BUS311
Real Estate Contract Essential Elements
Ashford University
BUS311: Business Law I
Real Estate Contract Essential Elements
Ever since the concept of personal property has existed, contracts have existed, the
simplest of those being trade, you have something I consider valuable, and I am willing to give
you something that you feel is of equal or more value to get what you have. We have come to an
agreement on the exchange of goods or services; a contract has been executed. Contracts can
take the form of verbal agreements, usually for smaller amounts of goods or services, or written
contracts, usually for large amounts of money or more complicated services. For a contract to be
valid and enforceable, there must be at least five elements: the Offer, Acceptance of the offer,
Consideration, Legality of the contract, and the Capacity of those involved.
In 2015 my family moved from Hill Air Force Base in Utah to San Antonio, Texas, the
location of my next duty station, Lackland Air Force Base. With the amount that I was receiving
in my allowance for housing, it made sense fiscally to invest in purchasing a house rather than
rent. I took a week of leave, and my wife and I went to San Antonio to look at houses. We looked
at a couple that seemed like they would be more work than we were willing to do. We finally put
in an offer on one place at the asking price, and we were rejected because the seller "Did not like
our funding source." This seemed strange because we were financing through the VA (Veterans
Affairs) loan process, which means zero money down from us, and a guaranteed loan to the
seller. Our realtor told us that there were likely problems in the house that the VA
would disapprove of for the loan. So we kept on looking.
The first element of a contract is the offer; Cornell Law School defines the offer as ”A
promise to do or refrain from doing something in exchange for something else. An offer must be
stated and delivered in a way that would lead a reasonable person to expect a binding contract to
