Expert: Jessica Bryan - 1/27/2010

Question
Hello,
I have heard that a seller has to be careful to fill out the seller's disclosure questionnaire honestly and completely, but not to give any additional information, because if you do, and you just happen to leave something out, it could come back to bite you.  

Is this "good advice" to a seller, and is this based on a principle of law, that you know of?

Yhank you  

Answer
Dear David;
I am not permitted to give legal advice but as a Realtor I advise that clients make minimal representation for just the reason you described.  Certainly one should never hide anything or provide the wrong information but sometimes providing too much information that is not required only causes worry and concern on the part of the Buyer.  For example, if a Buyer were considering two homes where one had the standard disclosure statement with all of the boxes filled in and showing that there were no problems, while in the second home the seller disclosed every repair ever made to the home, the Buyer might worry that the second home was in constant need of repair and came with lots of problems which might actually cause the Buyer to shy away from a perfectly good purchase.  In addition, anything that is disclosed must be complete and if something is mentioned in a disclosure statement without all of the information, there could be problems as well.  I can reference an example that occurred recently on a sale I heard about: the Seller had a very old home that had old electrical wiring.  He noted that the electrical had been replaced and the home had some substantial upgrades and improvements.  When the Buyer had the home inspected he found that while the improvements were made and upgrades done to some of the home, not all of the home was redone and there was electrical wiring behind the walls that was original wiring and deemed a fire hazard.  Can you imagine what might have happened if the Buyer had bought the home without finding this out before closing and if the home had caught fire due to the old wiring in the walls?  This was an example of the Seller disclosing only part of what was true and omitting an important fact.  The seller was not required to say that they had replaced the old wiring but since they had they needed to tell the full story to the Buyer.

I hope that this answer helps.

Sincerely,
Jessica Bryan