Doing it Yourself is Risky
By Jim Palmer Jr.

Frequently Realtors® are asked by the general public to provide forms for a real estate transaction that they are doing on their own, but what they usually don’t realize is that our Realtor® generated forms are proprietary and are not for sale. In other words, the Realtor® comes with the forms!

One time a young couple needed to sell their home themselves, without the aid of a broker because there was not enough equity to include a real estate commission. When the Realtor® declined to provide forms, they eventually found sample forms online which they proceeded to fill out on their own, but they were lacking much understanding and assuming a ton of risk by going it alone without any expert guidance.

The state-of-art forms written by attorneys for the Realtor® organization
in Washington State are comprehensive, as they contain the cumulative wisdom and experience of thousands of Realtors® in many thousands of transactions for over one hundred years. They cover virtually every situation that can occur in a transaction and offer the best business practices to make a relatively risk free transaction. The available generic online forms pale in comparison, especially when it is minus the expertise.

There is no law that suggests a seller must use a certain type of form for their real estate transaction so long as it contains certain legal elements that make it binding. First of all it must be in writing. It doesn’t really matter what type of paper or format, so long as the following elements are present. 1) Who are the principles? The full name of the parties must be on the contract. 2) What is the property?

In other words, the property must be positively identified by a legal description. An address or parcel number is not sufficient. 3) The amount of the sales price must be on the contract. 4) Agreement must be reached as indicated by full signatures which must be done without force or coercion and the parties must be of legal age and mentally competent. Each principle
must agree to the essential details and obligations. 5) The contractmust include consideration which is something of value. Some think this means money, but that consideration can take the form of trade or barter. There does not have to be earnest money involved, the promise to perform is satisfactory consideration.

But doing it yourself is risky! Involveyour expert Realtor® early on in that process.