When do I provide disclosures to the buyer?

Homepie’s contract is set up to allow a seller a certain number of days after entering into a contract with a buyer. It is based on how long the buyer’s inspection contingency period is and can be found in section 7.K. of the contract. Most often, the seller will have 7 days to provide them to the buyer.

It’s a common practice in most of California for sellers to provide buyers the required seller disclosures at the beginning of an escrow period, however, in some areas of Northern California, it is customary for sellers to provide disclosures before a buyer makes an offer. Because of this tradition, if you are working with a buyer who has a local agent, they may ask for them before even writing you an offer. At that point, it is up to the seller whether they want to do that, but it’s not required.

Unless there is a very good reason, a buyer or an agent should not have any issues writing an offer and making a deal without seeing the disclosures. Here’s why…

Unless they opt-out, a buyer will have an inspection contingency with a given number of days to review these seller disclosures and perform any non-invasive inspection of their choice. The inspection contingency is very common in almost every single real estate transaction; even cash investors use them very often. After the buyer reviews disclosures and does their inspections (provided they do this while they still have an inspection contingency in place), if they feel the property is not up to their standards, they can either negotiate repairs, request a seller credit in lieu of repairs, attempt to renegotiate the price, or back out under the inspection contingency and normally will get their deposit refunded. Or, they can just take it as-is knowing what they now know.

This is the way it’s commonly done in the majority of the state. Not only is Homepie’s contract process set up this way, but the standard agent contract provided by the California Association of Realtors is set up this way as well. The custom is merely a local preference.

It’s possible that a buyer or agent will insist, and then it’s up to you whether you want to fill them out and provide them. If you would like to provide disclosures ahead of time, there is nothing wrong with that and Homepie can help. You can sign up for our Transaction Coordinator (TC) service and your TC will help you with everything you need.