Navigate Selling Your Home with Confidence Across Ohio

The sale of a house is a major legal and financial transaction. There are many things a lawyer is permitted to do that a realtor is prohibited from doing. There are many things a realtor may be permitted to do that a lawyer is likely to do better.

Realtors cannot draft legal documents or clauses, such as a requirement that funds be held in escrow for the seller to finish making repairs post-closing, or a lease agreement for post-closing occupancy, or a power of attorney if the seller cannot attend closing.

Realtors may be allowed to draft certain documents but are not trained to draft them well. A simple example from a lawsuit I was involved in: the realtors drafted a repair addendum that stated that the seller would have the “chimney repaired by a licensed chimney contractor.” No competent lawyer would draft such a clause for at least two reasons: it doesn’t sufficiently describe the precise repairs to be done, and there is no such thing in Ohio as a licensed chimney contractor. The poor draftsmanship resulted in unnecessary litigation. After closing the seller honestly felt he had satisfied the requirement, and the buyer honestly believed he hadn’t. If the clause had been properly drafted the parties would have known what was expected and there would not have been a dispute, resulting in unnecessary expense and a great deal of stress. (The seller won the case because the repair addendum was unenforceable after closing—the closing extinguished the repair addendum.)

Realtors can’t provide legal advice, such as whether the buyer has breached the contract by missing a deadline, title issues, the seller’s disclosure obligations, and, if the deal fails to close, who is entitled to the earnest money.

Unfortunately, I spend a substantial part of my legal practice dealing with realtor errors in situations where they did a poor job drafting a document or provided inaccurate legal advice they were not authorized to give.

I do a comparative market analysis of similar homes that recently sold in your neighborhood. I will provide you with MLS listings for the comparable homes. We will do a detailed analysis of the comparative features and price and decide on a list price together.

It’s important to compare apples to apples as much as possible. You don’t want to try to derive a list price for a 2-story home based on sales of ranches if you can avoid it.

The first question to answer is whether the buyer has the financial ability to purchase your home. If the buyer will be financing the purchase we will require a preapproval letter before accepting the offer. A preapproval letter is a letter from a lender stating that they have done a preliminary review of the buyer’s loan application, usually involving running a credit check, gathering information about employment, reviewing tax returns and the like, and that the buyer is likely to get the loan. This is not a final loan approval but it provides a certain level of comfort that they should qualify. If the buyer is offering to buy for cash, we will want to see account statements showing that they actually have the money.

You may receive multiple offers for a property. Price should not be the only criterion. You also want to consider whether the buyer is paying cash or needs financing, whether they will purchase the home “as is” or want to do a formal inspection and negotiate repairs, how quickly they can close, etc. If an offer is a little lower in price but advantageous in other ways you may choose to accept the lower-price offer.