What Disclosures Are Required When Selling a House?

What disclosures are required when selling a house? A straight answer, plus the questions nobody asks until it's too late

The first time I sold a property, I genuinely thought "disclosure" meant ticking a box about a leaky tap. I found the actual paperwork three days before completion, read it properly, and realised I'd been sitting on two facts any buyer would have wanted to know. Nothing catastrophic happened. But I spent the following week imagining how differently it could have gone, and I've been obsessive about this document ever since.

So here's the short version before we get into the weeds: when you sell a house, you're legally required to tell the buyer about material defects and facts you know about that could affect their decision or the value of the property. What exactly counts as "material," and how formal that disclosure needs to be, depends enormously on where you live. There is no single global form. Anyone telling you otherwise has never sold property in two different jurisdictions.

What do you legally have to disclose when selling a house in the UK?

This is the question I get most often from friends who own property in Britain, and the honest answer surprises people: there is no American-style seller's disclosure statement in England and Wales. The system runs on a different logic entirely.

Instead of one consolidated document, you complete a property information form, commonly called the TA6. It's a lengthy questionnaire — dozens of questions covering boundaries, disputes, alterations, utilities, drainage, parking, and whether you've had any problems with neighbours. Alongside it sits the fixtures and fittings form (TA10), and for leasehold properties, a separate pack of management information.

The catch with the UK system

Here's the thing that trips people up: the TA6 is filled in by you, the seller, and its accuracy is your responsibility. If you answer "no disputes" when you've had two letters from the council about your extension, you haven't just been sloppy. You've potentially committed misrepresentation.

And the buyer's solicitor will check. In my experience, they always check. A conveyancer I worked with once pulled a planning enforcement notice off the local council register that the seller had "forgotten" about. The sale didn't collapse, but the price was renegotiated down by a figure that made the seller visibly wince.

In Scotland, the equivalent is the Property Questionnaire, plus the Home Report, which is mandatory for most residential sales and includes a survey, an energy report, and a valuation. Scotland actually gives buyers more upfront information than England does. Worth knowing if you're comparing.

What about the UK's "caveat emptor" principle?

Historically, England and Wales operated on caveat emptor — buyer beware. The buyer was expected to investigate. That's still largely true for physical condition: if you don't ask, the buyer may never find out about a damp patch in the spare room.

But the moment you answer a direct question on the TA6, you're on the hook for accuracy. And crucially, you must not actively conceal known defects in a way that amounts to deceit. There's a real line between "I didn't volunteer it" and "I lied about it," and it's the second one that ends up in court.

What are most seller property disclosures required for?

Let's get the purpose straight, because misunderstanding it leads to bad decisions.

Disclosures exist to shift information from the party who has it to the party who needs it, before money changes hands. That's the entire point. A house is one of the few purchases where the seller knows things the buyer can't reasonably discover — what the roof does in a storm, whether the basement floods, whether the neighbour plays drums at 11pm.

There's a second function people miss: they protect the seller too. A properly completed disclosure, signed and dated, is your evidence that you told the truth at the time. I've seen this matter in a dispute where a buyer claimed they'd never been told about a shared drainage arrangement. The seller had documented it, in writing, on the disclosure form. Case closed before it started.

The categories that actually matter

Most disclosure regimes, across jurisdictions, cluster around the same buckets:

• Health and safety hazards — asbestos, radon, mould, lead paint, carbon monoxide risks
• Physical defects — structural movement, roof condition, damp, faulty wiring, plumbing problems you know about
• Environmental and legal issues — flooding history, contaminated land, easements, restrictive covenants, boundary disputes
• Permits and alterations — work done without permission, unapproved extensions, anything that might not comply with building regulations
• Financial and title matters — outstanding liens, bankruptcy, pending litigation, shared maintenance obligations
• Circumstances some buyers care about deeply — deaths on the property, known paranormal claims in some US states, proximity to registered sex offenders

That last category varies wildly. Some US states require disclosure of a death on the property within a certain timeframe; others explicitly don't. California famously has its own rules about deaths within three years. It's genuinely a patchwork.

