In brief
A South Carolina deal runs on one dominant clock, and it is a contract term rather than a statute. The South Carolina REALTORS® Form 310 agreement, with the shorter Form 300 as its counterpart, gives the buyer a Due Diligence Period to investigate the property and terminate for any reason. The exit is not free: to terminate, the buyer must deliver the seller both a Notice of Termination and the agreed Termination Fee before the Due Diligence Expiration, and the fee is never owed once the deal closes. It is also the only signature-adjacent way out. South Carolina has no statutory attorney-review or cooling-off period, and its property condition disclosure carries a delivery expectation but no buyer rescission clock, so a late or missing disclosure hands the buyer nothing. Every residential closing must be supervised by a South Carolina attorney. The federal uniforms apply on top: the TRID three-business-day Closing Disclosure rule and the lead-based paint disclosure for pre-1978 homes. Verify every date against the executed contract and the current statute, because the SCR forms were restructured effective June 26, 2026 and the statutes are amended over time.
Contract deadlines look much the same from one state to the next until you meet the clock that behaves differently, and in South Carolina that is the one most out-of-state agents are primed to misread. Buyers in many states get a statutory attorney-review window, a cooling-off period, or a rescission right when a disclosure lands late. South Carolina grants none of those. The buyer’s leverage lives in a negotiated contract clause with a moving part most default forms elsewhere lack: a fee that comes due at the moment of walking away.
The through-line here is which clocks are contract terms you set on the SCR form and which are fixed by law, and the balance tips hard toward the form. The statute’s biggest contribution lands at the other end of the deal: the requirement that a licensed attorney run the closing.
Why South Carolina’s deadlines are their own subject
One form family, run on strict due diligence. The standard is the South Carolina REALTORS® (SCR) contract to buy and sell residential real estate, Form 310, with Form 300 as its abbreviated counterpart. Since June 13, 2022 these have been strict due-diligence contracts: the older repair-procedure and as-is repair options were removed, leaving the Due Diligence clause as the buyer’s mechanism for acting on what an inspection turns up. A deal written before that change ran on a different model, so describe current deals as strict due diligence and confirm the version on the executed contract.
A forms overhaul landed mid-2026. South Carolina REALTORS® restructured its forms effective June 26, 2026, described as the first major revision in years. Forms 300, 310, and 330 were reworked with clearer notice-delivery requirements and relocated broker information, a new Form 900 was added for out-of-state and foreign sellers, and the SCR 525 inspection timelines were tightened. More than one version circulates during a transition, so confirm which revision your deal is on and verify exact form numbers and revision dates against SCR’s current forms library first.
And an attorney-close rule underneath all of it. South Carolina is an attorney-close state. A licensed South Carolina attorney must supervise the residential closing, and that shapes how the back half of the timeline works: escrow, document preparation, the title search, recording, and disbursement all run through the closing attorney rather than a settlement company acting alone. That rule gets its own section below, because agents from title-company states are the ones it surprises.
| Clock | Where it comes from | What starts it | Hedged length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Due Diligence Period | SCR Form 310 / 300 (current revision) | Per the executed contract / the effective date on the form | A negotiated window per the blank; the buyer walks only by delivering a Notice of Termination and the Termination Fee before it expires |
| Earnest money deposit | SCR contract blank | Ratification / the date in the blank | Per the contract; held in attorney or IOLTA escrow |
| Repair request / amendment | SCR 525 repair addendum | Within the Due Diligence Period | Per the addendum; inspection timelines tightened in the June 26, 2026 forms |
| Sale-of-buyer's-property contingency | SCR 504 addendum | Per the executed contract / the effective date on the form | Per the addendum's blanks |
| CL-100 wood infestation report | SCR contract election + the lender | Before closing | Commonly required by the loan; elected in the contract, not a blanket mandate |
| Property condition disclosure | RPCDA (Title 27, Ch. 50; § 27-50-50) | Before the contract is signed, or as the contract provides | A delivery expectation only; late or missing delivery gives the buyer no rescission or termination right (as of mid-2026) |
| Attorney-supervised closing & disbursement | State v. Buyers Service Co., 292 S.C. 426 (1987) | Closing | Attorney-handled at the table through escrow; no fixed statutory disbursement day-count located |
| Closing Disclosure | Federal TRID rule | Issued before closing | Must reach the borrower at least 3 business days before closing |
Statutory citations here reflect the law as of mid-2026 and can change; the two federal rules (TRID Closing Disclosure timing and the lead-based paint disclosure for pre-1978 homes) apply nationwide. Form numbers, revision dates, and the due-diligence mechanics should be confirmed against the executed SCR contract and SCR’s current forms library.
