The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Taylor Odom, John Ralston & Bill Tucker Joined Keith & Jerry Live On "Real Talk With Keith Smith!"

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Taylor Odom, John Ralston & Bill Tucker joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller live on “Real Talk With Keith Smith” powered by YES Realty Partners and Yonna Smith! “Real Talk” airs every Friday from 10:15 am – 11 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Real Talk With Keith Smith” is presented by El Mariachi Mexican Bar & Grill, Fincham & Associates, Inc., Free Enterprise Forum, Intrastate Service Co, Mejicali, Tailored Closet, Premier Garage, Budget Blinds and YES Realty Partners.

Good Friday morning, guys. I'm Jerry Miller, and thank you kindly for joining us on Real Talk with Keith Smith. It's an absolute pleasure to connect with you guys through the I Love Seville Network on a show presented by Yes, Relility Partners this morning since 1987 YRP, Yes, Relility Partners, has proudly served buyers and sellers in this thing we call real estate. It's an ever-changing profession. And today's show will embody that ever-changing nature of real estate. Some contract law in the focus today. The new VR-600 contract, Keith is moniker this, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and yes, you heard me use the word Keith today. He is in attendance after a fantastic hiatus of the month of May in the Caribbean with his wonderful wife, Yona. They're celebrating or have celebrated 40 years of nuptials and fantastic. wedding experiences.

They work together, they live together, they play together. And for 40 years, she's hung out with Keith. I mean, right that. I mean, goodness gracious, I feel like I should send Yona top shelf bottle of scotch for 40 years. Keith Smith over there.

Judah Wickhauer is behind the camera. We give him some props without Judah Wickcower. This is not possible. I think on that note, we should go to the studio camera and welcome a sun kiss Keith Smith to the show. Thank you. Thank you. And a shout out to Judah. Five people on set is a hard thing for him to manage.

So thank you for doing this, Judah. I can go back to the trivia now that you guys kind of handle it. So today is like we talked about, just the good, bad and the ugly, right? You know, there's a new sheriff and down. It's the new VR 600. There's some good parts. There's some bad parts, and there's some really ugly portions to it.

But my goal today is the five of us to sip a cup of coffee or a bottle of water and kind of talk it through. We're not going to give legal advice, right? But we're just going to talk through it from a practitioner's perspective and see how the folks watching and listening can move forward. And I know it's a great sign when Bill's pulling out about, I mean, how many trees did you kill for that, Bill? Too many. He's a legend. He's a legend. He's a legend.

Bill Tucker is a legend. So let's do this. Bill, why don't you introduce yourself to the few people who don't know you and we'll work our way around the table and then dive in. Thank you, Keith. Thanks, Jerry. I'm Bill Tucker. I am a real estate attorney by choice. I just happened to have nothing else to do, so I became a real estate attorney.

I'm a partner with the local community law firm of Tucker Griffin Barnes. Hi, good morning. My name is John Ralston. I'm likewise a real estate attorney. I say by trick because I didn't know any better when I started and at Ralston Law Group here in town. And I'm Taylor Odom. I'm a solo practitioner.

I have an office here downtown. I've been in Charlottesville since 2013. So collectively, how many years of real estate attorney's shift did we have at the table? Let's just say over 50. How long have you been in real estate, Bill? out of curiosity. Well, when I graduated law school in 71 and bought my first property in 71.

And how old were you at that time? 71, no. Probably just out of college, maybe 20, let's see, law school. It's probably like 24, 25. Do you know what the new average age of a first-time old buyer is? Probably 35. Let's see that. Let's ask the panel.

I vote 35. We got 135. John, what do you got? Average age, according to the National Association of Realtors for the first time home buyer. I was going to say 33. Okay? I would say 35. Okay.

The answer is 40. Oh, wow. And that new number is about to be released, and the expectation is it's going to be even higher, wouldn't you say, Keith? I think you're going to see closer to 42 when it gets released out that way. So first-time home buyer is 40 years old. and you made me trigger that by when you bought your house when you're 24, 25. I bought my first home at 24, 25. I know Jerry was about that same age.

Gentlemen. Let's see, I was 31. Say, 27, 28. Yeah. There you go. Now 40. Now with a 4. Unbelievable.

All right, so let's get into it. So, gentlemen, what's the big change in this contract? versus last contract. Do we want to kick off with the big one, the times of the essence question? Or what do you guys think? Can I ask this question before you answer this one? What is the VR 600 contract? Should we start there first?

For the average, for the layman? Thank you. The VR contract is the Virginia Realtors Residential Pursons purchase contract. Good call, Jerry. So this is, as real estate agents, we go into our system, part of the Virginia Real of state associations. This is the template for lack of a better term that we use throughout. And it is certain jurisdictions or some MLSs such as Northern Virginia has their own contract. And I have some theories on this new contract and that way maybe we'll get into it a little bit later.

But this is when if you're buying or selling a piece of property in our region, this is by and far the contract. you're going to see and the contract we're going to have to work with. And there's been a lot of pushback on it because there is a term in the beginning of this contract that says time is of the essence on all terms after that. So I've got a bunch of questions about that, but I just wanted to kind of throw on to the table to the panel. I think I know how you feel about the terms, the term time, of the essence, but if somebody can just give a high level what

that actual term means, and then we can take it from there. Well, I'd probably start backwards before we had honor about and then we had honor before, but essentially there's a little little bit of wiggle room, for lack of better words, meaning that if you missed a settlement date

wasn't an immediate default in death of the contract. So what we've done is on the other direction of times of the essence, which is strictly you must perform. by the date. So by, but from a,

from a legal textbook perspective, Bill, what is the definition of time of the essence? It, it means that that is a holy date. That is the date. And with these,

the new contract, it's all the dates are time is of the essence. So that's my first question. So everything, so I'm reading this contract, the top down, it says all terms.

