Disclosures

What are disclosures? Well, disclosures are everything that you know about your home, that you by law, have to tell a potential buyer. Did you get the roof fixed? Is there water under the house? Did somebody crash into the garage 10 years ago? Even if it's been totally fixed, stuff like that. Even though you think that it's way, way in the past, you must disclose it better. Yet, we want to disclose all we know about the house before a buyer ever sets foot in it. That way they can get a full picture of what they have, and things are less scary that way. For somebody that has the information in California, the amount of paperwork that goes involved when you're selling a home is pretty intense. That's why you need to have somebody, especially with a team of paperwork, people behind them to make sure that t's are crossed and the i's are dotted, because there's a lot of things you don't think about.

Disclose all of it, even the ugly parts

Maybe you live on a golf course, you have to disclose if there are golf balls flying around. What if there's a sex offender that lives nearby and you don't even know about it? If you hire a good real estate agent, that all gets taken care of on the back end. So you're protected against things that you may not even have thought about. A lot of it's not that hard. Did you paint over the years? Have you replaced anything, countertops, toilets? Was there a leaky faucet at some point?

If the question is - hey, should I disclose this? The answer is generally yes. And the reason why is because it's better to admit faults upfront, which a buyer may not think are that big a deal, and you do then to see them in court later on after they've bought your house and they're suing you because you never told 'em about whatever. So it's better to err on the side of caution than to find yourself in trouble down the road, and we get it. There are things that you don't know about. There's stuff that your neighbors are doing that you may not be aware of, and all kinds of things that we've seen. The important thing is for you to be able to give an accurate, fair, honest description of your home to a potential buyer, which will save you headaches down the road later. I'm Brendan Moran with Five Star Real Estate and let’s work together.