Am I Out of Line? Negotiating After Inspection

[Anthony Gayden]

I have a house under contract here in Omaha. I agreed to buy the house as-is with no repairs to be done by the seller. I had a home inspection and discovered a couple of repairs that will cost me a few grand. I had based my purchase price on the fact that I knew I was going to have to do some repairs and I had budgeted to complete those things I had personally identified. These repairs go beyond my initial planning and budget and my offer would have been different had I known about them.

After the inspection I told my realtor that I wanted to negotiate based on this new information. He immediately starts telling me that I agreed to buy the house as-is with no repairs, therefore it would be a bad idea to go back and ask for anything. I remind him that I am not asking for repairs, only a credit and that I will do any repairs myself.

Am I in the wrong for wanting to negotiate after the inspection? Why would my realtor believe that this was somehow unethical? I am looking out for my own best interests here and if I can't get the numbers to work with these new costs, I will back out completely. 

[Charles Dobens]

@Anthony Gayden Wow. These posts are all over the place. There is a reason why there is an Inspection Contingency in contracts AND an AS/IS rep in the same document. One does not trump the other or hold more weight. For those of you claiming that the AS/IS means you take the property with all its faults, what do you do if you find out that the neighbor's driveway is entirely on your land? Do you get to renegotiate? Well, according the to 'AS/ISers', you should not be allowed to. Well, sorry folks, that's not how it works.

The Inspection Contingency gives you a window of opportunity to look behind the curtain and see if the seller's baby is as pretty as she says it is. If it isn't you have freedom to walk. If you walk, then the deal comes "out of contract" and the parties are essentially back in their pre-contract position - FREE TO RE-NEGOTIATE THE DEAL. 

There is nothing wrong with this provided that the parties entered into the agreement in good faith. Due to the fact that most inspection contingencies in contracts allow you to walk for any reason, proving bad faith is hard to do. The opposite is true though if you try to walk from a deal using the financing contingency when you have not even applied for a mortgage or engaged a lender. Courts have a harder time buying that excuse and you may be charged with breach.

Do not enter into contracts lightly.