Want to have the developer contract checked?

Hello, we have received a developer contract and are supposed to go to the notary in two weeks. It concerns a new development area, semi-detached houses with land. Should such a developer contract be professionally reviewed by a lawyer? Do you have any experience with such developer contracts?

Sign only what you understand.

And of course, this applies especially to the biggest investment in life.

A lawyer would be more of my second contact; it should first be about the construction/the subject matter before it gets to legal details.

You can and should have it checked. But you should also come to terms with the idea that the developer may not make corrections and that you might have to buy elsewhere in case of doubt.

It also depends somewhat on how large the developer is, how individually you can work with him. If it's a contract framework he has already used in 1,000 other projects, then you won't be able to change much. With us, we clarified 2-3 points again, which probably would have been built that way anyway. However, I would still have it reviewed, if only so that you can assess your risks.

Besides the legal points that any lawyer can review, it is also about who pays which costs, or what exactly is included in the contract. It is already more difficult to find someone who can do it within 2 weeks.

We had a contract reviewed by a lawyer friend and also discussed 1-2 things with him again (here it says xy, but what exactly does that mean) and then we also approached the developer again with a few points. One or two times it ended up just being further discussion and stayed that way, and I think 2 or 3 changes were still incorporated. (We had agreed beforehand and that was then passed on to the notary and recorded on the day of the notary appointment) But it surely depends on the developer, what they are willing to agree to.

We gave the construction performance description to several other people for review, but no real experts. There were a few comments, but for us all within the range of, we can actually live with that. Whether we ultimately should have hired an expert, we'll see :p