Thread: Can I amend offer to seller pay closing

Originally Posted by inquisitivebuyer

I live in Wisconsin. I recently made an offer to purchase a home and it was accepted. In the meantime, I ran into significant expenses with inspection issues in the home I was selling. Because of this, I don't have the money to cover closing costs.
The offer I submitted has expired. Can I amend the offer by increasing the amount and asking seller to pay closing? Can I cancel the offer and write a new one for a higher amount asking seller to pay closing? Which is preferable, or is neither one acceptable? It's not a problem with the seller, but I'm concerned about raising red flags or complicating the loan process.

You indicate that the offer was accepted, and then in the next paragraph indicate that the offer is expired.

Offers that are not accepted (expired or not) can be withdrawn and canceled or withdrawn then modified and represented to the seller for consideration.

Offers that are accepted can be modified, but only by mutual agreement with both parties.

As far as complicating the loan process, that seems normal right now, whether you modify anything or not, but make the "deal" say what you need it to say.

Is the offer accepted? Or expired?

You most certainly can ask the seller to pay closing costs. I have, on occasion, negotiated an offer higher than the list price, in order to have the seller cover my buyer's closing costs.

There's a risk in that - presumably the listing agent has the home priced pretty close to market. If you go over the list price you run the risk that the home won't appraise for the price you're offering. So your agent should do some research before doing this.

Assuming the offer has expired, it should be no problem to ask the seller to pay for closing costs. The only issue is with this is weather or not the house will appraise or not.

It would help if you might clarify exactly what you mean by "accepted". Is the house you were purchasing owner occ or bank owned? The reason I ask is because an "accepted" offer (at least if you dealing in the bank owned world) doesn't mean you have a signed contract. It means you have a property with acceptable terms to both parties but both parties have not signed off on it yet (typically, the bank is the last group to sign off on these). If you have the contracts signed, then we can call it "pending" or "under contract".

Assuming you meant signed contracts, then you can offer an addundum changing terms and see if the seller's would agree to it along with an extension of your original contract (that probably would be the least amount of paperwork).

If you cancel the contract, everything starts over and you open the property for other offers again. That may cost you more time and money.

Ask the seller to raise the price of the contract by the amount of the closing costs and have the closing costs made a part of the contract.