You may have heard me here or in my videos or even on Instagram say ‘buyer beware’ or ‘Utah is a buyer beware state’. Now, other than bringing to mind spooky images from a Halloween movie, what does beware mean in this sense?
Buyer beware means that the buyer is responsible for their own due diligence. They are responsible for making sure that the information presented to them in the sale of the home is correct.
-Storytime-
There was a house for sale recently that listed its square footage as 2,200. A little digging revealed from county records that the home was only 1840 square feet. If you purchased that home without verifying that fact, once the home was sold, you would have no recourse for the misleading fact. (Quick note- in this case, the owner used old, incorrect data and genuinely thought that the home was 2,200 square feet. Willfully lying about the size of your home, however, can lead to legal ramifications.)
So, the long and the short of it is that if you are buying a home, you need to spend your time making sure that you do your own due diligence with an appraiser, a home inspector, and even a handyman, if necessary, to make sure the house is exactly as it has been represented by the seller.
