If you have to ask, it’s fraud.
There really is no such thing as a white lie when it comes to Real Estate. Bending the truth, shading the facts or putting a different twist on the plain truth puts you at risk. Deliberately withholding information is also fraud.
- If you know that your hours at work are going to be cut next month, yet you fail to let your loan officer know about it, you just placed yourself in legal jeopardy.
- If you owe money to an individual or a business that does not show up on your credit report, you must disclose it.
- Court ordered child support payments often do not show up on a credit report and they must be disclosed.
- If you are about to retire and you fail to mention it, you lied by ommission.
The definition of fraud according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is:Â
1 a : DECEIT, TRICKERY; specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right b : an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : TRICK
2 a : a person who is not what he or she pretends to be : IMPOSTOR; also : one who defrauds : CHEAT b : one that is not what it seems or is represented to be
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The same thing applies to sellers of homes. Anything that a seller knows about the property that affects it’s value, needs to be relayed to the real estate agent for disclosure. Yes this means that the water that only accumulates when it rains really hard every four or five years. If something costs money to repair and it has not been repaired, it has an affect on the value. Just because the appraiser doesn’t see it because it is the dry season, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You know about it and it does exist.
Truth only comes in one color with Real Estate. Anything other than white is fraud.
