26 Jan Real Estate Terminology BINSR
While the ins and out of real estate have never been more part of our popular culture thanks to the advent of HGTV and its long roster of home shows, there are still several technical and legal components of real estate that can be confusing to home buyers and home sellers. For example, you’ve listed your home for sale, have negotiated with a potential buyer, and have entered into a contract to sell your home. Now what? The buyer will set up and pay for an inspection of your home, and based on the inspection report, will send you a BINSR.
What is a BINSR? This is a Buyer Inspection Notice and Seller Response, and this is the document the buyer uses to notify you, the seller, about the issues that exist with the home and the property. The buyer typically has ten days after the inspection to deliver this BINSR to the seller. Typically, there are three things the buyer can do after the inspection of the seller’s home, according to the BINSR. First, the buyer can indicate that they accept the premises completely, which means no further work needs to be done. The second option is the buyer can reject the premises, which means the real estate transaction is cancelled. The third option, which is the most common scenario, is the buyer “elects to provide the seller an opportunity to correct” whichever items from the inspection the buyer wants corrected before they take possession of the property.
This third option is where the buyer wants the seller to either repair, replace or change something based on the inspection report. The seller, you, will then have 5 days in which to respond to the BINSR. As the seller, you have three responses available. The first response is that you agree to correct all inspection issues. Your second available response is that you agree to no repairs. (The buyer then will have the option to accept the property as-is, or to cancel the transaction altogether). The final response is that you can itemize which items you are willing to repair, replace or change. For example, you may agree to fix 75% of the items on the inspection report, but not a few of the other items because you disagree with the inspector’s conclusions.
At this point, the buyer can then choose to either accept or cancel based on the seller’s response to the BINSR. While this is a very simplified explanation of the BINSR process, this is typically how this often-complicated portion of the real estate transaction proceeds. I look forward to answering any questions you may have about any real estate related matters.