Disclosures

When a person sells a home they fill out a form called a Form 17 which is a several paged document disclosure form that is suppose to transfer knowledge about the home from the seller to the buyer.  It should include things like “the plumbing backs up on a regular basis & I have to have Roto Rooter out once a year to clean out the sewer main.”  Things that a buyer definitely should have a right to know to make an educated buying decision on such a large purchase.

Recently I had a buyer make an offer on the house.  We read over the disclosure agreement & there was no “warnings” or issues disclosed in the Form 17.  However in the process of getting insurance for the home she found out that there were two water claims against the house from the insurance company.   When the seller was asked about what the water claims were for, they said that the radiant heating in the slab floor had leaked in a bedroom & that it was repaired in that bedroom only.  The second water claim was for a spicket that the galvanized pipe in the wall leaked.

My buyer then called 7 different plumbing & radiant heat companies only to be told that you can’t just do a repair in one area, that the life expectancy of the pipes were over due & that the rest of the heating could fail at any time.  My buyer felt that that the initial leak should have been disclosed on the Form 17 and wondered how the seller could have been told that it was ok to just repair one section of the radiant heating when she couldn’t find a company to say that it was ok too.  And the estimated to either replace or completely repair ranged from 30,000 – 40,000.

What do you think?  Should that have been disclosed on the Form 17?