How Residential Purchase Contracts Work in Arizona

The residential purchase contract has three contingencies in it to protect buyers and ensure they are buying a home without any surprises.

There are many great Tucson area homes for sale. Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call us at 520-544-5555 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

When you make an offer on a home in Arizona, you will present a home seller with our residential purchase contract. The primary point to that offer is what you are physically offering – the financial side of things. 

This includes your down payment, your earnest money, and your pre-approval if you’re buying with financing. We put all of this together and submit an offer so it’s taken seriously. The purchase contract contains three contingencies, which are in there to protect you as a buyer.

The first contingency is the inspection period, which gives you 10 days to order and complete any inspections on the home that you choose. We then send the inspection report to the seller with a list of items that we want them to repair. If they don’t respond in the way you want or you can’t come to an agreement, you are then free to cancel the contract. At the same time, we use a title company to make sure the home will be easily transferable if you choose to proceed.

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We have never lost a penny of our clients’ earnest money.

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If you and the seller come to an agreement on the repairs, it’s time to move on to the next contingency – the appraisal contingency. Your lender is going to order the appraisal for an appraiser to come up and inspect the property and confirm the property is worth what the offer is. This ensures you don’t overpay.

The final contingency is the loan contingency. Through the entire process, the lender is going to give the seller updates on how the loan is proceeding. If something were to happen in the middle of the transaction that resulted in you not being able to afford the home, you won’t be forced to buy the property. 

If you manage the transaction properly, your earnest money is never at risk. We have never lost a penny of clients’ earnest money in 16 years and we don’t plan on starting now.

If you have any questions for us or would like to take a look at a copy of our purchase contract, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you.

What the Dodd-Frank Act Means to Buyers & Sellers

Mortgage laws and guidelines have changed a lot after the Dodd-Frank Act. In fact, new mortgage rules and standards now have a noticeable effect on both buyers and sellers.

There are many great Tucson area homes for sale. Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call us at 520-544-5555 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

I wanted to revisit the topic of mortgages so that buyers have an idea of what to expect in today's market. 

The Dodd-Frank Act brought a lot of changes to the mortgage industry in the last couple of years, and most of them were implemented this year. This affects you, the consumer, in terms of the time it takes to close a home loan. Before the act, a mortgage usually took about 20 to 30 days to close, whereas today, it's closer to 30 to 45 days. Some of the government-backed loans like VA loans or FHA loans are stretching out even longer.

If you're a buyer, you'll want to get your lending issues resolved as early in the process as you can so your lender can move quickly once you go under contract. On the seller side, you can also expect delays. Typically, agents write contracts with a 30- to-45 day closing, and if the lender runs into any difficulties getting it approved, we end up having to push them out a bit.

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You want to get lending issues resolved ASAP to avoid delays.

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Make sure you coordinate with your agent so that neither of you encounters any surprises like having to move out of the house earlier or later than you originally thought.

Another issue in the mortgage world that's affecting both buyers and sellers is appraisals. With new government regulations, lenders don't reach out directly to appraisers anymore; instead, they go through a central clearing house so that the lender can't affect the results of the appraisal. 

Appraisers are backed up as well. Normally, they have a 10-day window from the time they're ordered to respond back with the appraisal. With the volume of activity we're having right now, the appraisers are also backlogged. That 10-day period is now closer to a 12- to 15-day norm.

If you're thinking about buying or selling a home or you have any questions about mortgages and how they've changed, give us a call. We'd be happy to help you in any way we can.