When I first started in Real Estate there were a multitude of disclosures that the seller of a property had to complete and present to the buyer. They were to be completed to the best of the sellers knowledge. 'Are you the seller aware of?'.....and many questions would follow. The best one asked has always been, 'Has anything “stigmatized” the Subject Property such as a death on the property, a violent crime, crime in the area/neighborhood, or allegations that the Subject Property is “haunted”?' I'd read this out loud, as I always go through the disclosures with my clients, and they'd laugh and think I was sooo funny. Until I looked them dead in the eye and say, 'Really, do you think this place is haunted?' One of my clients tried to fool me with a ceiling fan and neighbors remote, didn't work. And another, they forgot about the stories that their young son had told them about the man that used to talk to him upstairs.
Regardless of the questions asked in the, double multitude now, pile of disclosures, ignoring how silly you, the seller, may think they are......answer the questions.....to the absolute best of your ability. Don't consider hiding anything, your neighbor will remember when the roof leaked that you haven't mentioned in your pile of papers. The little old lady across the street will point out how the tree in your front yard always was causing root problems in your main sewer line. Neighbors are a wealth of information. And, so should the Standard and Short-Sale sellers be.
Legally Standard and Short-Sale sellers are supposed to disclosure everything about their home. What's been done to it, special taxes, insurance claims, water leaks, roof issues. And, in the recent years, even when the home was last painted. Owner-Occupied we call them, and since they've been living there for some period of time, you anticipate that they will know many things, nuances, about the house.
Now, here we are in a market full of REO's, or Foreclosures, and Investor owned properties. Guess what? These are not owner-occupied sales are they? The owners of these properties have never ever lived in these homes. They don't know what's been done before they took legal ownership of them. They don't know that the prior owner had a mold problem in the downstairs family room. They don't know that the pool has something amiss with the filter that a little tweak here and there made it still workable for the prior owner. They don't know that in the summer some weird worms come out all over the backyard and eat the dog food and get on the babies playthings.
And, therefore, as they are not required by law to disclose what they do not know, you don't receive much in the way of disclosures. Certain reports are required still, but they are the ones that are generated by companies, not people who lived there. We get zone disclosures, tax reports, termite inspections. And, a good listing agent will present a detailed AVID....Agent Visual Inspection Disclosure.
But, is that enough for your comfort? Most it is, some it is not. The real challenges are the flipped homes. The ones where they have so obviously painted and carpeted. Put in new cabinets. Again, these are investor owned, not owner occupied, and the disclosures are slim.
Unfortunately it is what it is. We get what we get in this 2010 market. We hope that the professional inspections and reports and disclosures tell us everything we need to know for our next home. And we hope that whatever the grandpa neighbor tells us, after we move in and are eating the cookies that his sweet little wife made, isn't so horrible that we're afraid to disclose it when we sell the house in the future!
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