When buyers draft initial offers for pieces of property, they will often use contingency clauses. These are essentially just clauses that say that if a specific contingency isn’t met, then the offer doesn’t stand.
For example, a buyer may use a home inspection contingency clause. If the home passes the inspection, they have to abide by the offer. But if it fails the inspection, then the buyer may have more options. One may be to walk away from the deal entirely, or they may be able to renegotiate for a lower price so that they can fix the issues that caused the home to fail the inspection. So why would a seller remove these protections?
Making the offer more attractive
The general reason why people do this is because they believe it will make the offer more attractive to the seller. A seller may be more likely to take an offer that doesn’t have contingency clauses than one that does. This may be true even if the seller believes that the home will pass the inspection. They just want to reduce the amount of risk that the deal will fall through, and that’s less likely if there aren’t contingency clauses.
So does this mean that you should consider removing these clauses if you are a buyer? Perhaps. It is not right in all situations, though, because you do lose the protection of these contingencies. You may be obligated to purchase a property that ends up having significant problems. But, at the same time, there can be benefits to removing contingency clauses, especially in a competitive market.
What this means is that you need to carefully consider your situation and all of the legal options that you have. By doing this, you can determine what steps to take to put yourself in the best possible position.
