Dear Forms Committee: I heard that silence is no longer approval of property condition in the commercial sale agreement. Is that true?

Yes. In previous versions of the OREF Commercial Sale Agreement, if the buyer didn’t provide unconditional disapproval of the property before the end of the inspection period, the buyer was deemed to have accepted the property’s condition. After considering the typical procedure for conducting due diligence on commercial property, OREF’s Commercial Forms Committee revised the wording. It now says that the transaction automatically terminates if the buyer does not, before the end of the due diligence period, notify the seller that the buyer is satisfied with the due diligence performed on the property.

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