Video Transcript

- Hi everyone! It's Elaine Andrews with our Business Un-Usual series and today's questions is, "I am the buyer and I am getting cold feet. "Can I still back out of the deal?"

You know buyers often get cold feet and get nervous throughout the buying process. The best story I have is a really smart intelligent client that I had a few years ago and he was a very smart investor. And he could not make any sense of Vancouver's overinflated doesn't make any sense market and he was afraid even though he was buying a home for his family he was afraid that it was going to be a bad investment.

It took him until three minutes before our deal was gonna be dead before he pulled the trigger on the subject removal. And finally bought the house. It took forever to get him to make a decision. That was 2006. And since then he's put more than $4 million in his equity bank that he gets to keep tax free because of that purchase and he's got a beautiful home for his family. But back to the question.

So there are a couple of times throughout the process when you can back out of the deal. And as we're going back and forth in the negotiation process you can stop and back out of the deal then. Once you have an agreed upon contract and you have subject removal if you don't remove subjects you can back out then. If you have not paid the deposit and the deposit is due and you don't pay it then you're in breach of contract and the contract is null and void and you can back out then.

Once however the contract is signed and the deposit money is paid you have a firm and binding contract with the seller and you're expected to follow through. If you don't follow through on that contract at the minimum you're probably gonna lose your deposit. And if the seller has a good lawyer and if the seller can prove damages you may be on the hook for more. As your real estate agents we always advise you to seek legal advice in this situation.

So hopefully that gives you a little more insight into that question. Thanks for watching. And we at Andrews Group hope you're staying safe and we hope you'll tune in for the next question.