So anything that's date related in this contract is now a time is of the essence. It's a material term. Exactly. If it says a date is filled in, that date is the date. If it says five days after so-and-so, it's five days. It's not six.

And the other thing the listeners ought to know is this VAR form, even though it's a statewide form, we're the main community in the state that uses this contract. The rest of the areas, Northern Virginia, Richmond, even, Lynchburg, Roanoke, most of the state have their own state's locality specific contracts, and all of those contracts have some version of time as of the essence in it. I know we're going to get to this later, but in my opinion, the reason this got enacted, without much advice from any real estate lawyer

in our community, it was done so that we would come and conform with the rest of the state because we were getting realtors from Northern Virginia for Richmond coming in here and not liking the way we do closings. Gentlemen. Oh, I agree with that. I think it was more so just the match the rest of the state. And I think even at that meeting with VAR and Kaba, that's virtually what they said. They wanted to match. Yeah, I know.

I've talked to some realtors where they were, the realtors from Northern Virginia were insistent upon using the Northern Virginia form contract and then it was kind of like a, you know, which version shall we use? And then now I think there's probably a little less nuance between the versions. At least that's the intent. So Telly, you wrote a pretty good little talking points there on time is of the essence. So we're going to lean on you to kind of take the lead on that. So of that two pages you've got there, what's the big takeaway?

Yeah. So I guess the, you know, if we kind of look back a little bit when you look at contract, law in Virginia. With real estate, typically, there is a favor towards flexibility. From a practitioner's standpoint, there's a lot of negotiating and soft skills and trying to get the deal done. But with the now time is of the essence, there's a little bit more teeth to the contract and to the dates. So, you know, I look at it every date is critical now unless there's an amendment to that. Disclosing as to what is not critical and what is critical. The big thing about times of the essence is that if a date is missed,

then it can be viewed as a material breach of the contract and the opposing party can claim that there is a default of contract. So that's a big deal. So I guess the key takeaway would be you know you miss a date that's bad, but it's really bad if the opposing party gives you notice that that has been a material breach of the contract. which could be grounds for termination. Now, of course, a lot of that would probably come about in a sort of mediation or even a litigation. And since there's not a lot of litigation, particularly in our area, because this is a new form contract, it's a big unknown. I haven't been doing this as long as Bill, but I've been doing it for a while.

And generally, real estate contracts are only as good as either side, right? the buyer and the seller, right? If they're willing and able and want to do the deal and move forward, we generally work through these issues. I think there's some pushback on this term, time is of the essence and it from the community, from the real estate community is, you know, for instance, one of my suggestions we talk a little bit about

is the loan application timeline, right? That's never really been kind of followed, right? We kind of, it was part of the process, but right now, from contract ratification, they have five business days to make loan application, right? So what is loan application? Well, it actually defines it in there that you have to pay your appraisal fees. So how do we as agents manage that, right? Because what could happen is we're now working with a third party

that we don't exactly know if the process has happened. You know, I think the good part of this new contract from a practitioner's perspective is, at least from my side of the table, everybody's got to up the game a bunch, right? We're going to have to really track dates, and we're really going to have to make sure that these items are completed and documented through it. But, Bill, I mean, you've been around the block more than a few times.

times, and you and I have worked on some deals that we held together at the last minute, where does this contract cause problems in those situations? Well, as we attorneys know handling the closings, all the issues that have been percolating during the contract negotiations, inspections, walkthroughs, final walkthroughs, title issues, They all come to the head at the day of closing. So now this new contract says you don't have any waffle room to spend a little bit of flex time to solve a problem. I'll give you a great example of what I found out yesterday from a situation.

Cellar has to buy a house out of the area. Closing is scheduled in the contract for Wednesday, two days ago. The buyer was not able to attend the walkthrough. That's the final walkthrough to make sure all the items have been repaired and such. So the buyer had his realtor do the walkthrough with a camera. And they noticed where in one of the rooms where a cabinet had been that held a TV, not apparently a large white screen TV, but a regular TV. When they moved the cabinet off the wall, when they left the house,

there was a mark on the floor and on the wall the wall board was a couple of dry bubbles from the paint bubbling which would indicate maybe some water problem but it was definitely dry it was able to be inspected because

the cabinet was not against the wall it was off the wall a little bit because of all the connections for the TV well the buyer basically said I'm not closing I want to come down personally and look at that before I close. So I think today the buyer is showing up because in the meantime the sellers who are

trying to buy a house out of the area are encouraging damages because their contract in this other area has time as of the essence on it. So quite frankly, if we had had time is of the essence contracts for this one, the buyer could have been told if you don't close on Wednesday, you're going to be incurring damages. If you read paragraph, I think it's 13 of the new contract, default, it provides if either party defaults, the non-defaulting parties liable for all

kinds of damages, real estate commissions and attorneys fees, you don't need to, I think, say it's a material breach. If you default, of time is of the essence and not close on that closing date, this particular buyer would have incurred all the cost that the seller

is incurring out of the area. So this is for everybody. So there's some confusion. out there amongst real estate professionals that the time is of the essence clause at the beginning of all terms does or does not negate on or before right so we have on or about or on or before and I think we've all had this discussion before prior to the time of the essence that kind of gives you a fludge factor of a couple of days one way or the other so what I'm hearing from your bill now is that if you don't if you put a date in there and you don't hit it for whatever reason then this contract could just evaporate, correct? And then plus there would be damages. Correct.

