Plano Texas Real Estate Blog - Local Plano Real Estate.

Contingency Offers - Active Kick Out...

Flickr photo: by Aqua Daisey

In today's changing real estate market you'll find much more use of status changes then the standard:

• active
• active-option (under contract)
• pending (waiting to close)
• sold

A contingency contract is used in a couple of ways.

For example, in this market an agent might not mark a property pending until there has been financing approval from the lender.  That is happening more and more.  It still takes the home off the market but buyers agents know where to look for this. A financing approval could take a couple weeks to a month.

Another Contingency is Active Kick Out and what that means is a buyer needs to sell their home first before they can purchase another. It's really pretty simple how this works. The seller will still show the home to prospective buyers and if he gets another contract the first offer gets a 24-72 hour window too decide to buy the property or not, (a kick out, if you will) and earnest money is usually refunded if this happens.  It's a risk both seller and buyer are willing to take to make a transaction happen and it is a common way to help facilitate a deal.  You just need to find the right seller and buyer to make it work.

So, if you are in the market and see a contingency as a status change it's smart for sellers to take back up offers and buyers to check back because something might have fallen through. There are more back on market properties now than there has ever been before.  Any agent should tell you that too.

[where: Plano, TX, real estate, contingency offers]