The one clock the deal runs on
The Due Diligence Period is the spine of a South Carolina deal, and everything else the buyer does early hangs off it. It is a contract term, so its length, its expiration, and its termination fee are filled in on the form for each transaction. Treat the description here as the shape of the clock, and read the executed SCR 310/300 for the exact setting.
What the period does. Within it the buyer may investigate the property and terminate for any reason or no reason. That is the buyer’s broad escape valve, and it is why an inspection, an appraisal concern, or a change of heart all resolve through the same window rather than through separate statutory rights. Terminating through it, though, takes more than a notice on its own.
Earnest money. The deposit is due per the contract blank and is held in attorney or IOLTA escrow. It is separate from the Termination Fee: the earnest money is the buyer’s deposit toward the purchase, while the fee is the price of walking away inside due diligence. For the mechanics of the deposit itself, see the earnest money guide.
Repairs, on the SCR 525 addendum. When a buyer wants the seller to address something an inspection found, that request moves on the SCR 525 repair addendum, negotiated inside the Due Diligence Period. The June 26, 2026 forms tightened the SCR 525 inspection timelines, so the window your deal runs on depends on the revision. The buyer’s leverage here is still the underlying right to terminate for any reason before the period ends. The general shape of an inspection window is covered in the home inspection contingency guide.
Financing and appraisal. A financed South Carolina deal still carries loan and appraisal expectations, but in the strict due-diligence model the buyer’s practical protection against a financing or valuation problem is to act within the Due Diligence Period. Read the executed contract for how those provisions interact with the due-diligence window on your deal. The state-neutral version lives in financing and appraisal contingencies.
The sale-of-buyer’s-property contingency. When a buyer needs to sell an existing home first, that contingency rides the SCR 504 addendum, with its own blanks and its own dates. It sits alongside the Due Diligence Period rather than inside it, so track it as a distinct clock on the file.
The CL-100 wood infestation report. A clear CL-100, the Official South Carolina Wood Infestation Report, is commonly required in practice: lenders frequently ask for one before closing, and VA-financed deals typically call for it. It is not a blanket statutory or automatic mandate, though. It is elected within the SCR contract for each deal and driven by the loan, so treat it as lender- and deal-specific and confirm the requirement for the transaction in front of you.
What the statute does, and the clock it does not give the buyer
South Carolina’s statutes surprise out-of-state agents most at the property condition disclosure, which they expect to carry a rescission clock. It does not.
What the property condition disclosure requires
The delivery expectation. Under the Residential Property Condition Disclosure Act (S.C. Code Ann. Title 27, Ch. 50; delivery rule at § 27-50-50(A)), the seller is expected to deliver the Residential Property Condition Disclosure Statement to the buyer before the real estate contract is signed, or as the contract otherwise provides. So far this reads like the disclosure regimes agents know elsewhere.
The part that is different. The Act gives the buyer no rescission or termination clock for a late or missing disclosure. Section 27-50-50(B) states that failure to deliver does not void the agreement, does not create a title defect, and cannot be used to delay or interfere with closing. There is no escape hatch that opens when the disclosure lands late.
The property condition disclosure sets a delivery expectation, not a buyer’s rescission clock. A late or missing one does not, by itself, let the buyer walk.
The scheduling consequence is what to stop looking for. An agent who tracks a disclosure-delivery deadline as a live buyer right, the way Virginia’s or North Carolina’s rules invite, is tracking a clock South Carolina does not run. The buyer’s exit at that stage is the contractual Due Diligence Period, and nothing about the disclosure extends or reopens it. Confirm the current statute text with a licensed South Carolina closing attorney, since Title 27, Chapter 50 is amended from time to time and the section numbers can be renumbered.
