How to read a San Francisco disclosures packet
How to do a first pass read of a San Francisco disclosures packet
In San Francisco pretty much every home listed for sale has a complete disclosures packet. Most are statutory disclosures required by the state and city. Some are additional inspections and very important documents to read.
If you’re interested in a home it’s customary to request a copy of the disclosures to learn more about it in case you want to write an offer.
However, these documents are hundreds of pages of long will take you forever to go through them for every home you have a passing interest in
So here’s how to quickly read them as a first pass (feel free to re-read every page for homes you actually want to buy).
This is the order in which I read them:
San Francisco seller's disclosure. The questionnaire where the seller has to fess up about anything unusual about the home. Pay special attention to the free text area and addendums. Also read the California version of this which will also be included and will be slightly duplicative (called the TDS)
Home inspection. Most sellers include an inspection of the home. Pay special attention to the foundation (brick no bueno!!!), electrical (romex=good, knob and tube=bad), roof (under 20 years good). Look for signs of moisture and resultant damage
Structural pest inspection. This is mostly about moisture damage to homes and provides an estimate to fix it. If the estimate is under $10K that’s usually pretty good. It can be way more than that however! Also sometimes they don’t provide an estimate for the major issues so good to read the whole thing b/c $10K could actually be $250K
AVID - the listing agents' visual inspections.
Natural Hazards report. Quick scan to see if it’s in an earthquake liquifcation zone, flood zone, landslide zone
3R report. List of permits from the city and official record if it’s a single family, condo, multifamily
Square footage disclosure. Before you get too excited about running comps make sure there is no funny business going on in the measurements!!
Underground storage tank disclosure: Make sure there isn’t one!
This may seem like a lot, but you probably can take a quick scan of this in 15-30 min. If it’s one your are really interested in, then spend a lot more time on it and review the whole pack thoroughly. If it’s one you end up not really liking, you got a little bit smarter about reviewing disclosures and on to the next one!