So, what DO you disclose?

This is vital to ensure that you are safe during and after the sale. I highly suggest going over disclosures with your agent prior to the home going on the MLS or prior to buyers seeing the home. We want them to have previously reviewed the disclosures prior to making an offer, this will help ensure the buyer doesn’t back out from things they should have already been made aware of. In California massive amount of disclosures that that need filled out and disclosed. This is actually a safety net for not only the buyer but also the seller. Anything from whether or not you live on a golf course or if you have a sex offender living in the surrounding area that you know about, would have to be disclosed. When you are selling anything that has ever been repaired, replaced, modified, added, fixed or changed needs to be disclosed. So if you’ve painted the walls, cleaned or changed the carpets, added new lighting or fixed the water heater, you need to disclose it!

One of my common sayings to my clients is “If you have to ask me if you should disclose it, the answer is most always going to YES! To over disclosure is better than under disclosure and will keep you out of the court room. You want the buyer to know anything and everything you know about the home, the area etc that could have a negative impact on the desireabity or price of the home. When you disclose properly, you don’t have to worry about them coming back to you later telling you they want to go to court or want to try to extract more money out of you. Obviously you can only disclose what you know about. If there are issues with the property that you don’t know about then the buyer would have to prove that you DID know and kept that from them intentionally in order to win in court.

So disclose, disclose, disclose.