Associate. Now, the good news is on the lender side, the language is still there for the lender. If you don't get that commitment by that certain date, we still have what I call the Evergreen Clause, that it keeps on going until you either get a commitment to you get terminated. There's a three-day notice period that you can give notice

that I'm tired of waiting, so either get your commitment or not. But other than that, you're going to be a commitment. that, that closing date, you know, it's not on or about an hour before, it is the closing date. So back on the good part of this, guys, is there, what, what do you see in here that is good

from your side and from a practitioner's perspective and from a client's perspective? Well, I mean, I kind of like how they further elaborated on the, I guess it's section three on just the types of financing. Like, that

I think is a good change. It's just, there's lot more options, but also a lot more to fill in. Again, I mean, I don't want to say everything's bad about it, but just circling back the times of the essence, I think there is potential to wrap, you know, ramp up the pressure a little bit on the settlement agent side. Because I mean, even if you go back to, what is it, Section 11 indemnification, the parties agree to hold harmless to the listing broker and the selling broker for any delay arising from regulatory or legal requirements, legal requirement being the contract. So that's where

I do sometimes feel a little more pressure of like, okay, well, the agents are indemnified. I'm not. So I think there will be an adjustment. Well, it makes your guy's job that much harder, right? Because you're going to have to be in front of this way before. Did you see it the same way, Taylor? Yeah, I mean, you know, one thing I was going to say, I'd never. thought I'd say the words good and title defect in the same sentence, but I do think the change into the title paragraph that if there's a title defect, I think there's a 10-day window now. But from my perspective, if there is a title defect, then now there's going to be a separate

amendment to the contract that's going to need to be drawn up that will specify the terms of how that defect is going to be remedied with specific dates and that sort of thing, because in the old contract I think it was 60 days. It was 60. Yeah and so there was a lot of kind of like, you know, well, are we going to do this? Is this happening? What's going on? I think this is going to have the parties a little bit more aware of exactly what's going on with that title defect, how it's being remedied and just a little bit more clarity to it. But you know, but that 10 days is going to be starting much sooner than the closing date because it's going to start when the title report comes in. So it's done to be. give a lot of time to solve a title problem. Right, so that's why there's going to have to be an amendment's, you know, drawn up every time there's a known title defect. The most common one is if there's a, if there's a deed of trust that hasn't been released from a prior lender, you know, those are quite common, but a lot of times those releases, you have to track down the former lender, the note holder, and, you know, that can take, you know, 30, 45 days to get those FedExed and reported, so. My concern is that, with Keith pointed out, is that we're all going to have to up our game

because, as we all know, there's so many things that can delay the closing right at the last minute. There's a walk-through problem. The HVAC is not working. We can't get a serviceman out. Well, we're definitely going to have to have some kind of escrow arrangement now. Now you've got to get the lender involved, potentially, with that. And then we're doing amendments, which we would do anyway, right? We would have to amend the closing day anyway.

Well, now we would delay the closing. Yeah, correct. To get the serviceman out tomorrow and close the next day. Assuming you can find somebody to go out there. Yeah. But, you know, things like as simple as the UPS loses the deed for two days. The weather delays the seller moving out. It's just, I mean, the good, I guess if there's a good news,

the way I've sort of rationalized it is that the rest of the state has figured out how to work with time as of the essence. Yeah. We've figured out how to do owner before. Now we've, from owner about, we've gone to owner before. We'll figure out how to do time as of the essence. It'll just be a learning curve. I think this changes how contracts are negotiated on the front end substantially.

Before you guys even see it, right? Because there's so many more, you know, other than we're negotiating price and closing dates and some other terms and conditions within the contract. we are now negotiating, like I just, I get wrapped around this loan application process, right? To me, this is a biggie, right? So before I now bring a buyer into it, I'm not going to need a pre-approval letter. I'm going to make sure that this buyer has actually made a loan application. Well, they can't make a loan application because they don't have a contract, right, on it.

And, you know, sometimes you have conversations, well, I'm not really sure which lender I want to use on it. But now we've got this ticking five-day business clock that once it's ratified, they've got to make application, they've got to pay for the appraisal, right? They've got to make the application fee on it. And so within five business days, they've got to commit to a lender. And sometimes, at least in the years I've been doing it, that kind of fluctuates back and forth before they go ahead and do it. Any quick thoughts on that? I mean, anything on point. It just needs to be front-load.

with respect to the planning and the, I mean, I'll say this, times of the essence, I mean, I've worked with it in the commercial sense, and it gets done, the deals get done, so I don't have. But there's a different dynamic, right? This is very different, you know, when you're working with homeowners, is generally the largest purchase on it. Do you see maybe that a homeowner is going to maybe make multiple applications? If they're willing to pay for multiple appraisals, right?

They can file the application and then, you know, terminate. Well, it's very clear in the contract. They have to, within five days, they have to pay for the appraisal. I'm doing some quick market math here, just because I think the tempo of the market is really going to dictate how this contract is reacted and going forward. So, but before, before I do that, anything you want to jump in on? that, Taylor, on what you're seeing as far as the negotiation structures go? You know, I'm not really seeing much on the negotiation side. You know, this contract, the last, it was revised, was on the 26th of May, so it's pretty

new. So I'm starting to see a couple of contracts come in, but I'm not really aware of the of the nitty-gritty of the negotiations behind the scene. Yeah, well, people just haven't worked themselves through it yet, right? You know, to Jerry's point and he kicked the show off, you know, it seems like we've been doing this for over seven years. years now and every quarter there's something different in the market right so I think we'll work through it on it I just think that the average real estate agent the average buyer and seller need to understand these timelines matter

so I just did some quick high level because the first month the first Friday of next month we do a much deeper dive into the market before I answer this are you guys seeing tempos picking up in your offices you've got sales in the last Oh, yeah. Yes. This spring has been very busy. It's picked up. It slowed up a little bit in the last week or so.

