“When you accelerate you have to keep steady pressure on the accelerator. Otherwise, the truck may jump out of gear and then kick back into gear. “The entire truck will jerk forward. It’s kind of hard on the transmission when it does that.” The buyer ate it up! He bought it on the spot. He knew that most 20-year-old trucks have problems. He also figured that a seller who was so upfront about the problems wouldn’t be hiding any problems from him. My friend was selling it for 30% more than the fair price he had paid a used car dealer just a year before. He had done some work on the truck, but it was still no bargain. This same strategy works for selling a home. Most buyers are not stupid. They know if they buy an older home, it will have some problems. The more forthcoming you are about those potential problems, the more relaxed they will become about buying your house. If you see something, say something. Most states don’t compel you to discuss issues if you have no knowledge of them. Don’t run out and hire an inspector to nit-pick every little detail of your home and find problems that might not even affect property value. The problems you must report are the ones that you know about: leaky pipes, rotting wood, basement flooding—basically anything about your property that has bothered you and that you know will bother the new residents. However, you can’t be cavalier about the unknown issues. In some scenarios, turning a blind eye could get you in hot water. Depending on the state in which you’re selling your house, you could be held responsible for not discovering unknown potential problems. Educate yourself about the specific disclosures your state requires. To get an idea of what you might be up against, let’s look at the regulations in California, one of the most stringent disclosure reporting states in the nation.
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