The attorney at the closing table
South Carolina is an attorney-close state. A licensed South Carolina attorney must supervise the residential closing. Under State v. Buyers Service Co., 292 S.C. 426 (1987), and the unauthorized-practice line that followed it, document preparation, the title search, the closing itself, recording, and disbursement each constitute the practice of law. A title or settlement company alone cannot conduct the closing in the attorney’s place.
What that means for the money and the timeline. Earnest money and closing funds run through attorney or IOLTA escrow, and disbursement is handled by the closing attorney at the table. No fixed statutory disbursement day-count was located for South Carolina, so treat disbursement as attorney-handled at closing, and do not carry over a statutory wet-funds window from another state. Verify current requirements with a licensed South Carolina attorney. The general shape of escrow and disbursement is in title and escrow explained.
The two federal clocks South Carolina inherits unchanged
Two requirements ride on top of every South Carolina deal with no state-specific hedge, because they come from federal law rather than the SCR form or the state statutes. Under the federal TRID rule, the Closing Disclosure has to reach the borrower at least three business days before closing on most residential mortgages. And any home built before 1978 triggers the federal lead-based paint disclosure. Those are the two lines on this page you can state flat; everything else here is hedged for a reason. The three-day rule has its own guide, the Closing Disclosure 3-day rule.
Counting conventions: the form defines the day
Because the clock that matters most in South Carolina is a contract term, the way you count it comes from the SCR form’s own definitions rather than from a statute. The definition of a day, how the Due Diligence Expiration is expressed, and whether an expiration carries a specific time are all set on the form, and the June 26, 2026 revision changed notice-delivery language across the family. The version you counted from last year is not a method for this year.
The practical rule. Find the Due Diligence Expiration on the executed contract and count to it the way that contract defines its terms, including how a notice has to be delivered to count as delivered. Do not assume a standard cutoff hour, and do not assume the disclosure or a lender milestone adds a separate right; here it does not. A deadline calculator set for the counting convention on the form is cheap insurance against being a day off on the one clock that decides whether the buyer can still walk.
What a clean South Carolina file looks like
Put it together and a clean South Carolina file tracks one clock above all others and gets its mechanics right: the Due Diligence Expiration, and the fact that terminating before it takes both a Notice of Termination and the Termination Fee. Around that sit the earnest-money, SCR 525 repair, SCR 504, and CL-100 dates from the form, and the attorney-run closing at the far end. The file that misses in South Carolina is usually the one that expected a statutory disclosure or attorney-review window to exist, watched for a clock that was never there, and let the real one, the contractual due-diligence deadline, slide past. Stripped of the South Carolina specifics, the same mechanics run in every deal; the deadlines that decide a deal walks through the version a South Carolina file inherits.
Where Ratifyly fits. Because Ratifyly works from the document in front of it instead of a fixed template, it takes whatever SCR revision the deal happens to be written on. You send the paperwork over the way you would hand it to a coordinator, and it works through every page: it pulls the parties, the price, and the dates, together with the counting convention attached to each one, then assembles the transaction and its timeline straight from the documents instead of from keyed-in fields. When an amendment or a tightened SCR 525 window shifts something, it re-reads the file and re-flows the schedule, keeping the Due Diligence Expiration pinned to the executed contract.
Every call still goes to a person. No South Carolina deadline should ride on the software’s read alone, so a compliance audit raises each finding for a human to decide. The whole party list works from one shared live timeline, and a deadline escalates before it arrives rather than after. For a brokerage running South Carolina deals, that is the gap between trusting the due-diligence clock is tracked and being able to prove it. Ratifyly is in honest early access. You can trace the full route a forwarded email travels on the how-it-works page, then check exactly where things stand for South Carolina on the coverage page.