What do you think that is, Bill? Probably the inventory. Buyers have found what they were looking for. If they're, you know, waiting for interest rates, they better go quick. Well, I think the interest rates are having the biggest impact on it. Right now, year to date, the car footprint, so from January 1 to today, there was 835 units sold, it's a total attached, detached, new construction. Same period last year that was 764.

So we're up roughly 9, 8.6% in volume. Very interesting, the average price is up about 5%. We're currently, I apologize, I got the numbers reversed. It went down 5%. We're at 669 right now, average. Last year, we're at 699, so we're up. roughly 8.5% and we're down roughly

5%. That's on average. So what's inventory, units sold her up or down? Explain that? Units sold are up by 8.5%. Okay. And then average price point? It's down about 5%. Okay.

Down 5%. You've got to take a deeper dollar. That's the entire car footprint. That's the car footprint. That's attached, detached, that's just a quick throw up. But I mean, you guys are looking at that 8.5% increase because you guys are seeing a larger, and I think when you're starting to see the

prices get a little bit tighter, right, you're going to start seeing more competition and more negotiating going in and where I think this contract's going to matter and the skill level is going to matter because, you know, here's a scenario, right? I'll just throw this out on the table. We've got a, let's say, you know, right now the $1 million, the $1.5 million is, you know, a very hot market right now right usually got multiple offers yada yada yada yada we come in we put a contract in we negotiate it and we missed the five days and jerry puts another offer in or keith puts another offer and all of a sudden now the sellers got another backup offer in it you're going to kick me out you're going to say what you just you didn't meet your criteria

you're out and i'm going to go sell it am i being a bit dramatic about that or you see this as a potential I mean, I think if you're, you know, at the end of the day, sellers are probably going to look to make as much money as they can on their investment. And just like a drop in interest rates, I mean, that's a similar thing. I mean, when interest rates were dropping and people were taking out very large loans. I mean, it was not at all uncommon to see somebody try and get out of a contract because they have a contract in the background. That's, you know, 20% more. Which was much harder in the old contract, right? Right, right. This one, you know, people are going to start looking for what did you miss, right?

And it's layered. So many other items are layered within that contract. It makes it easier. Back to my original statement, you know, it's only good as Keith and Jerry, right? It's only good as the buyer and the seller, right? You know, if they want the deal and they're willing to work through it, they'll work through the thing. But I think once you start seeing interest rates getting back to where they were at the end of last year or the beginning of this year, before this little hiccup we've got going on,

I think you're going to see the tempo get even stronger on it. From my perspective, from practicality speaking, you're probably going to want to have a critical dates list. Anytime you get a new contract drafted where you look through it, write it down, have a critical dates list, and then mark those dates on your calendar, just to make sure you're not many, missing those. And from the times of the essence, the way that courts look at that is the behavior is very important.

How do the parties treat the times of the essence? There could be an argument to say, well, if we let one of those dates slide, nobody says anything. Then there's this acquiescence that times of the essence isn't really that important to the parties. So if you then try and, you know, after the fact, then go back and say, oh, well, you didn't meet this date. Well, you know, if you're a judge seeing this through litigation, you might think, well, you guys didn't care about it before. So you've acquiesced to times of the essence not being a material term of the contract. So that's always a possibility, too. So if you're wanting to protect your rights, you know, obviously hold those dates hard.

So I can't say how other folks are doing it. But internally, we've actually, unbeknownst of this new contract coming out, because we knew a new contract was coming out. I don't think everybody in the industry really knew what the specific details were. going to be for it. I know you guys didn't know because you guys were not, you guys kind of found out about this at a meeting. But, you know, what we do now is under every contract that comes in,

there's a system we've set up that everybody that's involved in the transaction from the attorneys, the lawyers, the buyers, the sellers, the agents all get a constant timeline update, right? They get an initial email with all the things. And two weeks before a deadline, five days before a deadline, two days for a deadline, everybody in the team gets an email. To your point, if something goes sideways, I want to be able to say, we've reached out to everybody, we've notified everybody.

Because from a broker's perspective, this puts us in a little bit of liability seat here, right? Because we're the ones, we're not party to the contract, but we help manage the contract and help manage the transaction from point A to point B. Do you guys see it the same way? Absolutely. I think we've all got a ton of additional liability. For example, my firm's looking at some software that will do something similar to what you just mentioned

so that we can say, well, we kept you informed. You know, I don't want to digress, but when you were talking regress, when you were talking about lenders and such, I was just looking back at the language. And I noticed under default, you know, failing to make a timely application, it's paragraph, it's under, oh, I can't,

it's paragraph, so a, a, form. Roman numeral little six. But anyway, it failing to file it timely as a default. But then it's got above it, and this is interesting. I'm curious what we all think, that it does say that these grounds constitute a default by buyer, which buyer may cure only by providing evidence reasonably satisfactory to seller within three days of written notice.

So are we really saying that five days? Now can have another three days if the seller says I'm pulling the plug because you didn't apply in time? That's why you guys are here. Yeah, I don't know how to interpret that. And then if you go to default on paragraph 13, assuming there is a default, that party who didn't file timely and didn't file assuming they get the extra three days, they're liable for a real estate commission and all kinds of other damages. You're going to see a lot of that.

