If you look back I posted about a transaction that I have currently in escrow where we did receive an offer with a substantial amount, (well over 3%) back. As I said they wanted to make the home handicap accessible. I was looking out for the best interest of my client. It had nothing to do with not being able to do the extra work needed. It had everything to do with my advise that this looked shady, and had a high probability of crashing and fraud. When I asked some pertinent questions to the selling agent, he not only could not answer them but ended up withdrawing the offer.
Two weeks later we got into escrow from another offer and contingencies have already been removed.
The post also referred to cash back being done in a manner of fraud, without full disclosure in the contract or anywhere else.
Also I doubt the lenders would have any problems with exceptional credits being made in escrow as long as the payments were made directly to the contractors that the buyer had. Bugs had commented on this in a thread awhile back.
I am not an appraiser, or a mortgage broker but I haven’t seen lender approvals of cash back directly to buyers for more then 3% for single family residential purposes. That doesn’t mean they are not out there as you have stated you have seen plenty of them. I assume that those were for single family residential homes, not land. I have seen payments approved to the contractors where estimates and invoices have to be submitted.
