What’s in your attic?

For most residential real estate transactions, the Real Estate Seller Disclosure Law (RESDL) requires that the property seller fill out a disclosure form. The law and regulations set out a mandatory form and PAR has historically produced a form that exceeds these mandatory minimums.

But no matter how comprehensive the disclosure form gets (the PAR form is up to nine pages with some content and format changes made in 2012), it seems like there’s always something that slips through the cracks – not because consumers or agents are trying to cheat the system but because they don’t think about it when filling out the form.

It was recently pointed out to PAR that while the disclosure form asks direct questions about basements and crawl spaces (presumably because sellers at one time needed to be reminded that these areas are also subject to disclosure), the form doesn’t similarly point sellers toward potential disclosure issues in their attics. Though it’s easy to argue that a property owner should understand that a known problem in the attic needs to be disclosed just like a known problem anywhere else in the property, there may also be value to tweaking certain questions to ensure that sellers are consciously aware of the issue when filling out their disclosure forms.

On June 29, the PA House of Representatives adopted House Resolution 399, sponsored by Rep. Bill Kortz (D-Allegheny), which requests that the State Real Estate Commission add “accessible attics” as one of the “areas where conditions must be disclosed by property sellers….”  To be clear, this resolution doesn’t make a change to the existing form, nor require any specific change to the existing form – it simply functions as a formal request that the commission consider making adjustments to more clearly show that attic-related conditions should be disclosed by sellers.

While this resolution may result in changes to the text of existing disclosure forms, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t make any substantive change to the law. If sellers today are aware that their attics have a water leak, serious mold growth, fire damage, structural concerns, etc., those are potential defects with the property that already have to be disclosed. The suggested changes would simply remind sellers of their existing responsibilities.

Similarly, the law currently says that sellers only have to disclose conditions they’re aware of and that they don’t have to inspect the property to find any defects.  So if sellers haven’t been up there recently (it’s been about 8-9 years since I’ve squeezed through my own access panel), this doesn’t require that they climb a ladder and crawl around to see if anything’s wrong.  It’s just a reminder to disclose what you know.

PAR staff was aware of this proposal and consulted with Rep. Kortz before the Resolution was introduced. The Standard Forms Oversight Committee will be asked to review the issue at PAR’s Fall Business Meetings and consider making a recommendation for tweaking the existing PAR disclosure form and of course we’ll follow the issue with the Commission as well.