On October 1, 2021, the Arizona REALTORS® will publish revised drafts of the following three forms: (i) Vacant Land/Lot Seller’s Property Disclosure Statement; (ii) H.O.A. Condominium / Planned Community Addendum; and (iii) Multiple Counter Offer. While the revisions to the Vacant Land/Lot SPDS will be addressed in a separate article, below is an explanation of the revisions made to the other two forms.

H.O.A. Condominium / Planned Community Addendum

The Arizona REALTORS® H.O.A. Condominium / Planned Community Addendum identifies four fees payable upon close of escrow and allows the buyer and seller to decide who will be responsible for paying which fees. Line 31 also allows the seller to identify any other HOA fees that may be payable upon close of escrow. However, the Addendum does not currently address the possibility that additional fees may exist that are not identified by the seller on page one of the Addendum.

To cover this issue, the following two lines will be added to the Addendum:

By way of these lines, the parties can now negotiate and document which party pays any fees not previously identified by the seller on page one of the Addendum.

Multiple Counter Offer

The Multiple Counter Offer to be released on October 1, 2021, evidences a substantive change to lines 40 through 42 which currently state, “Signature by Seller below and delivery to Buyer or Buyer’s Broker as indicated above creates a binding agreement. Seller revokes all other counter offers by separate notice and agrees to sell the Premises to Buyer subject to the terms and conditions contained herein.”

Effective October 1, 2021, the above-referenced lines under the Section titled “Seller Final Acceptance” will be revised to state:

The primary reason for the revision is to help ensure that a Counter Offer not yet accepted is revoked by the seller before entering into a contract with the buyer. Otherwise, the seller can find themselves in the problematic position of having sold the Premises to more than one buyer.

Although the new verbiage achieves the same result, a secondary reason for the revision is that it emphasizes the fact that any previous terms and conditions not modified by this Multiple Counter Offer shall remain unaffected and considered to be accepted. In the event that agents currently insert verbiage into the Multiple Counter Offer stating that all other terms and conditions remain unchanged, that will no longer be warranted.