So you’ve sold your home and signed your agreement of purchase and sale. The i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for closing so you can get your money.

As a seller, your main and possibly only worry at this point is not wanting your buyers to change their minds. If an issue happens to come up, you figure it’ll be covered by your firm and binding agreement of purchase and sale. You don’t expect anything to go wrong, but this is residential real estate so you know anything’s possible.

Your buyers are probably thinking “I hope those sellers take good care of our home until closing. And I hope there aren’t any hidden surprises we missed when we were looking at the home.”

With these circumstances in mind, let’s look at a few things some of our seller clients had to deal with recently even though these things were clearly covered by their agreements. They were the types of things that happen every now and then so you might want to keep them in mind for future reference.

So what happened? The buyers in each case asked for something before closing that wasn’t included in the agreement:

• Buyer 1 asked the sellers for the plans and drawings relating to their renovation/addition.
• The agreement with Buyer 2 allowed Buyer 2 to revisit the property only 3 times before closing, but that didn’t stop Buyer 2 from asking for a fourth visit.
• The revisit clause in the agreement with Buyer 3 stated that the revisits were for the purposes of taking measurements or bringing consultants to obtain quotations. Buyer 3 asked if he could have a full home inspection done during one of his revisits because he didn’t do one before making his firm offer. The purpose of the inspection was to let him know what work needed to be done so he could arrange to have it done right after closing.

These all seem like pretty simple requests, don’t they? So why not just say yes if you’re the seller? Here’s why:

When I was an articling student I remember getting a very skinny file folder from a senior lawyer. It had a memo attached to the outside which read “Attached herewith self-explanatory file.” (Exactly the kind of guidance every articling student craves.) When I looked inside the folder, I found two things: an agreement of purchase and sale and a letter from the client that said something like “I don’t want this property any more. Get me out.”

As a seller, you never know what might cause a buyer to want out. Something they see in the plans or on an extra revisit or during an inspection might result in them wanting out, which is the last thing you want. So if you get a request like one of the requests above who could blame you if you think “Hmmm…sounds to me like the buyer might be looking for a way out of our deal.” If this happens, don’t fool yourself into thinking “That doesn’t bother me because I’ll just keep the buyer’s big, fat deposit.” You can’t count on being able to keep the buyer’s deposit without any argument from the buyer or his lawyer. You may be able to keep it or you may not. It’ll depend on the circumstances.

Since these requests weren’t allowed pursuant to the agreements it would have been easy for the sellers to politely decline them. But if they took that position the buyers might have wondered “What does the seller have to hide that he’s denying my simple request? Maybe I should be digging deeper and thinking about getting out of this deal.”

As you can tell, the essence of distrust on both sides can start to fill the air at that point and the seller would be in a tough position: should he play nice and grant the buyer his potentially innocent request or should he abide by the terms of the agreement and deny it? What would you have done?

In each of these cases, I advised my clients to speak to their lawyers. I was fairly certain that the lawyers would counsel them to abide by the terms of their agreements, but these were legal issues having to do with the terms of the agreements and legal advice was preferred. All three lawyers told my clients that the buyers’ requests were most likely being made in good faith and nothing was likely to go wrong, but why tempt fate. Better to play it safe and politely decline the requests.

In all cases, the buyers understood they were asking for something that wasn’t allowed pursuant to their contracts and were probably advised in advance by their Realtors that their requests wouldn’t be granted. When something like this happens, it’s best to act calmly, explain things in a nice way and then carry on so a minor matter doesn’t get turned into a major issue.

Now, if you know anyone who’s interested in learning the ins and outs of the market and who’d like to receive the kind of help that involves honest answers, straightforward advice, no pressure and being treated like family, please let me know the best way for me to connect with them because I’d like to offer them this kind of help.

And as always, don’t be shy if you have any questions or comments about this post! Thanks for reading.