Home purchase offer question

quote:

---

Made an offer on a house in Denver this weekend at asking price w/ small amount of closing costs covered by seller. Seller countered with no concessions and added a clause that says seller has option to terminate contract if, upon inspection, they receive a notice to correct.

Feels more like they are trying to allow time to get a better offer. Is this normal?

I know Denver is a crazy market right now, but I would expect the seller to show some level of commitment once contract is executed.

---

Not that unusual. They are basically saying "here is the house. Take it or leave it." And in a really strong sellers market, they can very easily get away with it.

I was just a seller and buyer in the past 60 days. Selling took me 29 hours for the first contract and 5 days for the 2nd. Right now, in markets like Houston and Denver, sellers can basically make demands and find a buyer that will deal with it.

Also, as a seller, I wouldn't pay a dime on your closing costs. It's one of the reasons our first contract didn't go through. There are too many buyers with better financials out there to agree to that.

I hope your buying experience is better than mine. I missed out on the first 4 houses I put contracts on. Sellers are in complete control right now (in Houston).

I seem to recall that in the LA standard contract (I know this is Denver, but saying for comparison) that if an inspection finds issues and the buyer asks the seller to fix or a reduction in price, the seller can say no thanks, and the buyer can walk away, and no one loses any money.

When we bought our new house this spring, we ended up paying about 10K less than asking price and the sellers also paid 2.5 percent of the sales price for closing costs. In exchange, they told us up front that if anything was wrong with the house, they were not fixing it, and we could walk if we wanted to. We had an inspection and only found a couple of minor issues, so we just fixed them ourselves.