09/12/2022
Should you disclose or not?
I am happy to say that in the past 10 years we have NEVER had a lawsuit, and neither have any of the seller or buyers that we've represented.
Hi, I'm Susan Chace with SoCal Area Home Team.
When you are selling, Disclosing anything that has ever been repaired, replaced,
modified,
added, fixed or changed...
is very important and will help keep you out of litigation.
It's essential to go over all the disclosures with your agent prior to putting your home on the Multiple Listing Service or
prior to buyers seeing the home.
We want them to have previously reviewed the disclosures
before making an offer,
this will help ensure the buyer doesn’t back out later from things they should
have already been made aware of.
Did you know, that in California, there are massive amounts of disclosures that need to be 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 s*x offender living in the
surrounding area would have to be disclosed. . . IF you know about.
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,
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.
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.
If you're thinking of selling, give us a call. We've helped a lot of people, just like you, in this area, and we'd love to help you too.
I'm Susan Chace with SoCal Area Home Team, and as always, we are here to serve your real estate needs.