plowhog
Elite Member
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2015
- Messages
- 3,394
- Location
- North. NV, North. CA
- Tractor
- Massey 1710 / 1758, Ventrac 4500Y / TD9
Yes and no. In CA the Seller is required to do mandatory disclosures about the property. The recourse if they do not disclose is to sue-- but how many people can afford that after spending their $$ to buy a home? Not to mention most "grow" businesses operate on cash. So I presume the seller is long gone with few assets to chase. Adding a fruitless lawsuit on top is just added misery.there should be a legal obligation by the seller to divulge the issues with the property. Afterall isn't this what escrow is for? To check the title
Title insurance companies only find recorded items such as easements. They have no way to find unrecorded items. (I just discovered an unrecorded easement on my property dating back to the 1940's.) They typically don't look into the history of permitting. In commercial real estate in CA you can purchase "upgraded" title insurance to insure against unpermitted work-- I can't recall if that applies to residential or not.
I predict an explosion of these types of situations where sellers get burned. The recent "national settlement" that decoupled seller and buyer commissions will result in a lot of buyers bypassing the "greedy real estate agent." In virtually every real estate thread here on TBN the theme is that real estate agents are fatcats who don't earn their money. So it will be natural for buyers to be glad to cut them out. The buyers (in many cases) won't know the mistakes they are making, the questions they are not asking, the inspections they are not doing, or the contract language they should have added, until after escrow closes. Then they will find themselves behind the 8-ball.
If I owned a real estate attorney firm I'd be hiring as many lawyers as I could find right now.