The Residential Purchase Agreement (RPA) is undergoing substantive changes to the content of the form, and a new version will be released the week of Nov. 24. Here are the top three changes REALTORS® need to know about the new RPA:
- The form now takes a unified approach to inspections and repairs. Wood destroying pests and organism inspections and all other inspections are treated equally.
- The time to remove the loan contingency has been extended from 17 to 21 calendar days. Coinciding with this change is the removal of an optional paragraph allowing the loan contingency to remain until the loan is funded.
- A new paragraph has been added to explicitly address the issue of items included in the sale that may not be owned by the seller or that may by virtue of their presence cause a lien to be recorded against the property.
In addition, features and functionality in zipForm® Plus also will be enhanced to simplify a user’s ability to automatically add addendums when field limitations are reached, attach forms when respective form check boxes are selected, as well as programming that minimizes user error by having mutually exclusive checkboxes (for example, a user cannot check both “all cash offer” and another contradictory financing term). With so many changes coming your way, C.A.R. has many resources available to ensure every member is ready for the new form when it is released. Visit on.car.org/rpa2014 for the latest details and training resources.