C.A.R. Form NBP — Notice to Buyer to Perform

What it is for

It tells the buyer that something the contract requires has not been done and gives them a defined, short period to do it. It is not itself an ending, and delivering one does not commit the seller to ending anything.

Why skipping it is expensive

Because a passing deadline does not remove a contingency or create a right to end the contract, a seller who declares the deal over without having delivered this notice has acted without a basis. That is the position no seller wants to be in when the deposit is being argued over.

It also tends to be self-defeating. A seller who ends a transaction improperly has not returned the property to a clean state — they have created a dispute that sits over the listing while the deposit is unresolved and the former buyer has a grievance with something behind it. Delivering the notice costs two days and removes that entire category of problem, which is a short delay against a long one.

Delivering it is not a decision to end the deal

Agents sometimes hold the notice back because sending it feels like an escalation that commits the seller to walking away. It does not. The notice opens a window; the seller can still do nothing when it closes, and many transactions carry on perfectly normally after one has been delivered and answered.

Treating it as the ordinary next step when a date has gone by, rather than as a threat, is what keeps it useful. A seller who waits three weeks to send one has spent three weeks with a contract that could not be acted on either way, and the buyer who eventually performs would have performed just as readily on day three.

There is a matching notice pointing the other way

The obligation is not one-sided. Sellers have contractual actions of their own — completing agreed repairs, delivering disclosures, meeting deadlines the agreement sets — and there is a corresponding notice a buyer delivers when a seller has not performed. It works the same way: a short defined period after delivery, and only then does the right to act arise.

That symmetry is worth knowing because a stalled transaction is rarely stalled on only one side. A buyer who has not removed contingencies is quite often waiting on a disclosure or a repair that has not arrived, and a seller who reaches for the notice without checking their own outstanding items can find the answer is a notice coming back the other way.

Forms this touches

Named so you know which document the conversation ends in. Their text is not reproduced here.

• NBP — Notice to Buyer to Perform

Questions that come up

Related in this guide

• When a California contingency deadline passesA passing deadline does not remove a California contingency or allow cancellation. What a seller has to deliver first, and how long it takes.
• Removing contingencies in CaliforniaCalifornia removes contingencies actively, by signed form. A deadline expiring does not remove one — which surprises nearly everybody.
• C.A.R. Form CCA — ending the contractThe form that ends a California purchase agreement, and why ending the contract is a separate question from who receives the deposit.