New Eviction Disclosure Legislation Headed to the Board

BeyondChron gets it wrong (gasp!) again! Today's little confusion stems from Bevan Dufty's amendment to Daly's eviction disclosure legislation which was smartly vetoed by the mayor then the veto was upheld by four Supervisor votes.

The original legislation would have basically required that we as real estate agents beat you over the head with a vacancy disclosure before you even walk in the door of an open house. That's akin to beating you over the head with a termite report or a 3R (building permit history) report. It's not what open houses are for. They are for you to see if you are interested in a property. If you like the property, you would request additional information, such as inspection and other pertinent disclosures.

Now Supervisor Dufty is looking for an amendment that would just clarify the job that we already do as agents.

I'm a full-time Realtor®. I do my job and follow the law. The law currently states that I must disclose how a property (or individual unit) became vacant, if it is vacant, during the sale of the property.

Just like everything else that we as agents must disclose, vacancy is an important disclosure. For those who haven't been through the purchase process, a buyer is likely to get all of the disclosures for their transaction BEFORE they write their offer to purchase a property. Any disclosures that they DO NOT receive before writing their offer create a new contingency. If you are a buyer and you have a contingency, that means you have a way to get out of contract.

For this purpose, we as agents disclose as much information as we can get from the seller prior to offers being written. If we provide new information to a buyer after they are in contract (including, as the author of this article writes, when you are signing your loan documents), that buyer typically has a NEW contingency and an opportunity to cancel the contract.

Do agents or sellers withhold disclosures till the last minute in hopes that a buyer won't back out? Perhaps. Is this a common occurrence? Definitely not. If we lose a deal at the last minute because the buyer is sensitive to a previous eviction, we don't get paid. If the seller loses a buyer because they get the disclosure at the last minute, the property is likely to become damaged goods. There has NEVER been a benefit in this town to withholding disclosures, and there's not likely to be any reason for that to happen in this more balanced market.

This is nothing more than a not-so-covert ploy to circumvent a state-mandated law (the ellis act) that the Supervisors have not found any other way to circumvent. This is not about disclosure. This is not about helping tenants. It's about burdening an already difficult process and hurting everyone in an effort to teach a couple of people a lesson.

In the article, Casey Mills writes, "As anyone familiar with the housing market knows, waiting until this point [when your offer is accepted] to pull out of a sale when merely getting an offer accepted by a realtor is difficult would be a tough thing to do."

First of all, some copy editing is in order. Second, Realtors® don't accept offers, SELLERS accept offers. And third, this is how real estate works all over the world. You like a house, you write an offer, you review any disclosures, you do your diligence, if you like what you see at that point, you proceed and close escrow.

Only because we as professional agents in San Francisco, looking out for both the buyer's and seller's best interests, started putting immense disclosure packages together for people to review PRIOR to writing offers, do people think this is the way it has always been. For example, one of my current listings has a 183 page disclosure package and one of my last listings had a 216 page disclosure package.

As a buyer, you have a right to the information, and if you don't like what you see, you have a right to get out of the transaction. That's real estate. Here in San Francisco and all over the country. Why pretend this is any different or make it any harder than it already is?

Could it be that Chris Daly needs to find a way to look good in the eyes of his flagging consituency?