Currently own a 1bed-1bath condo with insanely cheap mortgage but horrendous neighbors and HOA.
Found a townhome in area I love. My only concern was still sharing walls with others since my condo experience has been so bad. Anyway, planned on making an offer on townhome today and as I got on zillow, it showed as contingent. How screwed am I? Anyone been able to purchase a home that had been contingent? Would love to hear your stories.
Was planning on putting in an offer today-home shows as contingent as of today ðŸ˜
byu/SnooWalruses2253 inRealEstate
Posted by SnooWalruses2253
11 Comments
Make the offer anyway but don’t let your emotions or scarcity mindset offer something ridiculous.
You don’t. Contingent means it’s under contract. Only way is you keep monitoring that house and hope the buyer backs out then you put an offer in. If buyer backs out, you should be concerned because it could be something as simple as their appraisal didn’t work or there are serious structural issues with the home.Â
You could put in a backup offer.
It could be contingent on the other people selling their house and goes into sudden death if they get a second offer who knows it doesn’t hurt to shoot your shot
Contingent means they accepted an offer. It could mean that the offer is contingent on the buyer selling another house, in which case you could submit a backup offer that would trigger a clause for the current buyer to have a shorter period of time to drop the contingency (usually 72 hours). If they didn’t drop the contingency, the seller *could* chose to move your offer into first position. Plus I assume you would need to sell your condo first, which means they would have zero incentive to accept your backup offer in the first place.
But that’s all a longshot. More likely the contingency is just a general inspection contingency and/or financing contingency. In that case about 5% of houses fall out of escrow during those times in normal markets.
We bought our current house while it was contingent. It all depends on what the contingency is. Ours was contingent on the other buyer selling their current home first. We made an offer to purchase the home with no contingency (we were renting so nothing to sell). They went with our offer so they wouldn’t have to wait for the other guy to get his sold. Call the agent and find out what the contingency is and offer accordingly.
Contingent contracts will typically have a clause that basically says if the seller gets another offer, non-contingent, the original buyer has X amount of time to commit or lose the house. You have nothinjg to lose by making an offer as long as you are not going to make it contingent on selling your condo.
You snooze, you lose. You can always send a backup offer and hope the other buyer backs out. This is why they say time is of the essence. If you liked it, why wouldn’t other people like it too?
Keep looking. If you snooze you may lose. You can put an offer in and see what happens. Â
I recently bought a house that another buyer backed on. It can happen!
I would check. We looked at one where the contingency was that the one buying had to sell their house but if the seller had another offer come in before then and they liked it they could take the offer.