Opinion ID: 2370096
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: A. The Offer of Sale

Text: The Offer of Sale is set forth in full in the Appendix to this opinion. [62] It appears the Estate based the lengthy document on a form created by the Condominium and Cooperative Conversion and Sales Branch of the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs to help property owners fulfill their obligations under TOPA. Be that as it may, the document is inartfully drafted at best. To begin with, while it characterizes itself in several places as an offer of sale, [Heading, ¶ 1, ¶ 10, final ¶] it also refers to itself in three places as an offer of sale notice. [¶¶ 2, 9, 10] An offer of sale and an offer of sale notice arguably mean different things; the latter term plausibly may be read to support the Estate's contention that the document was not a firm offer capable of immediate acceptance but merely an invitation to negotiate over the terms of a sale. (It does not help matters that the document also describes itself, idiosyncratically, as an offer to purchase.) [¶ 2] Other language in the Offer of Sale more directly supports the Estate's interpretation. Notably, the paragraph captioned Settlement Time states that [i]f the tenant organization decides to purchase and the offer is accepted by me, the tenant organization will have a minimum of one hundred twenty (120) days to secure financing. [¶ 6] Furthermore, the paragraph setting forth the tenant organization's statutory right to 120 days  to negotiate a sales contract  also can be read to imply that only an opportunity to negotiate has been extended. [¶ 3] Indeed, after explaining at the outset that [t]his offer describes your tenant rights and responsibilities and the statutory time periods under the Act [TOPA], [63] [¶ 1] the document expends significantly more effort informing the tenants of their rights than in laying out the acceptable terms of a sale. A notification of statutory rights is not the same as an offer. Although we hold that TOPA requires an offer in the conventional sense of the term, it is not clear that this document was the offer that TOPA required. And if, as the Estate suggests, there was uncertainty or disagreement among landlords and their counsel as to whether TOPA requires a firm offer as opposed to an invitation to negotiate, that lends further support to the Estate's interpretation of the document. [64] Reading the Offer of Sale holistically, a fact finder might be able to conclude that the document is more consistent with an invitation to commence negotiations than with a firm offer. Nonetheless, the document clearly can be construed as a genuine offer, as the Association contends. The document is entitled an Offer of Sale & Tenant Opportunity to Purchase, and its very first paragraph begins, This letter is to advise you of my offer to sell the Property. Thereafter, despite its terminological inconsistency, the document does, repeatedly, call itself an offer. On its face, moreover, the document purports to fulfill the Estate's initial obligation under TOPA, which, as we have explained, requires a firm offer. The label alone might not be sufficient to convince a fact finder of the document's substance, [65] but the document also claims to set forth [t]he material terms of the sale. [¶ 4] The Estate does not argue that the Offer of Sale is insufficiently definite as to its material terms to permit the formation of a contract, and we perceive no fatal deficiency in that regard. As explained above, the fact that additional (non-material) terms remained open for negotiation would not be enough to preclude an enforceable agreement on the material terms. That the Estate may have been surprised to receive an immediate and unqualified acceptance of its Offer of Sale likewise does not mean the offer was incapable of a binding acceptance. We conclude that the Offer of Sale is ambiguous. On the existing record, its meaningwhether it was a firm offer or only an invitation to negotiatewas not susceptible to resolution as a matter of law on the parties' motions for summary judgment.