Really Big Purchase and Sale Agreements

Here in Spokane and average purchase and sale agreement can be well over 20 pages.

clipped from seattletimes.nwsource.com Real-estate paperwork Q&A Forms, forms and more forms. Buying a house used to be relatively simple. Like the price? Just sign here. Now it appears you may need a law degree to understand everything you sign. But there are good reasons there is so much paperwork needed to close a deal. Here are answers to questions about real-estate paperwork that were submitted to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS), the real-estate association based in Kirkland that tracks home sales across much of the state and creates and sells forms to real-estate agents. The answers were provided by the staff of the NWMLS. Q: Why the increase in the paperwork required to close a residential real-estate transaction over the past 20 to 30 years? A: First, changes in state law (both statutory and case law) and local ordinances over the years require that certain provisions be included in the parties' contract. Second, the parties to residential real-estate transactions have become more sophisticated.