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Estate and Letting Agents : Established 1992
for the East London property buyer
Defect Disclosures
The better you understand defects and disclosures the better
prepared you are to negotiate with the seller on which defects
will be repaired and which will be reflected as a discount
from your offer.
Home surveyors focus on two kinds of defects:
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Patent defects, or those that you can see, which may
include water stains, ceiling cracks, sticky windows or
sagging floors, and
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Latent defects, or those that are not readily visible,
which could include faulty plumbing, asbestos ceilings
or dry rot.
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Defects of either type could be trivial or serious. Only
an inspection can help you decide which defects require
immediate action and which can be postponed.
When a seller or estate agent reveals to you a material fact
about the physical condition of a property, that’s called
disclosure. A material fact is any information that can affect
the price of the home or your decision to buy it at all.
This could include information about periodic flooding in
the basement or a proposed commercial structure on nearby
property. The Property Information Form which the seller is
obliged to complete contains a mandatory section covering
aspects of disclosure including problems with neighbours etc.
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