North Arlington Real Estate market is hotter than ever! Most detached homes are getting multiple offers after the first week on the market. When a market really heats up like this, some very aggressive buyers waive contingencies. The 3 contingencies that have been commonly attached to contracts in our market are the following:
1) Home Inspection. This is a period during which the buyer can hire a home inspector and make sure the house has no major defects and works as well as they can tell from seeing it. This is typically anywhere from 7-10 days. This is a total "get out of jail free" card because the contingency addendum does not say anything has to be wrong with the house in order to back out of the contract with no fault. All the buyer has to do is get an inspection, provide it to the seller and void the contract within the alloted time.
2) Financing. The typical time for these, before this super hot sellers market was 21 days. We shall see if that continues through the spring. So far the ones I've seen have still had this much time.
3)Appraisal. This is an objective 3rd party opinon of value. The banks want verification that the price the buyer is paying that they are lending money for is not out of whack. These are becoming problematic in this rapidly appreciating market.
How many homes are keeping these contingencies?
In Arlington, over the past two weeks, 34 homes have gone under contract.
11 went directly to CONTRACT status, meaning no contingencies attached.
4 went to Contingent/Kick out, meaning there is a home inspection contingency attached.
19 went to Contingent/No Kick out, meaning one of these standard 3 contingencies are attached.
If you like percentages, this means that roughly 30% of contracts waived all contingencies.
It will be interesting to see if this trend progresses. It is certainly MUCH higher than in the past several years, where only the occasional fixer upper or tear down sold with no contingencies.
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