When an agent is working on getting a seller's home ready for market one of the things we ask our clients to consider is if they wish to keep any of the attached items. Sometimes a seller is determined to take their drapes or blinds, one buyer in Davis discovered that the seller had removed all of the custom light switch plates in the house. Adding insult to injury they didn't bother to replace the light switch plates! But the most common horror story involves chandeliers. A chandelier is attached to the house and will be sold with the house, unless it is specifically excluded from the sale. It doesn't matter if you inherited it from your grandmother and it has tremendous sentimental value - unless it is excluded in the contract it is legally the buyers.
And what if a seller tries to exclude the chandelier and the potential buyer threatens to cancel the deal because of that? How much simpler to prevent this in the first place - if the seller has such a chandelier the best thing to do is to replace it before the house is put on the market.
Gordon Lane is a Woodland resident and Yolo County real estate agent who works in Woodland, Davis and the surrounding communties of Dunnigan, Esparto, Winters and Dixon. His family has lived and farmed in Yolo and Colusa Counties since the 1870s.
