Sale contract versus Offer Form

I was going to put an offer on a place and the real estate agent sent me the sale contract, ... 18 odd pages or whatever it is. Anyway I have refused to fill it out and told him that normally its done with an offer form, a 2 pager...

He comes back and says thats the way they do business, if I want to make an offer I need to fill out the Sale Contract..!!

Far as I am concerned he can go get stuffed.

Thoughts? Are they trying to dupe me into making an offer that I cant get out of?
 
Ahh why make an offer if you want to get out of it? I would of thought you would have a cooling off period also if you signed the contract.

Not sure how things work in sa but if I were the agent I would believe that you were not a bona fide buyer as you should be putting your offer in the form of a contract if you are serious
 
I would disagree to be honest, I am a serious buyer, I have approved finance, and I will be buying within the next 60 days (for certain reasons I am on a time limit). On the other hand I dont care if this property goes past me, there are others I am looking at as well.

But my real question still stands, is this normal procedure or not? I always thought its done through a notice of offer first?
 
I'm an agent in Melbourne so from my perspective an offer needs to be written on a contract of sale in order for me to take it seriously and to be passed onto the vendor for them to consider. If a buyer was not prepared to use the contract I would not consider them serious buyers and I would question their motives as to why they would not be prepared to put pen to paper.
 
Oh and I thought a notice of offer was used when the contract was not yet avaiable and was used as an agreement between the buyer and vendor subject to the purchasers approval of the docs when they arrive. They are not legally binding agreements so it offers the vendor little security if you were to pull out.
 
I think I know what radelaide is getting at. I'm in Victoria and have only ever had to sign a 2 page REIV contract, but once was told to sign some massive contract of sale, rather than this standard 2 page document. It was completely new to me (the property had previously been auctioned, passed in and later re-listed as a private sale so not sure if that was the reason for it), and I had to add all my own clauses including the finance one, whereas the standard REIV contract normally has standard wording for this. I was a bit confused as to why I wasn't signing the standard document too, but I did. Missed out on the property though, so never ended up being an issue for me.
 
yup that sounds similar, its totally full of clauses etc, where as I thought the "norm" was to do a 2 pager type first.

yup i understand it has no legal binding agreement.
 
I understand your confusion too. We had it in reverse. Buying a property in Victoria there was a 2 page contract of sale - or was it the offer? :confused: It just didn't seem right. The agent didn't want to put a clause in because "there wasn't room on the page". !! (We got her sorted out).

We'd just sold a property in California where the contract for sale was about 84 pages.
 
An offer should always be made via completing a sale contract where one is available. The only situation this should not occur is when the sale contract is not available.

An offer form is nothing more than an 'agreement to agree'. With the exception of certain cases, this is not a legally enforceable agreement.

If you want to buy this property, what's so scary about signing a contract? After all that is how you buy a property?

It sounds like your problem is more based on principle than anything, in which case all i can say is that this is standard procedure in my view.
 
I've always had to sign the stupid 18 page form to put in an offer. Anything else barely counts in SA.

You can haggle afterwards by scribbling out things and initialling the scribbles.
 
Back
Top