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New Arizona Purchase Contract Takes Effect

The new contract is the most common form in Arizona to transfer resale residential property in our state. The new contract is now 10 pages instead of 9.

When attending the new Arizona Purchase Contract class by Jan Steward, Manager, Risk Management at Arizona Association of Realtors, I was amazed that several agents in Arizona were still using an old purchase contract from 2004-2005. Not only is this disturbing because they haven’t stayed abreast of new changes, but what about the agents who accepted these contracts?

What’s even more disturbing is that these agents had to have made a huge amount of contracts and placed them in a drawer somewhere to use later which isn’t a very sustainable thing to do.

The four biggest changes with the new contract are:

Earnest Money: This was a simple change to now state that anyone can deposit the money once escrow is opened.

Fixtures and Personal Property: Not a very big change either, but this section just helps to better explain what a fixture actually is and they now have added more common items that should be included. They also added “leased items” to help clarify things.

Seller Warranties: This was the biggest change! Seller warranties have now been completely removed from the contract and homes are now sold in their present condition or “AS IS” so the “AS IS” addendum has now been removed from the forms catalog. The Notice of Non Warranted Items has also been removed.

Broker on Behalf of Client: Because there are so many teams in real estate, there is now space on the contract to add the second agent. I loved this change because I work with Kim at my office.

Here’s a link with a copy of the new contract with all the changes in RED for you to review:

Residential_Resale_Real_Estate_Purchase_Contract_Form_2-2017_red-edit…

Maybe to help those other agents still using the old contract, we could place verbiage in our listings that say to please use the new February 2017 contract…