How Residential Purchase Contracts Work in Arizona

Tucsan Real Estate Podcast with Kathy Vallee

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

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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.