We Are All Lawyers Now – The Rise of the Legalish

Re:We Are All Lawyers Now – The Rise of the Legalish by kazinator on Tuesday October 23, 2018 @03:39PM (#18286706)

Another scenario: say you have this $1500 review and it uncovers issues. You want the house anyway and try to negotiate the price down. Oops, the house goes to the next bidder who didn't bother with such a review. Basically, all you can do with the review is to "know what you're getting into".

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Re:We Are All Lawyers Now – The Rise of the Legalish by bradknowles on Tuesday October 23, 2018 @06:49PM (#18288183)

Depending on the jurisdiction, anything discovered in a detailed inspection of this sort will have to be disclosed to any future buyers.

So, in that case, it would be to the best interest of the seller to reduce their asking price and/or fix the major problems that were found, so that they no longer have to carry this legal burden going forward.

Yes, this happened to me and my wife (she's the lawyer in the family), and this resulted in us getting over $12,000 cut off the purchase price of our house, in addition to getting a number of major problems fixed before the deal actually went through.

IANAL myself, and I can't make any claims that anyone else will necessarily benefit in the same way, but that detailed inspection of the house-to-be-bought can be worth 10x the cost you pay for it -- or more.

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Re:We Are All Lawyers Now – The Rise of the Legalish by pnw_hazor on Tuesday October 23, 2018 @03:59PM (#18286882)

In residential deal, the legal review comes after the offer has been accepted and the title co has provided a title commitment and proposed title insurance policy but before closing.

Depending on the discovered issues, if any, your offer may be voidable or in a worse case you will have to forgo your earnest money. Still better than losing the whole house years later because of something like an incorrectly handled DIY divorce.

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