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Completing Your Sale or Purchase of Houston Real Estate

Posted by 2M Realty on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 3:50pm.

Contact 2M Realty about the The Bayou City Blog

For buyers and sellers of Houston real estate, one of the final requirements before closing often involves additional negotiation by both parties. Yes, it’s the home inspection.

Whether you’re a buyer seeking new property in Houston areas such as the Bellaire real estate, Montgomery real estate or Richmond real estate markets, some level of security is critical to the sale. After all, as a buyer, you want to make sure you are getting what you intend to pay for.

Most sale contracts require the completion of a home inspection at some point prior to closing. More often than not, however, the average seller of Houston real estate receives a list of fixes and upgrades that need to be completed before execution of the contract.

And so the negotiating begins.

The seller need not address all repairs suggested by the buyer’s home inspector, but the seller certainly accepts the increased risk that the buyer might walk away from the deal if left disgruntled. If the inspector uncovers severe imperfections in the home, the buyer would normally just end the transaction based on contingency clauses.

Given the current shaky state of the national and Houston real estate markets, though, a truly motivated seller would be rather negligent to let a buyer leave the deal. If the seller chooses not to address all suggested repairs, he or she would still be well-served to reach a happy medium.

While the Houston real estate market recorded positive gains in September, October and November of 2009, the volume of single-family homes sold dropped 2.1 percent in December year-over-year, according to the Houston Association of Realtors (www.har.com).

The median price of single-family homes in the greater Houston area rose 5.2 percent in December, but real estate sales in general are still somewhat tenuous. This sentiment then underscores the importance of a seller’s willingness to meet as many reasonable buyer requests as possible.

Remember, it wasn’t long ago that desperate sellers were offering a wide variety of incentives – including paying closing costs – in hopes of attracting potential buyers.

In any case, home inspection has become a major part of any Houston real estate transaction. And though the buyer may certainly use an inspector’s suggestions to his or her advantage, one thing has become crystal clear. It is in the seller’s best interest to satisfy the buyer’s wishes at the risk of foregoing a potential agreement.

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2M Realty is a unique brokerage firm providing agents both traditional and Internet services throughout the Greater Houston real estate market. With its' Treehouse virtual platform, participating agents experience the freedom of working from home and get to retain 100% of the commission. This platform is an end-to-end online solution giving agents personalized websites, lead management programs, marketing collateral tools, form libraries, transaction management, electronic signature functionality and more.