Under Contract...Now What?
Disclosures
There are typically various disclosures for your signatures and review which could include the following:
1. Closing Instructions: this allows you to acknowledge that the title company will be closing documents for this home purchase. This fee is for the real estate fee. This is the same fee we discussed while reviewing your offer, per the Closing Costs section of the Contract…nothing new! This will reflect on final settlement statements at closing.
2. Square Footage Disclosure: this is more for marketing purposes as they are acknowledging that the estimated sq ft was pulled, *most likely*, from county records and is for marketing versus verification purposes.
3. Seller’s Property Disclosure: if this document was completed by the seller, they’ll send it over to us. It reviews the information the seller knows about the property. They are usually more ‘lightly’ filled out – which is another great reason why an inspection is a part of the real estate process as the inspection shares the most about the home than this disclosure. At times, a seller may not have this. If they don’t you’ll receive a Source of Water (otherwise already in Seller’s Property Disclosure).
4. Source of Water: sometimes they’ll submit a separate source of water so you know which water company services the home.
5. Lead Based Paint: if your home is build before 1979, there may be a lead based paint…if not, no worries 🙂 If you do receive this, please be sure to review this document and sign at your earliest convenience. There is a Buyer section on this document. It will ask you if you would like to complete a lead based paint test or not. You can do either one. A lead based paint test is typically completed during inspection and costs $300-500. In our experience, most people select the ‘waive lead inspection’ option on this form, though if you are doing some major renovations in the future and ‘waive’ your right now, let’s talk about a future test.
Again, Gina will send these over to you once we receive them from the seller! As always, let us know what questions you have.