Jennifer LeBow

So you’re ready to put an offer on the house.  Before you do, you will need to read and sign a long document called the Seller’s Disclosure (at least, you will if your purchase is in Pennsylvania).  The purpose of the document is to inform the buyer of pertinent information that would affect your decision to buy or, at least, your choice of offer price.  The disclosure includes questions about the age of the roof, heating and a/c systems, whether the water is public or on a well, whether any pets have lived in the property, if the basement gets wet, what additions or alterations have been made, etc. I have a few suggestions to buyers as far as reading the disclosure:

1. Read it carefully.  If there is anything left blank or something you can’t read (sellers’ handwriting can be hard to decipher) or something you don’t understand, ask your agent for clarification.
2. In any areas where the seller indicates there has been a problem, have your agent confirm that the problem has been remediated.
3. Use this document to get an idea of costs you might incur soon after the purchase–for example, if the roof is 21 years old, or the hot water heater is 11 years old, you should be budgeting for replacement.
4. Be sure to give the inspector a copy so he can be certain to not miss possible red flags.
5. Beware.  Sometimes, when people have lived in a home for a long time, they may honestly not remember every significant repair they made.  Additionally, some sellers, unfortunately, are not entirely honest when filling out the disclosure. They worry that they will scare buyers away, so sometimes things are simply not mentioned. The reality is that, while the law says that the person filling it out cannot knowingly be dishonest, it’s very hard for a buyer to prove that a seller knew about something and purposely didn’t disclose it. If, after you’ve bought a home, you believe the seller committed fraud on the disclosure, you have to sue him and the onus is on you to prove he lied.  It’s ugly, expensive and only sometimes successful.  So, I just like to warn buyers that, while they definitely should read the disclosure carefully, they should also not necessarily believe that it is a totally complete, accurate accounting of the property’s condition.

When you buy a house, there are all kinds of logistics to manage and information to process.  One thing that I encourage my buyers to do at the settlement table (if not before) is, assuming it hasn’t been a very contentious transaction, to ask the sellers for their list of service providers–from the person who mows the lawn and blows the leaves to the plumber  electrician, HVAC guy or chimney sweep they’ve used.  Why?  Well, it’s a least a starting point if you need any of those services to have the names and contact info for people whom the seller trusted. What will you do, especially if you’re new to the area, when you realize there’s a pipe leaking?  Sure, you can google “plumbers”, but you will have no idea who’s reliable, trustworthy or expensive. Second, all houses have idiosyncracies. Sometimes, you may either pay less (for a shorter service call) or even have better success with repairing a problem if the technician is already familiar with the house.  If the HVAC contractor has serviced the heater for the last 11 years, he probably knows that you have to wiggle the knob to get the panel off, for example. So I always recommend asking for “the list”.