What Is an Attorney Review Period?

The best-known version is New Jersey’s: when a contract is prepared on standard broker forms, it goes to each party’s attorney for a review window measured in business days. An attorney can approve the contract, disapprove it outright, or disapprove it while proposing revisions, and the parties trade changes until both sides conclude review. Only then is the contract locked. Variations of this practice exist in a few other states, and in some markets the custom is simply that attorneys paper the deal from the start.

For investors who buy directly from homeowners, the review window changes the shape of the first seventy-two hours. A seller who signed enthusiastically on Monday can be talked out of the deal by a worried relative or a cautious lawyer by Wednesday, and in review that costs them nothing. The discipline is to treat review as part of the sales process: stay in touch with the seller, make sure their attorney has the contract promptly, respond to proposed revisions the same day, and keep the tone cooperative, because an attorney who distrusts the buyer can kill a deal that the seller still wants.

Pipeline math has to respect the window too. A wholesaler who counts a deal as locked on signing day will overstate inventory to buyers and get burned when review ends it. The cleaner habit is staging: signed, in review, through review. Marketing spend, buyer walkthroughs, and public commitments belong after review concludes, and dispo conversations before that point should say plainly that the contract is still in attorney review.