If these things fall apart, you're going to see brokerages suing other brokerages. And that's what, you know, the software you're talking about, we implemented, that before this got released on our end of it, but you're 100% right, this is what happens. Everybody gets automatic taxes now. When we were at that meeting with Carr, one of the things that I pointed out and the VAR people didn't like that

was that what this contract's going to do is create a lot more legal work for us lawyers, fixing all these problems, and it just means that the costs are going to go up for everybody. So let's talk about the 10-ton. elephant in the room, the local bar association created its own addendum to the residential purchase of contract. Since I didn't write it, you guys want to talk about what it is and what it does and, you know, there was a message from Virginia realtors that, yeah, you can use it.

I interpret it between the lines, you know, it wasn't approved by us. Yeah, you can use it. But don't look at us to cover you if you do use it. Yeah, well, I think every market that has their own form contract, there are common addendums that are circulated in that market. And I think this is going to be the one in our market. And shout out to Chip Royer at Gary Manas, who really drove this home. He did a great job in coming up with this. And then, you know, Jim Cox is kind of our president of the local real estate bar association.

And he and he and Chip worked together on getting this done. And I really like it. I mean, my biggest, my biggest issue with it when I first saw it was, you know, obviously he's like, how does this affect me? And from the settlement standpoint, what's very common now, especially after the pandemic, are people who are signing documents out of town, particularly a buyer who's signing, you know, he's signing out of town. He's signing his loan package out of town with the mobile notary or somebody on the settlement date, as he's supposed to.

But then the settlement date is the date by which settlement should occur, but settlement can't occur until all documents and funds are in the hands of the settlement agent. So if he FedEx's those documents back, those documents are going to arrive to the settlement agent the day afterwards, which technically is a default. It's a default. You can make that argument. And I think this amendment, this addendum handles that by saying, you know, delays in couriers, overnight services, that sort of thing can't be a reason for a default. So talk about the good parts of this, right? The good, bad and the ugly of the addendum. And, you know, hopefully we have a bunch of real estate agents watching.

Is this something they should use? Should they talk to their broker about it? Let's talk a little bit about this addendum and does this addendum fix or help clarify, right? Because none of us like gray in the contract, right? Does this help clarify some of the gray? We weren't in the room, so you guys were. So what do you think about this contract, this addendum to the contract? Because I know it's being used quite a bit, actually.

Well, I was going to say to one point that was brought up in the meeting is that they wanted to get rid of some of the legalese in the contract or the prior version, which, okay, I've seen that in other fields as well, but sometimes that legalese served a purpose. Legalese and a legal contract. Yes. I mean, that was the thing. Again, your attorney. On one hand, it was like the contracts, the contract, the respective times of the essence. But then in other sections, it was made to be more conversational, which. okay but I think what the addendum is trying to address is just smooth over some of those instances where maybe it was a little overly edited or thinned out I mean like with if anyone has it in front of them section three the balance chiproar noted that there's certain instances where the deposit is stranded it just accidentally got cut out inspections 4E if I've already seen a couple contracts were

the provision about the home inspection or the final walkthrough, excuse me, was left blank. I had the call of realtor back and said, by the way, don't leave that blank because maybe it doesn't happen in this contract, but eventually it could bite if you leave that blank. And I know, sorry. I was just going to say that the way the addendum got created was a group of us got together and realized that when we were at that meeting, we thought we were going to have two months to kind of work through everything, and we were surprised that not only did we not have two months,

but we didn't even have a day because it was effective in the day of the meeting. But that's okay. So a group of us got together, and this is the result of probably three or four different drafts. It was circulated around the group. And it does attempt to at least some of the obvious points that we were concerned about. It does attempt to modify those to basically create hopefully less conflict on some of the points that we thought were obvious that needed to be corrected. We've also, as a real estate bar, we're pretty active, and we've put the word out that let's take the month of May and see what kind of issues may come up.

Unfortunately, we won't see a lot of closings happen with this contract. Not in May. But we just wanted to kind of get the word out. Everybody think and see what kind of issues you've come up with. And when we have our June meeting, which I think it's June 8th or something. The bar. The bar, a real estate bar. We intend to kind of review what kind of problems we've already seen with this and maybe make more suggestions.

This, and we, I had, I reached out to lenders and say, okay, from your perspective, you know, what, you know, what, you know, what. do you see as a troubling points and they all kind of came back and said look at the end of the day everybody's going to have to up their professionalism everybody's going to have to up their their their timelines just just a point you know this this i've been doing this going on 40 years and i've done a ton of commercial projects and you expect to see time as if that's and when i swore the words time of essence a chill went up my place and i swear the words time of essence a chill went up my back, right? It's like a hand grenade with a pinpole. You never know when it's

going to blow when it's going to blow. But there's a provision in here that not a lot of us agents focus on and focus the deposit, the buyer has to do proof of funds. It's within seven days. And it's not something we generally

track. Now we're going to start tracking that because our role is to protect our clients, either a buyer or a seller, same as your guys. But, you know, if you're turns out that if the contract ratification, there isn't proof of funds of the deposit for the contract, that's a default. That's page two, number five of third party finance. I can't read the top number. If you read the balance, basically what that's saying is that, so if you're doing a 80, 20 loan, that 20% proof of funds has to be delivered in writing to the other side. And if it's not, then that's technically

it triggers the time that you underlined it. Look at that. The time is of the essence thing. And I know that this contract stuff can be a little dry in this conversation. But, you know, what I am trying to do here is I know that the tempo is there. The numbers may not be there as far as value goes compared to last year, but we're up, and I expect this tempo to increase. Well, the value depends on the jurisdiction.

