Standard Agreement for the Sale of Real Estate (ASR)

There are many petty annoyances that are not the height of professionalism, but probably don’t rise to the level of a code violation.

Each year the PAR Legal Hotline fields a fair number of calls with questions can be answered simply by taking the time to carefully read some of the most common transactional forms every so often.

A Notice of Termination is unilateral. That is, the execution by one party is sufficient to terminate the Agreement of Sale. Why? Because the Agreement of Sale granted the right to that one party.

The Pennsylvania Seller Disclosure Law requires sellers to disclose known material defects of a residential property to potential buyers, but it does not matter how a seller learns of that material defect. This includes material defects identified through a buyer’s inspection when the transaction does not ultimately close. In this situation, the seller’s property disclosure must be updated.

Often, the loan-to-value ratio and the Appraisal Contingency Addendum are seen as being the same thing and at their basic level, they do the same thing. However, they are not the same and more importantly, as they are built into the PAR forms, they function very differently.

The Price Escalation Addendum (Form PEA) is one of the most misunderstood in the PAR forms library. You should review PAR’s guidelines for the form before using it, but let’s review a couple of the most common questions/complaints/misconceptions that we hear on the PAR Legal Hotline.