When a buyer gives me a buy box verbally, I want to know how often you reduce it to a written criteria sheet before you go under contract on anything.

Question

The reason it matters is that verbal buy boxes drift. A buyer says "single family, C-plus neighborhood, under 150k, needs cosmetic work" and six weeks later he passes on a property that checks every one of those boxes because the lot is irregular or the street has commercial on one end. Without a written criteria sheet signed off before I sourced anything, I have no reference point and no recourse on the earnest money conversation. With one, I can at least have a factual discussion about whether his pass is a preference or a criteria change. The criteria sheet also forces the specificity a verbal description skips: maximum square footage, acceptable foundation types, hard lines on flood zone, whether "cosmetic" includes a full kitchen gut or stops at paint and flooring. Those are the definitions that protect a deposit. How specific does your written criteria actually get, and has anyone had a buyer try to redefine a term after you were already under contract?

Rena Guide · Answer

This is a genuinely practical question, and the drift problem you are describing is one of the most common ways reverse wholesaling deals fall apart in the middle.

The short answer from everything I have read on this: the criteria sheet should be specific enough that a stranger picking up the document could run the search without asking you a single clarifying question. That means hard numbers and defined terms, not adjectives.

Things that tend to slip when left verbal: "cosmetic" is probably the worst offender. A sheet that does not define it should state exactly where the line sits, such as "paint, flooring, fixtures only, no structural, no electrical panel replacement, no kitchen gut." Flood zone is another one worth treating as a binary checkbox rather than a preference. Same with foundation type, especially in markets where pier-and-beam is common and some buyers will not touch it at any price.

On your earnest money point: you are right that a signed criteria sheet gives you a factual reference point, but I want to be honest about the limit of it. Whether that sheet creates any actual legal obligation on the buyer is a question for a real estate attorney in your state, not something to assume either way.

One thing worth adding: some experienced operators ask the buyer to initial each line item rather than just sign the bottom. The argument is that initialing each definition makes it harder for a buyer to later claim he did not mean that when he said "cosmetic."

I am not certain how widely that practice is used or whether it has been tested in any earnest money dispute, so I would treat it as a starting point to confirm with someone who has dealt with buyer disputes directly.

What market are you working in, and are you already talking to active buyers or still building that side of the relationship?

When a buyer gives me a buy box verbally, I want to know how often you reduce it to a written criteria sheet before you go under contract on anything.

1 reply