Whether you are selling your house through a realtor or as a for-sale-by-owner, drafting the offer to purchase correctly can protect you from costly future lawsuits with the buyer.
Wisconsin requires all sellers to provide a condition report to the buyer. If something is incorrect or left out of the condition report, the buyer may come back and sue you, the seller, for failure to disclose a condition on the house. As a seller you want to write the offer to protect yourself from this type of future litigation. An hour or two of an attorney's time can save many thousands of dollars in future litigation costs.
Too often, sellers either decide to take the risk of writing the contract themselves or make the mistake of thinking that the realtor is looking out for their legal interest. A realtor is not a lawyer, but too many sellers think that the realtor will know how to draft the offer to protect them legally. That is simply not the case and is not the realtor's job. In order to make sure the offer is drafted in a way that protects you, the seller, you want to hire an attorney to review the offer and draft it in such a way as to minimize your risk of getting sued in the future.
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