BINSR Negotiations – To Ask or Not to Ask For Repairs?

Let’s talk about the BINSR for a moment as I’ve heard a lot of rather odd statements from clients on this matter recently. The BINSR, or Buyer Inspection Notice Seller Response form is used to indicate what, if any, items the buyer is requesting the seller to fix after having completed inspections.

 

Recently I’ve had a few clients say they are told by “friends” that you can’t ask for any repairs because we are in a Seller’s Market. This is NOT true. Yes, we are in a Seller’s Market, but why would that mean you can’t ask for even one repair? The Seller cannot cancel your contract during BINSR negotiations. They can’t say “oh man you asked for a repair so I’m walking away and taking a different offer”.  The worst the Seller can do is say no to your requests and then you as the Buyer will get to decide if you want to proceed or not.

 

Now this doesn’t mean that I recommend you go crazy and ask for every single item that came up in the inspection report. (Doing that typically just irritates the Seller and is likely to result in you getting zero repairs completed.) However, I do recommend you pick your top few items and ask for them to be done. In most cases the Seller is willing to work with you on most, if not all, of the items you requested. And if the home is in decent shape and you are going to proceed either way, then what’s the harm in just trying to get a few items scratched off your to-do list ahead of time?

 

So go ahead and ask. You never know until you try!