The Evans Law Firm

The law of the state of New York requires a seller of a residence to provide the buyer with a disclosure statement. ( see http://www.dos.state.ny.us/lcns/pdfs/propcond.pdf ) If the statement isn’t given, the purchase price is automatically decreased by $500.00. So far, I’ve never seen a deal like that go through. The disclosure statement is almost always used.

The benefit in filling out the form probably protects the real estate brokers more than the buyer, because a lot of sellers just circle the word "unknown." That lets the broker off the hook from being responsible to the buyer for misrepresentation. However the typical contract for sale states that the buyer can get a professional home inspection engineer to do a detailed inspection. If there are substantial defects that are not previously disclosed, the buyer can back out of the deal. If the disclosure statement states that the roof is over 20 years old, and the home inspector reports that the roof will need replacing, the buyer is held in because the disclosure statement reported it. The sense is that you are better off presenting the shortfalls to protect yourself from a retreating buyer.

The danger is that there may be some extra-ordinary defect that you just want to ignore. Who can you talk to? Your lawyer must maintain confidentiality. The broker does not have such strict rules. There should be some discussion about what you say and don’t say and how you say it. Filling out the disclosure statement isn’t always a routine thing. You should be very concerned about this new development in residential real estate sales. The old "as is" and "buyer beware" contracts are fast disappearing.