CAR Has What We Need to Transfer Ownership of Mission Viejo Homes

The Help You Need to Transfer Ownership of Mission Viejo Homes

The California Association of Realtors (CAR) legal team writes and frequently updates the contracts we use to transfer ownership of Mission Viejo homes from one owner to another.  This allows buyers, sellers, and their Realtors to harness the collective knowledge gained from hundreds of thousands of transactions to transfer ownership of Mission Viejo homes.  The collection of contracts CAR provides to transfer ownership of Mission Viejo homes spell out the top three things that need to be agreed to in any Mission Viejo home sale.  These are: who pays for what; when are things going to be done; and what’s the condition of the property.   Here’s how the CAR attorneys have helped home buyers and sellers avoid misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and mistakes.

Who pays for what in a Mission Viejo home sale transaction?  In addition to the price of the home, the CAR documents require the seller and the buyer to specify and agree on which party is going to pay for the necessary and optional fees associated with the sale of a home.  This list includes things like title insurance, title transfer fees, HOA document fees, home warranty policies, and termite inspections.  The buyer starts the ball rolling by submitting a Purchase Agreement that spells out what all of these fees are and who they would prefer to have pay for them.  As you might have already guessed, it is not uncommon for buyers to request sellers to pay for most everything.  This may cause the seller to fire off a Counter Offer that puts the obligation of payment on the buyer.  And this may go back and forth until an agreement is finally reached.

When are things going to be done in the home sale transaction?  The CAR forms allow the buyer and seller to fill in the blanks with specific dates and often the time on that specific date that things will be done.  This includes when the buyer will complete their inspections, when the buyer will remove their loan approval contingency, when the seller will deliver the necessary disclosures to the buyer, and date and time when the seller will deliver the keys to the buyer.  Again, the CAR attorneys have included all of these important activities so that the buyer and seller have all of the necessary time frames included and specified when it comes to transferring ownership and possession of the property.

What’s the condition of the home? The CAR Purchase Agreement reflects the attorney’s suggestion that homes in California are sold in their current “as is” condition.  Additional CAR forms are there to help sellers disclose the relevant information to the buyers and for the buyers to be aware of the current condition.  This is all in an effort to prevent misunderstandings between buyers and sellers regarding the condition of the property.  Seller have a form to identify all the “features” of the home, including whether there’s a stove, a furnace, sewer connection or a septic tank, and the age of the roof.  The seller then is required to indicate the condition of the “features” and specify any know broken or defective “features.” The buyer and the seller both sign a (as of today) 12 page document stipulating that it is the buyers right to investigate and the seller’s obligation to disclose things like square footage, lot size, water intrusion, permits, mold, easements, and geological conditions.  And if the buyer elects to perform a mold inspection which reports a high concentration of unhealthy spores, the CAR attorneys have cooked up a form for the buyer to request the seller to make repairs.

Rest assured that the CAR attorneys have covered 99% of what needs to be defined, disclosed, inspected, and negotiated between the buyer and the seller to transfer ownership of Mission Viejo homes.  The hard part is getting the two parties to agree.

I'm Leslie Eskildsen.  Just keeping it real in Mission Viejo real estate.

Call me.  949-678-3373

Text me.  949-678-3373

Email me.  Leslie@LeslieEskildsen.com

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