The San Francisco Association of Realtors recently revised its purchase agreement to add paragraph 46, which requires cash buyers to comply with Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) rules during escrow.
FinCEN is a division of the Department of Treasury, and combats money laundering. It’s been around since the 1990s. Escrow officers have been collecting the required information from cash buyers during a transaction for quite some time, but our purchase agreement only added the new paragraph in April 2019. Sellers have the option of cancelling the contract if the cash buyers don’t agree to provide the required information to escrow. Continue Reading