Alissa Resnick and Brett Benhazl’s experience buying a home will sound familiar to many Americans negotiating today’s housing market.
The couple understood the rationale behind buyers waiving the appraisal contingency — after all, sellers wouldn’t want to deal with buyers who might back out if the appraisal came in low, especially given how high bids could come in above the asking price. But that didn’t mean the decision came without apprehension, once their third offer was accepted.
But these waivers involve risky trade-offs that could cost buyers thousands of dollars or more, and leave them without vital protections should elements of a deal fall through. Increasingly, successful offers are featuring some sort of contingency waiver. “About 80% of buyer offers we have written this year have zero contingencies,” said Samer Kuraishi, a Zillow Premier Agent and the president and founder of The ONE Street Company, a real-estate firm in Washington, D.C.
The home-sale contingency is a good example of one that may carry less risk to waive. “It gives the buyer the opportunity to back out of the purchase if they can’t sell their current home within a certain time,” said Holden Lewis, home and mortgage expert at personal-finance website NerdWallet. “In today’s seller’s market, this is the least risky contingency to waive. Most sellers can find buyers quickly.
Otherwise, the home buyer in this scenario will need to endure some financial pain. They can pay for the difference between the appraised value and the bid price on their own. In many cases, that money would come out of the buyer’s down payment. Making a smaller down payment could lead to a higher interest rate and the need to pay mortgage insurance, which could cost thousands of dollars.
“You may not be able to waive a clear title search in your area — in some parts of the country, it isn’t even legal,” Rachel Stults, deputy editor at Realtor.com, wrote. “But if you discover you can, don’t.”
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