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Welcome to Friday & the end of a week where we officially said goodbye to summer and welcomed in fall. And oh, September 21st happened – thank you Ann O’Neil for sending this little ditty on Tuesday morning to start my day! Still worth us all turning up the volume and moving a bit to this ditty – right here! *especially great being my 15 year old told me this week no more signing and dancing in the car to school. Sorry buddy, I can’t stop moving;) Ok, what happened in real estate this week…
No, that isn’t an picture from our office(s) this week (although Halloween is coming soon?)! This is the Ted Lasso crew at the 2021 Primetime Emmy Awards after scoring big. What did happen – Windermere Eastlake assistant manager Dina Harvey Jardine text me this photo as we received a call from the DOL starting in on yet another office audit. Her exact quote, “this is the energy we bring to the Eastlake audit.” Another moment the made me smile this week. Anyhow, a heads up that the DOL is back auditing. A general reminder that our offices are as audit proof as our partnership with all of you in doing so. We are getting pretty good at this – thank you!
This week I hosted two legal CE classes, “Suits of the Past” with Demco Law Firm. I have blog content for weeks. In proper Friday “sweep” form, I’ll share practical application over the coming weeks in what came out of class. First up, “or sooner” commentary within our purchase and sale agreements…
Question: Does writing in phrases such as “or sooner” or “on or before…” etc. constitute unauthorized practice of law? Does it matter if such a practice is widely accepted in the industry?
Answer is: Despite the prevalence of phrases such as “or sooner” – these phrases should be avoided. At best, these phrases legally accomplish nothing, as the parties would have subsequently agree to change the closing date, anyway. At worst, these phrases can be ambiguous, misleading and can lead to lawsuit (and did – as shared in class this week). The best practice is to leave these phrases out and just insert a Closing Date. If the parties can and want to close sooner, they will execute an addendum doing so.
…another way to think of this – agreements to agree are not enforceable and can lead to confusion in expectations between buyer & seller. *I know, your next question then becomes – why does escrow ask us to add “or sooner” in an addendum? Just explain to escrow that you’ve been advised not to and that all parties are amicable to closing early and we’ll send a Closing Date addendum with new date if that becomes possible!
Could it be true?! Learned just today while visiting our Ballard office that paint stores will now accept latex paint! This is huge! At least, news to me. Oil paint still needs to make its way to hazardous waste sites.
That’s a wrap from my desk this week. To close it out – carrying thru last week’s blog focus in mental conditioning from Trevor Moawad. Stealing Madison Park broker Susan Stasik social post from today…
“What happened happened. Okay. Fine. What happened after this has nothing to do with that.” – TM
Be good to yourselves everyone. As pictured at the top of this post – bought myself some flowers on the way home from the Ballard office today. What will you do for you this weekend?
All in, for you. All in, for us. – Laura