That's for the entire car footprint. I bet if you looked at the Almore numbers, it would be incrementally up. Yeah. Comments are coming in. This is from a lender. Jay Dominic, he's a pros, pro as well. All these guys are.

This is the comment from Jay Dominic. I think he's been the business 30, 40 years. A point about the five business days to application. If the buyer comes to me, on day five and makes an application. I cannot collect any appraisal fees until they've signed their application disclosures, specifically a form called intent to proceed. So if they're applying day five, they probably will not receive their disclosures, their e-signs, and then pay before the fifth day is gone. So if buyers wait until they've signed their fifth day to apply, they will

likely end up in default. And that's important to emphasize, he says, to everybody that's watching. You've got six different real estate firms watching. You've got a boatload of insurance brokers watching, a boatload of loan officers watching, some home inspectors watching the program, and a lot of elected officials here. Anyone want to talk a response to Dominic, Jay Dominic there? But doesn't the, again, the default language in that section about if you don't timely make your application, the seller has to ask for evidence that they, you know, give you the three days written notice. The seller has actually got to give notice that you didn't apply in time.

Correct. Well, this puts the onus on the 8. It puts the owner, that's where I've been hanging my hat on this one thing that Jay's been talking about this loan application because a lot of times, you know, we're in multiple offer situations, you know, whatever it might be, we don't have everything done, which is the comment I was trying to talk about, the negotiations have to happen on the front end. Now, does your addendum address this one specific issue? on that or that we need to figure out a way to add into that because what it does is it ties the buyer's hands to this one lender right and we're going to have to have all this done finish to jay's point he can't do a full application until he has a contract and five business days is not necessarily five calendar days so you have a little bit of wiggle room in there to go ahead and do it but you know these are hand grenades with pins pulled

to go ahead and go ahead and that could just blow a deal up. It seems to give, I mean, just talking out loud here, and then we'll get to more comments here. It seems to give a lot more negotiating leverage, exit leverage to the seller. The seller here should a multiple offer scenario arise or should a better opportunity arise and the bottom of the ninth inning has more exit upside.

Yeah. And maybe the agents that are watching this program don't want to hear that because that could just complicate. Maybe you guys don't want to hear that. But that's how I see it is just a guy that, you know, a hundred percent right. Tries to win. 100 percent.

And then it becomes an ethics question. But isn't it an ethics question? Well, depends, right? You know, if, yeah, it's a tough, that's just a hard question to answer. You know, we've got to operate with the four corners of the contract. But, you know, and you're supposed to enter. into a contract in good faith, right? That's how you're supposed to do this, right? And you know all of a sudden you get another offer and you start looking for ways out of the deal.

Am I really operating in good faith, right? You know, and that's maybe a topic for a different day and a different, for Jerry and I to battle out. But, you know, I see it as a little bit of unethical and definitely not operating in good faith. that said, our role is to protect our client and our role is to get the best possible for our client. If we're representing the seller, then they get a better deal. We're going to start looking at a contract and figure out how to get out of it. And it just made it that much easier to do. Right. And it made it that much easier to do that I think when the market really starts rocking and rolling,

you're going to see a lot of it. Well, here's an interesting question. this is from someone not in the industry. This gentleman's name is Caleb. He says, Mr. Tucker at the beginning of the show mentioned that localities across Virginia have different contracts. Why is there not just one uniform one to practice real estate in Virginia? Great question. That seems like a pretty good question.

It would make sense, but of course because we're dealing with different communities and different personalities and different practices, is it's just not going to happen. It hasn't been that way for years having the same contract form. It would be great. And, you know, I'm happy that we've got now a form that hopefully is going to be not changed a whole lot in the future. So this will give us some time to learn it and figure out how the kinks and how to make things work with this contract. Not to change the subject, but when you're talking about what you just talked about, Keith, with the lender and the application, At the back end, according to the contract, there's a loan commitment that's needed,

but from the lender's side, they need to clear to close. They need to clear to close so they can send out their CD in time to make the closing happen. So talk about that because there's a lot of misunderstanding between clear to close and loan commitment. It's two very different things. Clear to close is exactly what it says. We're ready to close. we've got all the things met. And typically they send the CD out when they've got the clear to close.

So what's happening now is we're working with the lender towards the end of the closing, comparing numbers, getting the CDs to balance. What about a loan that has a three-day rescission period in it? And all of a sudden, we're changing the CD. That's not going to be a purchase. That's not going to be under this contract. Yeah, the only time that would happen is if, I think, the interest rate changes, the loan amount changes, or

prepayment penalty is added for some reason, then it would restart the three-day timeframe. But if that happens, right, it happens, we now have a conflict in the contract. Everybody's got to scramble to do an amendment on. Jerry, to your point, you're spot on. Almarve County, we're up. I just did the numbers. We're up 25 units year over year, and we're flat on. sales price. So we're literally

at 922 is the average from 2025 to that. So to your point, Almar County is staying pretty consistent on value. I have to take a deeper dive. I think that number is probably a little greater 26 over 25. Katie Mullins watching the program. She says one of the big questions, and she's a realtor, she says

one of the big questions for the folks that are interviewing agents, be sure that you ask them specifically, are you familiar with purchase agreement contracts in the market and any updates to those contracts before you get on board with a real estate agent? It's going to be working on your behalf. Yeah, so thank you.

