A Bill of Sale can be used to sell personal property, which is any property other than real estate and the improvements upon it. Generally personal property is just included in the purchase agreement for the real estate being purchased. The most common case for the use of a bill of sale is to include personal property in the sale without the buyer's lender seeing it. Since a bill of sale is a completely separate document it is not sent to the lender for the underwriting of the loan. If the lender were to see that personal property was being included they might think that the purchase price was inflated in order to pay for the added property.
An example is the sale of a property I sold in Springfield, NE (just outside Omaha). The house sat on nearly two acres of land. Since the seller was moving to a house with a much smaller yard she had no use for the riding mower and wanted to sell it with the house. The buyers of course were interested in it. The price of the home including the mower was negotiated and this is the price that was put on the purchase agreement. A bill of sale was written for the mower for $1. This accomplished both of their goals of buying/selling the mower without the lender questioning it. The bill of sale included a clause that stated if the sale of the real estate did not close then the bill of sale was void.
A bill of sale while not commonly used is just another tool in a Realtor's arsenal to assist their clients in getting what they want.
Trumm Team - Alliance Real Estate, Omaha, NE
Comments (1)Subscribe to CommentsComment