A mistake I made

I once sold a flat and left off the fact that the building's communal boiler had failed twice in eighteen months. I didn't think it was "material" because it was communal, not mine. The buyer's surveyor flagged it, and I had to explain myself in a phone call that lasted twenty awkward minutes.

The lesson: if you're wondering whether to disclose it, disclose it. The downside of over-disclosing is close to zero. The downside of under-disclosing can be enormous.

What are the three most important documents in any sale of property?

Different jurisdictions, different names — but the same three functions appear almost everywhere.

Document	What it does	Where it appears
Seller's property disclosure statement	Lists known defects, repairs, hazards, and history	Most US states (names vary: TDS in California, SPDS in Texas)
Property information questionnaire	Answers standardized questions on boundaries, disputes, utilities	England and Wales (TA6), Scotland (Property Questionnaire)
Title deed / title report	Confirms who actually owns the property and what encumbers it	Everywhere — this one is non-negotiable

The title document is the one people underestimate. It's not about the house's condition; it's about whether the seller can legally sell it at all, and what restrictions travel with it. A restrictive covenant buried in a 1920s deed can stop you running a business from your home or extending the kitchen. Buyers who skip this step discover the problem years later, usually when they try to sell.

Lead-based paint: the one US federal requirement

If you're selling a home in the United States built before 1978, federal law requires you to give the buyer a specific lead-based paint disclosure and a copy of an EPA-approved pamphlet. You must also give them a ten-day window to test for lead, unless both parties agree in writing to waive it.

This applies regardless of which state you're in. It's the closest thing the US has to a universal disclosure rule.

The mortgage angle nobody mentions

Disclosures affect lending, not just the buyer-seller relationship. If a lender discovers an undisclosed structural problem or an unpermitted addition, they can refuse to fund the mortgage — which kills the sale. I've watched a deal collapse at this exact stage, three days before exchange, because the survey flagged a rear extension with no building regulations sign-off.

Which disclosure must be given to the buyer?

If you want the single most important one: the written seller's disclosure form, completed accurately and signed before the buyer's offer is finalized.

The word "written" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Verbal disclosure is nearly worthless in a dispute, because you can't prove what was said. A signed document with a date on it is evidence.

Timing matters too, and this is where people get it wrong. Disclosure should happen before the buyer commits, not after. In practice, in the US, that means the disclosure statement accompanies the offer or arrives within a short window afterward, depending on state rules. In the UK, the TA6 typically goes out with the draft contract, once a sale is agreed but before exchange.

Can you sell "as is" and skip disclosure?

No. This is a persistent myth. Selling as-is means you won't fix defects — it does not exempt you from telling the buyer what those defects are. I've heard sellers argue otherwise, and I understand the appeal, but it doesn't hold up. An as-is sale with a fraudulent disclosure is still a fraudulent disclosure.

What happens if you don't disclose?

Three realistic outcomes, in order of likelihood:

1. The buyer discovers the issue and renegotiates the price downward. Most common by far.
2. The buyer walks away, and you've lost months and legal fees.
3. The buyer sues after completion for misrepresentation or fraud. Rarer, but the financial exposure is serious, and in some cases it can be treated as a criminal matter.

I've experienced the first. It cost me roughly 6% of the agreed price and a fortnight of stress. Not fatal, but entirely avoidable.

How do you find the disclosure when you're buying?

Ask. Directly, in writing, early. In the US, disclosure documents are often attached to the MLS listing or held by the listing agent. In the UK, your solicitor requests the TA6 pack from the seller's solicitor. If a seller is reluctant to provide something, that reluctance is itself information worth weighing.

And read it. Actually read it. Not skim, not trust your agent's summary. I've seen buyers skip a dozen pages and later find the answer to their flooding question sitting on page four of a form they'd signed off on.

Ultimately, disclosure law exists because property transactions are asymmetric — one side knows more, and the system tries, imperfectly, to level that out. It doesn't always work. Rules vary, enforcement varies more, and plenty of sellers genuinely don't know what they should be declaring. But the principle is sound: say what you know, in writing, before the buyer commits. Everything else is detail.