This guide is educational and general in nature. It is not legal advice. South Carolina REALTORS® restructured its forms effective June 26, 2026, with Forms 300/310/330 reworked, a new Form 900 for out-of-state and foreign sellers, and tightened SCR 525 inspection timelines, so exact form numbers, notice-delivery mechanics, and revision dates should be confirmed against SCR’s current forms library; the strict due-diligence contract model has been in force since June 13, 2022. Statutes are amended too: Title 27, Chapter 50 (the Residential Property Condition Disclosure Act, including § 27-50-50) should be spot-checked for renumbering, and the attorney-close requirement rests on State v. Buyers Service Co. and its progeny. Statutory references here reflect the law as of mid-2026 and can change. Always verify a specific deadline against the executed contract and the current text of the controlling statute, and consult a licensed South Carolina attorney for advice on a particular transaction. The federal TRID Closing Disclosure timing rule and the federal lead-based paint disclosure for pre-1978 housing are the only requirements stated here without a state-specific hedge.
Questions South Carolina agents ask
Does the property condition disclosure give my buyer a way out if it comes late or never arrives?
No. Under South Carolina's Residential Property Condition Disclosure Act (S.C. Code Ann. Title 27, Ch. 50), the seller is expected to deliver the disclosure statement to the buyer before the contract is signed, or as the contract otherwise provides. But the Act gives the buyer no rescission or termination clock for a late or missing disclosure. Section 27-50-50(B) is explicit that failure to deliver does not void the agreement, does not create a title defect, and cannot be used to delay or interfere with closing. South Carolina has no VA/NC/MD-style late-disclosure termination window. The buyer's real exit at that stage is the contractual Due Diligence Period, not the disclosure. This is general information, not legal advice; confirm the current statute and your contract terms with a licensed South Carolina closing attorney.
Is there an attorney-review or cooling-off period after signing in South Carolina?
No. South Carolina has no statutory attorney-review, rescission, or cooling-off period at signing of the kind found in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, or Massachusetts. The only signature-adjacent way for a buyer to exit is the contractual Due Diligence Period written into the SCR Form 310 or 300, and that is a negotiated term rather than a statutory right. Read the executed contract for the exact window; do not assume one exists by habit carried over from another state.
Does South Carolina require an attorney to close?
Yes. South Carolina is an attorney-close state: a licensed South Carolina attorney must supervise the residential closing. Document preparation, the title search, the closing itself, recording, and disbursement each constitute the practice of law, so a title or settlement company alone cannot conduct the closing. This reflects long-standing South Carolina Supreme Court precedent, State v. Buyers Service Co., 292 S.C. 426 (1987), and the unauthorized-practice line that followed it. Earnest money and closing funds run through attorney or IOLTA escrow. This is general information, not legal advice; verify the current requirements with a licensed South Carolina attorney.
How does a buyer terminate during the Due Diligence Period?
By delivering to the seller, before the Due Diligence Expiration, both a Notice of Termination and the agreed Termination Fee. During the period the buyer may terminate for any reason or no reason, but the notice alone is not enough; the fee has to be delivered with it. The Termination Fee is never owed if the deal closes. The period's length, its expiration date and time, and the fee amount are filled in on the SCR Form 310/300 for each deal, so confirm the exact expiration and the termination mechanics on the executed contract rather than assuming a standard deadline.
Is a CL-100 required on every South Carolina sale?
Not universally or by statute. A clear CL-100 (the Official South Carolina Wood Infestation Report) is commonly required in practice: lenders frequently require one before closing, and VA-financed deals typically call for it. But it is elected within the SCR contract for each deal and driven by the loan, not a blanket statutory or automatic contract mandate. Treat it as lender- and deal-driven, and confirm the CL-100 requirement for the specific transaction.
Which SCR form is my deal on, and did the forms change?
Confirm the form and revision on the executed contract; do not assume the version you used last time. South Carolina REALTORS overhauled its forms effective June 26, 2026, described as the first major revision in years: Forms 300, 310, and 330 were restructured with clearer notice-delivery requirements and relocated broker information, a new Form 900 was added for out-of-state and foreign sellers, and the SCR 525 inspection timelines were tightened. Separately, these have been strict due-diligence contracts since June 13, 2022, when the older repair-procedure and as-is repair options were removed. Verify exact form numbers, notice-delivery mechanics, and revision dates against SCR's current forms library before relying on any of them.