When selling your Mayfield home, the Ohio Revised Code requires you or your realtor to fill out and sign a Residential Property Disclosure Form. This requirement is stated in the Purpose of Disclosure Form section on the last page of the form.

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney and I don’t play one on TV. For legal advice concerning residential property disclosures please seek the advice of your real estate attorney.

As the owner, you provide "actual knowledge" on the current conditions and problems affecting physical areas of your house. This means listing down issues about the property, based on your own personal experience as its current home owner. Third-party inspection is not required to accomplish the form.

What must I disclose?

A seller needs to list down their observations on certain areas of their house for sale in Mayfield Village, Ohio:

1. Water supply

2. Sewer system

3. Roof

4. Water intrusion

5. Structural components (i.e. foundation, basement/ crawl space, floors, interior and exterior walls)

6. Wood destroying insects/termites

7. Mechanical systems

8. Presence of hazardous materials

9. Underground storage tanks

10. Floodplain/Lake Erie coastal erosion area

11. Drainage/Erosion

12. Zoning/code violations

13. Assessments

14. Homeowners' association

15. Boundary lines, encroachments, shared driveway, party walls

16. Other known material defects

Once accomplished, you or your realtor must present the signed form to your buyer before entering into a purchase agreement with them. This is implied in the last section of the form: Receipt and Acknowledgement of Potential Purchasers.

To complete the form, the seller affixes his/her signature, most importantly to acknowledge receipt of the document.

What must I keep in mind?

The form does not require home sellers to inspect or disclose offsite conditions outside their homes for sale in Mayfield Hts, Ohio.

"Offsite conditions" are those that may materially affect the value of your residential real estate property. Examples are noisy neighbors, new real estate construction in the area, a toxic waste contamination issue on a nearby property, and a highway near the owner's home, to name a few.

Based on the form, inspecting offsite conditions falls on the home buyer.

Failure to provide this form gives the buyer the option to cancel your purchase agreement through "a signed and dated document of rescission".

Cancellation of the real estate sale becomes valid when the rescission contract is delivered before ALL three of the following dates:

1) the date of closing; 2) 30 days after the Owner accepted your offer; and 3) within 3 business days following your receipt or your agent’s receipt of this form or an amendment of this form.

Must all home sellers fill out this form?

There are a few exemptions. Home acquisitions in any of the following conditions need not accomplish a Residential Property Disclosure Form:

1. Transfer to a co-owner;

2. Transfer to a co-resident of at least two years;

3. Family transaction;

4. Forced sale (e.g. eminent domain, foreclosure, bankruptcy, probate transaction);

5. Inheritance without occupancy within a year

Disclosure on homes for sale by owners in Mayfield Village, Ohio is serious business. Many first-time home sellers fall prey to incorrect interpretations of the Disclosure Form. Don’t let inexperience come between you and a successful home sale. Call me, Christine Pappas, at 216-956-7635 for more information!