If you are about to buy a house, you need to bear in mind that something might occur that causes you to change your mind. By inserting a few contingency clauses into the contract you give yourself the option of backing out if those things occur.
Here are some of the contingencies to consider using:
A funding contingency
Right now you believe you have the funds to proceed with the purchase. Will that still be the case if your lender withdraws or alters their provisional mortgage offer? Will that still be the case if the person lined up to buy your current home pulls out?
A survey contingency
Houses can contain a lot of problems that may not be apparent to the untrained eye. Presumably, you have taken a good look at the property and believe you have a general idea of its condition. However, a professional survey can go much deeper and find problems that could potentially cause you to change your mind about buying. They may be structural problems or they might be issues to do with the land. Either way, you want to be free to renegotiate or withdraw if something major shows up.
A title contingency
One of the reasons for getting legal help to buy a property is to check the title deeds. Not every property has an entirely clean title. Discovering these issues now allows you to choose whether to pass, to ask the seller to solve the issues or to go ahead anyway in the knowledge that you will have to deal with those issues in the future.
Buying a house is a significant commitment, and by learning more about which contingencies to use you can increase the chance of a satisfactory outcome.