Calendar Days vs. Business Days in a Real Estate Sales Contract

Calendar Days vs. Business Days in a Real Estate Sales Contract

The Northern Virginia Regional Sales Contract for use in residential real estate purchases is a document that defaults to calendar days, unless otherwise specified, when addressing the number of days in a contingency, or to review resale documents from an HOA.  

What happens if a buyer, at their agent's recommendation, decides that they would like to specify x number of business days for their financing contingency?  If there is no definition accompanying the call out of business days, what would you assume it meant?  Monday through Friday?  Monday through Friday with the exception of pre-scheduled government holidays? Or actual business days that occurred during the transaction?  

If you worked a real estate contract with, let's say, 21 business days called out in the place for the buyer's financing contingency, when is that contingency officially over?  Especially if there has been government holidays like Columbus Day AND the Federal government closed for two days during Hurricane Sandy.  You can see where this gets sticky.  

Here's my advice:  If you feel the need to call out business days in your buyer's offer, as a Listing Agent, I am going to recommend my sellers define it as Monday through Friday, with no exceptions for holiday or government shut down days.  The waters simply get too muddy without a definition.  And here's another, simpler suggestion: If you need to account for business days, just ask for more time in calendar days.  After all, there is a reason the Northern Virginia Sales Contract uses calendar days as a default.  It's not a measure of time that you can question.