Sacramento Law Group

Specific Performance in Sacramento Real Estate Transactions

When the seller in a real estate transaction fails to perform their obligations under a real estate purchase or option agreement, the buyer must decide whether to force the seller to comply with their contractual obligations through the remedy of specific performance or pursue alternative remedies such as monetary damages.

To pursue specific performance and force the seller to convey the property, the buyer must also be ready to fulfill their obligations under the real estate purchase agreement. Furthermore, the buyer’s real estate attorney will have to prove the statutory requirements spelled out in Civil Code Section 3384-3395. Those requirements have been articulated in Henderson v. Fisher as…

The plaintiff must show that his remedy at law is inadequate; the contract must be just and reasonable and must be supported by adequate consideration; there must be a mutuality of remedies, that is, the contract must be subject to specific performance by both of the contracting parties; the terms of the contract must be sufficiently definite for the court to know what to enforce; and the performance which the court is asked to compel must be substantially identical to that promised in the contract.

Adequate Consideration

What is adequate consideration? Adequate consideration is not exact fair market value, but rather what is fair, just, and reasonable at the time the contract was entered into. Adequate consideration is determined by the surrounding circumstances, and where the seller’s consent has been obtained by misrepresentation, the resulting consideration may be found to be inadequate under the circumstances.

Inadequate Legal Remedy

This element is by far the easiest for a buyer to satisfy. In cases involving the purchase of a single-family dwelling that the buyer intends to occupy, a conclusive presumption exists that the breach cannot be adequately compensated by monetary damages. Accordingly, in the typical real estate purchase agreement involving a single-family dwelling that the buyer intends to occupy, the seller’s breach of the real estate sales agreement will be enough to satisfy the “inadequate legal remedy” requirement for specific performance.

Real Estate Law Consultation

If your seller backed out of a California Residential Purchase Agreement and you want to pursue specific performance to obtain the real estate, call our law firm at (916) 596-1018 to speak with real estate attorney Michael Benavides.  Our free consultation is designed to help you make an informed decision on which remedy to pursue given the facts of your case.

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