2021 Revised California Purchase Agreement

For the first time since 2014, the California Association of Realtors is issuing a complete makeover of the Residential Purchase Agreement.

Due to the Covid craziness of last year, the release was delayed from the end of 2020 to December of this year.

While there are not any real changes as far as the basics and verbiage, the structure has changed quite a bit, and will go from 10 pages to a whopping 16.

All the timeframes that used to be thru-out the entire contract, have now been moved to the front of the purchase agreement into an array of dizzying smaller sections and columns, leaving all the legalese (boilerplate language) in the back of the agreement

Along with the 21 day standard for Loan Contingency, C.A.R. has reduced the standard days to 17, along with an array of new timelines at 17 days as seen in section 3L which include:

* Informational Access to the Property

* Review of Seller Documents

* Preliminary Title Report

*Common Interest Disclosures

* Review of Leased or Liened items

Also added to the timeframes in Section 3N are:

*Sign and return of Escrow Holder Instructions with a standard of 5 days after receipt

* Time to pay for the upfront HOA fees with a standard of 3 days after acceptance

* Install Smoke Alarms, CO detectors and Water heater bracing within 7 days of acceptance.

Paragraph 4 - It seems that C.A.R. is also ridding us of all the Purchase Agreements for Probate, Manufactured Homes, tenant occupied, Tenancy in common and providing separate advisories in their place.

The change in the layout, to say the least is a bit confusing and therefore, watching a webinar and getting to know it, before you are just thrown into it is HIGHLY recommended.

You can sign up for a Webinar here, or you can watch it at your own pace here or here.

As the form will not be released until December, 2021, changes may still be made, so the final released version may be a tad bit different.

C.A.R. is also offering classes that qualify for 4 hours of DRE continuing education credit. Reserve a spot here.