The vision of your completed dream house in Santa Cruz may not always line up with your home-buying budget. Yet you may be able to secure such a home at a lower price (provided that you are willing to put a little bit of work into it). There are often listings out there with the phrase “as is” appended to them. These represent homes that sellers are unwilling to do anything extra to in order to facilitate a sale. It is widely accepted that when you agree to buy such a home, you will take it “warts and all.” Can you later, then, get out of a purchase agreement due to factors related to the condition of the house?
Most assume that there is something wrong with “as is” properties. There may, however, be situations were a property is sold “as is” for reasons other than needing repairs or renovations (such as a bank trying to sell a foreclosed home). Even still, it is almost universally recommended that you have a home inspection done prior to closing on an “as is” property. If that inspection reveals problems that are greater than you originally anticipated, you may want to reconsider buying the house.
Knowing this, you will likely want to give yourself the opportunity to walk away from the sale. Information shared by the website realtor.com ensures that you can do this by including a contingency when putting the house under contract that allows you to get out of the agreement (with your security deposit) based upon the findings of the home inspection. The seller may not agree to cover the cost of the inspection, yet paying that extra $500 may be worth it if it saves you from throwing potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars into a money pit.
