How does it do that, you might ask? It hurts them after escrow closes. When the buyer might need information or assistance or something else from the seller. Sellers have long memories. All the work I have done to maintain peace and harmony between the parties blows up.

Especially if the buyer has promised to purchase the home AS IS. Sending a Request for Repair to a seller to fund future home improvement projects makes a seller feel duped. Nobody wants to be duped. Or, lied to. Doesn’t matter how a buyer tries to rationalize the request. It still boils down to the buyer wants the seller to fund future home improvement projects. It’s not gonna happen. Any feeling of good will from the seller flies out the window.

Most sellers are reasonable. They want the buyers to enjoy their home and make it theirs. Just not at the seller’s expense. If buyers don’t like the kitchen counters or flooring or appliances, they will need to make their own arrangements. After escrow closes. Geez, Louise.