Congratulations! You’ve Received a BINSR!
You’ve negotiated a price with a buyer for your home, and you’ve entered a contract to sell your home to this buyer. This is great news! What happens next? Typically, the buyer will set up and pay for an inspection of your home, and based on the inspection report, will send you a BINSR. This is a Buyer Inspection Notice and Seller Response, and is the document the buyer uses to notify you, the seller, about the issues that exist with the home and the property. Here’s the important part: the buyer typically has ten days after the inspection to deliver this BINSR to you.
With regard to the BINSR, there are three ways the buyer can go after the inspection. First, the buyer can indicate that they accept the premises completely, which means no further work needs to be done. The second option is the buyer can reject the premises, which means the real estate transaction is cancelled and they will not be purchasing the home. The third option, which is the most common scenario, is the buyer “elects to provide the seller an opportunity to correct” whichever items from the inspection the buyer wants corrected before they take possession of the property.
This third option is where the buyer wants the seller to either replace, repair or change something based on the inspection report. You, as the seller, will then have 5 days in which to respond to the BINSR. As the seller, you then have three responses available. The first response is that you agree to correct all inspection issues. Your second available response is that you agree to no repairs. (The buyer then will have the option to accept the property as-is, or to cancel the transaction altogether). The final response is that you can itemize which items you are willing to repair, replace or change. For example, you may agree to fix 80% of the items on the inspection report, but not the other items because you disagree with the inspector’s conclusions. This scenario is common, for example, when the inspector can’t find a switch to turn something on, or the lightbulbs just need to be replaced.
At this point, the buyer can then choose to either accept or cancel based on the seller’s response to the BINSR. While this is a very simplified explanation of the BINSR process, this is generally how this often-complicated portion of the real estate transaction proceeds. We look forward to answering any specific follow-up questions you may have about any real estate related matters.
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