The level of professionalism within my specific industry is going to have to raise. You're going to have to really take the time to educate yourself and understand the contract. and more importantly, be able to communicate it in the way folks understand it on it. By time it gets to you guys, you know, it's signed and done, and then you guys are trying to work through what we've got there

on our end, and that's what I was trying to explain a little earlier, the items that we now need to focus on the negotiating contract just grew. And that's okay. That's a good thing. And I think that's the good part of the contract because it really, you really, you know, Bill, I've been doing this long enough. You know, the theory always used to be get it on the contract and work it. Get it on paper and work. You cannot do that with this contract now.

Right. And we've been talking today about all the things that could go wrong and how you can get out of the contract. But fortunately, most of the time, we have a buyer who wants to buy it. a seller who wants to sell, a lender who wants to make a loan, and a realtor like to make a commission, and we're going to make it work. It's only when we have that seller

who's got a second contract offer and wants to get out of the first one that we're going to see this contract. I don't want to do this anymore. So I think that's how we're going to get around this. We're just going to work our way through it. Well, we said this earlier, right? I mean, a real estate contract is only good

as the two parties that signed it, right? And back to my good faith comment, right? If everybody operates in good faith, right, mistakes happen and issues need to be worked through, everybody moves forward in good faith. It comes to the point where somebody doesn't want to do that. And now it's easy to get out. I just gotta pick up the phone and call John up and go,

I need verification, loan application was made within five business days, it was paid and all that stuff. And if you can't verify that, in writing, then I'm going to exercise the times of the essence clause. And we're going to say, thank you very much. Your contract is now terminated. But after the three-day notice. Yeah, three-day cure period, basically.

Which then, if they want the house, they take three days to go ahead and do it. So I just think everybody kind of saw the time as essence like I did and went, oh. but this is all going to be about the level of professionalism in our industry to help people get through it. And this is why I wanted to do this today is to have this conversation. Any questions? This question's come in. I understand the opportunity of the upside from the seller's side if they want to get out. Is there any wiggle room on the buyer's side should they want to get out by intentionally missing times and dates?

I think on that side, you guys are the pros, it's much more punitive if you do that on the buyer's side. You mentioned that, I believe, but maybe we should offer more clarity on punitive nature. Yeah, I mean, obviously what's hanging over the buyer's head is whatever their earnest money deposit was. Right. You know, the higher that amount is, you know, would a buyer be okay losing $3,000 maybe, you know, but if it's 25 or 50 on a very large property, then I think there's a little bit more thought that the buyer would have to make on that decision.

Taylor, the contract doesn't have the depositors, liquidated damages. So if that buyer defaults, he potentially owes a real estate commission. Right. That's the big one. So, you know, the buyer doesn't have a lot of ways to get out of this by purposely defaulting. they can just hope.

Well, then they're in default, right? And therefore it triggers all. But they don't do something to create that. They're more likely going to be waiting for the deed to get lost in the mail or the wire from the lender. Something to do with the inspection. Or the wire from the lender gets delayed a day and it's not there until the next day. And the claim settlement didn't occur on the closing date.

Or how about a soggy wall behind the TV cabinet? Yeah. Exactly. So to the agent who chimed in with that question, it's really the genesis of today's conversation that as the first line of defense, for lack of a better term, it's how we have to explain the contract to the buyer, right? And we need to do this in a way that the buyer understands it or the seller understands it, And these are the potential loopholes, or these are the potential pitfalls in it.

Like I said earlier, I've been doing this since 87, and it's always been the theory, negotiated, get it on the contract and work through the problems as you go through it. This makes it that much harder to do business in that fashion. This from a realtor, what if the funds are being provided by a helock from another property, then the three-day rescission would have an effect? Anyone want to touch that one? Well, yeah, I mean, the funds need to be there at settlement or before settlement. So it doesn't matter what the source of the funds is.

If they're late, you're a default. And if we write a good contract and put an addendum in the contract that says this purchase is contingent upon the refinancing of another piece of property, yada, yada, yada, then you have yourself protected from it. The problem is you probably won't get that across the finish line on the buyer end of it. And the question becomes, do we need to disclose that the deposit is coming from a HELOC, right? But, you know, again, in situations where multiple offers are then in negotiations, that's probably going to hurt you and not help you. This question comes in. Can the panel speak to how many deals are cash deals that they're writing or a part of? I've done quite a few cash this year, lots of cash in our area, a lot of cash transactions in our area.

The ballpark back of the napkin for the car footprint is one in three deals roughly are cash transactions. Is that number up ticking? Just back of the napkin numbers are down ticking. I would imagine with, I mean, interest rates, good guy, with the geopolitical tension, and we're not going to go down that road. Rates are up. And now we're talking potentially no Fed cuts at the end of the year later this year, and rates can go even higher.

I would think cash would be even prioritized more. Before you said the one-third, I would have guessed one-third, but on a higher-in contract a million and above, I bet it's two-thirds are cash, if not more. Well, I'm going to jot that down. I haven't looked at the numbers yet, but it's been holding across the board about a third. Right? To your point, if you took a look at Almar County, a million up, you'll see probably a bigger number. But what you won't see is, okay, I'm doing a 1.25 and I'm bringing $600,000 cash and I'm only getting a $600,000 loan.

That's not considered a cash transaction, right? for all intents of purposes, it's a cash transaction, right? You know, that when you're bringing 50% cash to the table, it acts a lot like a cash transaction. Comments continue to come in. Yonah's thanking the panel for being here part of the show and the expertise. Your buddy is it Javon Javon is watching in the Caribbean? So I need to give a shout out to him.

