I was talking to a real estate education friend of mine and she pointed out something that I think you will find interesting. Take a look at the Amendment to contract. Now look at the last revision date. The last revision was in 2015. I think it is really interesting that almost all of the main contracts…ONE TO FOUR FAMILY RESIDNETIAL CONTRACT (resale), and other contracts had numerous changes that went live on April 1st, but the supporting document, the document that is designed to update the contract had ZERO changes. This answers the question as to why some paragraphs were not renumbered… in order to keep other forms like this one from having a forced revision. But here is were it gets interesting.

We are talking about the ONE TO FOUR FAMILY RESIDENTIAL CONTRACT (resale). The termination option fee was moved from the back of the contract to page two. The new procedure that is stated on this page is that the termination option fee is to be paid to the title company. The termination option fee can be included in the same check as the earnest money. No changes to the timelines but the timelines were explained better when it comes to holidays and weekends. That’s the backstory here’s the rest of the story.

As I said in the first paragraph the Amendment, TREC 39-8, has not changed. Bullet point (6) addresses the termination option: “Buyer has paid Seller an additional Option Fee of $ for an extension of the unrestricted right to terminate the contract on or before 5:00 p.m. on _______________, 20__ . This additional Option Fee [ ] will [ ] will not be credited to the Sales Price.”  So your initial termination option fee goes to the title company, but if there is an additional option fee the title company WILL NOT be accepting it, BUT they will have to know that it happened so that it can be credited to the Sales Price. So the seller is not completely at the mercy of the Texas contract, they will directly be receiving any additional termination options. Interesting, very interesting, and yes I have more to say but that’s all for now.

Helping you to…
Live the Real Estate Life,
Scott