No Surprises

Surrender is not the right word to use to describe what happens after the closing in an everyday deal, but the idea of avoiding surprises should be exactly the same. You have an agreement, but it’s a fragile agreement. Very possibly there will be a time lag between your handshake and the formal contract, if one is required. (Let’s ignore the question of what sort of contract that handshake represents, since we’re not lawyers.) A lot of things can happen in that time that you can’t control or even know.

The one thing that you do know is that you won’t be there to go over the points slowly and calmly with the person on the other side of the negotiation. The rapport that you’ve developed over several hours or days of negotiation will have grown cold. So you’re doing yourself a big favor by reviewing not only the important points of the contract, but the exact next steps that will take place: You’ll arrange to have an inspector look over the property, a mortgage will be obtained, yadda, yadda, yadda.

That’s a two-stage review:

1. The terms

2. What will happen next, whether it’s part of the agreement or not

If you haven’t done both, you haven’t finished the negotiation.