J. Vaughn is. Jayvon, sorry. Great. great guy and a young man and he helps us with what we do down there in St. Martin. And I was talking to him the other day and he goes, I watch your show, but I have no clue what the hell you're talking about. So they're on a French island over there, but he is an awesome young man. He runs his own little water sports set up, and it's just a young 20-something hard work kid that

I think we think the world of he goes I watch you all the time and he's from Jamaica and he goes mom I have no idea what the hell you're saying our marker here for the panel what is the what is the panel's prediction

or crystal ball for how the rest of the year is going to play out the rest of 2026 is going to play out anyone want to make some bold predictions everybody just went yeah it's really hard to I mean, you know, when you look at the inventory, I'm not really aware of the inventory.

I remember there were some numbers thrown around in the car meeting that we had. There was about 150-day supply of inventory, and that fluctuates. It depends on where the jurisdiction is, what you're doing now. So I do a week or seven-day running, so that's what you're looking at here right now. So right now, we have 100 new homes that came on the market, and 100-1 went pending. And I track this every seven days on it. And we've been between 100 to 150 new coming on and roughly the same going off. So back to the tempo question, right?

You know, a lot is coming on, but the same amount is coming off. We're not actually picking up inventory, right? So picking up inventory would be we'd have more coming on the market, less going bending on it. So whatever's coming on is going off. Now you have to take a deeper dive. some of these are sitting in the market for a little bit longer, but a snapshot of a seven-day window, the car footprint, we're basically running a one-to-one schedule. What comes on, kind of goes off, not the same property.

My experience from doing this for several years is it really doesn't matter. We have a good community and we will continue to see people moving in and buying and people relocating or people moving up or moving down. And I have never, even when we had the crash in 2007, things were still active. You were busy doing other stuff, though. Well, that's true. You were doing short sales. A little of that and foreclosures.

And foreclosures, right, which is an interesting thing. I'm going to talk about that next thing. Foreclosures start to pick back up. On the commercial side, for sure, you're starting to see him pick up a little bit on the residential. On the residential side, but nothing dramatic right there. It's going from zero to a little bit above zero, but you're starting to see a movement a little bit on the floor closure side.

Look, we are, it's interesting. Yon and I were talking about this when we were down with our family. The spring market sprung around January. I think the summer market is going to spring around June this year. I think you're going to start seeing, particularly because of interest rates, rates, lack of inventory.

I think everybody's taking the gas prices. Everybody's going to take a breath somewhere around June, see what happens. But when you're number three in the nation, the lifestyle market, people are coming. And they're coming with cash, and they're coming at a very substantial price point. I mean, Bill, you've been doing this for a while.

I mean, would you ever expect a million to a million have to be the most competitive market right now? Absolutely not. I've never seen that. Again, I'm amazed at the cash, you know, the contracts that come across for cash, and it's good for the community and good for the market.

So let's keep it up. Yeah, and I was going to say also, you know, I've heard that the highest growing demographic in the Charlottesville-Albara are the, you know, 55, 60 and plus. The boomers. Yeah, so coming in with a lot of, yeah, coming in with a lot of cash to, you know.

Well, we're way past our time, but I've been saying this, the real conflict is generational. It's between my generation and Z and millennials, right? We've got the money, right? We've got the cash, and we're just buying stuff up, and the buyer profile is the same. What the millennial wants and what the boomer wants is exactly the same. Single level, buy a brewery, buy a coffee shop, whatever, that kind of thing, and we're competing. for the same product. But we're going to dig into that a little bit next month.

Any quick questions? No, we covered them. Cover them. Gentlemen, I really appreciate this. I know this is in the middle of your busy season. I know Bill's ready to go out and go do some closings here. He's packing up already. He doesn't even want to say goodbye. He's just leaving.

Right? I like that. But any last words real quick before we wrap up? And just thanks again for doing this. We'll stop me. Yeah, I just say thanks for the opportunity. I'm happy to talk about it. And, you know, as to the, you know, the addendum to the local VAR contract,

I view that it's going to be changed. It's a working document. So ideally, as our market plays out, we'll have some great comments and great additions to the addendum. So on that standpoint, if somebody wants a copy of that, how do we do? They reach out to you guys to get a copy of it? Or how do we get addendums into real estate agents' hands? Yeah, feel free to email. I know all of our local bar has.

them circulating so we can forward them over on the email chains. Well, thanks for having me back again. Always welcome. And, yeah, I think it will be an adjustment. It's just smoothing out. Some issues that are going to arise or just asking questions or being involved

in a way that we weren't prior, but I think this community will adjust. You know, it'll go sideways when somebody doesn't make the money they think they're going to make. That's when it'll go sideways. And again, thank you for doing this. and yes, all of us, most of the real estate attorneys in this community have access to the addendum,

and we'll be glad to share it. We hope the different agencies will look at it and consider it. And again, most of us real estate attorneys are just as just sort of a practical advice. If you've got questions, realtors, and you're thinking about getting a contract signed and you need help, don't hesitate to call one of us because I always take the position and much rather get involved while the contract's being negotiated and clear up problems and have to deal with them after it's ratified. Well, you have no flexibility now unless you have this addendum. You know, once it's signed and signed.

Very few flexibility. Keith, a fantastic panel. We appreciate you. Viewers and listeners that are asking the show is archived in totality, wherever you get your social media or podcasting content. Judah Wickhauer is behind the camera and made sure we stayed on track and put everything together. Thank you to Judah. And we thank the panel.

The I Love Sewell Show, guys, is up at 1230. And thank you kindly for watching, Real Talk Wickees. And I want to thank the folks watching. This was a really needed conversation. So thank you, everybody, for chime in it. Enjoy the morning, and we'll see you guys about an hour and change. So long. Thanks, guys.