Dallas Real Estate: An Informed Buyer is the Best Buyer
Yes, even in this market. In an earlier post today about settlement cracks, I posed the question of disclosing even minor crack repair on the Seller’s Disclosure should you sell your home. I am told that most of the lawsuits in Dallas real estate transactions today center on seller’s disclosure. So I am indebted to a law-practicing (to borrow Tim Roger’s phrase, thanks Tim) reader quite familiar with disclosure issues:
“I managed a real estate agents and brokers errors and omissions claims unit for a major commercial insurance company for several years, and am very familiar with suit against agents, brokers, and sellers. While I agree in theory that normal wear and tear shouldn’t have to be disclosed, what I have found in reality is that if a buyer is so picky that they are going to pass on buying your house because you disclosed normal wear and tear repairs, you are better off finding a different buyer. There are a couple of things at work here. One, buyers that are looking for problems with a house are going to find problems with a house. Two, there aren’t a lot of attorneys out there that are truly familiar with what an agent’s duties are, so it’s not hard for disgruntled buyers to find an attorney to file suit, and when they do, they name every party that had a hand in the transaction. Three (perhaps it’s the Murphy’s law of disclosures), the one thing a seller doesn’t disclose is going to be the one thing that becomes a problem down the road, and results in a claim. Once a “non-disclosure” comes to light, that claim becomes more expensive. Sellers usually don’t have any kind of insurance coverage for claims by buyers, so the real estate agents and brokers become the targets.
When I talk to agents and brokers, the question always comes up: what if my seller made a repair and doesn’t want to disclose it? My answer is that if the question comes up, the seller is better off disclosing. After buying houses myself, and seeing how many ways a transaction can go wrong, I think an informed buyer is the best buyer.”
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Not sure who the law-practicing reader is but he hit a pet peeve of mine smack dab on the head.
“There aren’t a lot of attorneys out there that are truly familiar with what an agent’s duties are,”
Sir (or Madam), I couldn’t agree more. And I’ll elaborate even further by saying, there aren’t a lot of real estate agents and real estate managers that know what their duties are, either.
Expert advice for FREE is a good thing…
Inspect EVERYTHING before you buy and disclose everything that was inspected. And everything that was a major repair under your watch. If it was repaired before you moved in and you don’t have any info, I say you can leave it off. I think buyers are more comfortable with someone who shows that they took good care of their home and made all repairs that were needed. Especially with older homes. My house is 78 years old. There’s always something to fix.
Inspectors today certainly seem to be working in CYA mode. We sold our 50 year old house even though the inspection noted several “potential” problems. My favorite was the potential for water under the p&b foundation because of the grade of the lot. There was no evidence of water ever being in the crawl space (because there never had been). When my husband read the inspection he said he would have torn the house down based on the report.
“Two, there aren’t a lot of attorneys out there that are truly familiar with what an agent’s duties are…”
This is truly not an informed or reasoned statement. Maybe if the realtors quit trying to practice law it wouldn’t seem so difficult to them. This area of law is not particularly complicated. I’ve seen more realtors misquote law and fail to follow than I can count. If realtors don’t want to be involved in the lawsuit than they need to be familiar with what there duties are.
in dallas @: When we bought in 1995 Chase wouldn’t provide a mortgage until we or the seller installed a $4k french drain due to the grade of our lot and the house was built in 1963 with no water issues. The seller had to pay for the drain installation since we were not going to buy otherwise. We had the propery inspected and paid for the inspection which Chase used against us and the seller to demand the French drain and I think it has caused foundation issues since because the dirt is too dry and now requires a sprinkler system. Home ownership is NOT for sissies!
@bmk I agree with you. But I don’t think most Realtors are intentionally trying to practice law. They simply don’t know how to admit they don’t know something about a contract or clause so they will just make something up. They would rather answer their client’s question with BS than not answer them and risk looking uninformed. Then they get sued. As they should.
Disclose everything is what I tell my clients for sure. The further away I can stay from lawyers the happier I will be. Definitely agree that if someone will not choose your house because of normal wear and tear, they are definitely a buyer to avoid and work with if you can. North Texas Realtors