Hands On The Heartland
Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

Kansas City home sellers must disclose to any home buyer all material defects, conditions and facts of which the seller is aware. If a seller knows their foundation was leaking – even if they fixed the problem years ago – they need to disclose it when selling. Even if the problem was on the previous homeowner’s watch, do you think the new homeowner must disclose that fact when selling later? That’s a good question for an attorney, but  when selling common sense tells us that you had better disclose any situations of which you’re aware.

Judge Judy

I believe that 99% of homebuyers understand that a home is going to have issues over the years. What they want to know is the the problems were addressed so the problem isn’t simply passed on at closing.  Explaining the previous problem and listing what corrections were made to remedy the problem is usually all that’s needed. Taking the risk of hiding a current or previous defect is  breaking the law and very poor selling judgment if you ask me.

A good example is when children are selling a home they inherited from their parents. If the kids know the home has a mold problem in the basement they can’t put their head in the sand and sell the home without telling the buyers. Saying “it was my parents home and I didn’t know” or “I’m not disclosing anything because it wasn’t my home” just doesn’t work.  I believe that any seller of any home they have an ownership position in had better be disclosing ANY and ALL material defects, conditions and facts of which the seller is aware. If they don’t Judge Judy will probably be waiting just around the corner – and that’s if a seller is lucky enough that it’s just a small claims issue.

So understanding that sellers must disclose material defects, conditions and facts, does selling as-is also mean that a buyer can NOT do inspections on the home? That is NOT the case, assuming a  typical 10-day inspection period is written into the contract that allows the buyer to back out. Really, in most cases, “as-is” means the buyer CAN do inspections but they had better not ask for ANYTHING to be corrected by the seller. A buyer’s options after conducting inspections are essentially to either (a) to cancel  the contract within the 10-day inspection period or (b) accept the home in “as-is” condition now that they have conducted inspections and are comfortable moving forward to closing.   Of course there may be the rare as-is seller who caves in and is willing to correct an item if it’s threatening to kill a deal. But that is very unlikely because if  a seller were willing to correct inspection items they wouldn’t be selling the home as-is (knowing that a home sold as-is is likely to sell below market value).

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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