Misunderstanding how time works in real estate can cost BIG!
One hour late and you could lose your earnest money AND the property. How time works during a real estate transaction is different than how time works in our day-to-day lives so I’m breaking it down in bite-sized pieces and a fun pop-quiz.
Whether you’re a first-time homebuyer or a seasoned seller, you’ll want to know how time works in a real estate transaction, including facts such as:
- Any period of time starts on the day following the event commencing the period.
- Time periods of 5 days or less do not include weekends or legal holidays.
- Time periods of more than 5 days include weekends and legal holidays.
- Time periods end at 9:00 pm on the last day of the specified period.
- If the last day of the time period is on a weekend or a legal holiday, it moves to the next day that is not a weekend or legal holiday.
- Time periods are not delayed by a missing legal description; time periods begin from the date of mutual acceptance.
Since we all love a good story, let’s look at how these rules apply to our friends John & Jane’s homebuying experience.
On Friday, January 3rd, John, and Jane submitted an offer on their dream home. It was accepted the same day! Their timeline was tight since they only had 5 days to conduct their inspection, so they were eager to get started. The inspection was done on Thursday the 11th and we gave our response back to the seller on Friday the 12th.
Using the rules listed above see if you can answer these three questions:
- When was day one of the time period?
- Did John and Jane give their inspection response to the seller within the allotted time period?
- When was the latest time and day they could have given their response back to the seller?
How did you do?
