Posted by Penny on June 08, 2007 at 10:24:12:
I’m not an attorney and I don’t play one on TV.
That said, unless you have substantial legal knowledge for your state, you could be creating substantial legal and financial risk for yourself by not seeking legal advice. All terms must be written in the real estate purchase agreements - verbal agreements are not enforceable. In addition, competent legal counsel should be including terms that protect your interests, many of which you may not be aware as a newer investor or may be unique to a particular transaction and not normally found on template documents available at office supply stores.
When it comes to signing legal documents for real estate and business deals, I always have my attorney review them before signing. It is very important that what is in writing represents your interests, accurately describes agreements with other parties and has protection for you in case of non-performance, contingencies, etc.
By using a knowledgeable real estate attorney who is familiar with your state laws, they can help you can develop a purchase contract template that you can then tailor for each purchase. Any real estate attorney should have draft documents to use as a starting point, so you should not be starting from scratch.
Once you have this, you can prepare the draft purchase agreements for your attorney to review prior to submitting any formal offers, thus saving you time and money while still protecting your interests. Each transaction is unique. While there will be a significant amount of things that are common to all, there is likely to be a few unique terms to each. Those are the gotcha’s that can often be most important.
In addition, the knowledge you gain by discussing your investment objectives with an attorney will benefit you during your negotiations and help you to understand which terms are negotiable and which aren’t for you.
Having competent counsel available and utilizing them at the right time is money well spent. It’s the old penny-wise/pound foolish theorem.
But that’s just my $.02.
Hope this helps.