Oregon Seller Property Disclosure: What You Actually Have to Tell Buyers

I'm Holli Cobb, a REALTOR® with REAL Broker in Redmond, and this is one of the first pieces of paperwork I walk every seller through, usually before we ever talk about price. Oregon law requires a written property disclosure statement on most residential sales, a form where you tell the buyer what you actually know about the condition of the house: the roof, the foundation, the systems, past repairs, and anything that's gone wrong that you're aware of. It's not a sales document and it's not optional paperwork to skim and sign. It's your statement, in writing, of what you know.

Some sales are exempt, a transfer between family members or through probate works differently than a typical resale, for example. I'm not your attorney, and for anything specific to your situation, confirming the exact exemptions and requirements with a real estate attorney is the right call, not a guess from me or from the internet. For a standard sale of an owner-occupied home, though, plan on filling this out, and plan on it mattering.

The duty is to disclose what you actually know, not to go hire an inspector and find out things you don't. If you've lived in the house and you know the roof leaked in 2019 and you had it patched, that's known, and it goes on the form. If you genuinely don't know whether there's a slow leak under a slab you've never had reason to look under, you're not expected to guess or to investigate just to fill out a form more thoroughly than the law requires.

Where sellers get into trouble isn't usually the big obvious items, it's the smaller thing they talked themselves out of mentioning: a water stain that came back after the first fix, a window that's stuck, a crack that's been there for years and seems stable. If you know it, write it down. It's a much smaller conversation now than it is after a buyer finds it themselves.

Past repairs are their own category worth thinking through. If you fixed something, the disclosure form usually asks you to say so, not just confirm the house is fine now. A roof that was replaced after a leak is a different fact than a roof that's simply newer, and a buyer is entitled to know which one they're getting, even if the current condition looks identical from the ground. The same goes for anything you worked around rather than actually fixed, a space heater that covers for a cold back bedroom, a dehumidifier that runs in a crawlspace year-round. Those are known conditions too, and they belong on the form even though nothing is technically broken right now.

This is the misconception I hear the most: that listing a home 'as is' means you don't have to disclose anything, since you're telling the buyer upfront not to expect repairs. 'As is' changes whether you're agreeing to fix things the buyer finds, it does not change your duty to tell them what you already know is wrong. You can sell a home as is and still be required to disclose a known issue with the furnace. Those are two separate questions, and conflating them is how an otherwise straightforward as-is sale turns into a dispute later.

I see this most often with an inherited house or a long-held rental, where the seller never lived in it day to day and is tempted to treat 'as is' as a reason to say less rather than more. The logic usually sounds like 'the buyer knows it's as is, so they're not expecting anything,' but that's a statement about repairs, not about honesty. A buyer walking into an as-is sale still deserves an accurate answer on the disclosure form, drawn from whatever you actually know, including what a property manager or tenant told you, not just what you personally witnessed.

If a buyer later discovers a problem you actually knew about and didn't disclose, that can turn into a real claim against you after closing, not just an awkward phone call. The form exists to protect both sides: a buyer who knows what they're getting, and a seller who put it in writing and isn't on the hook for something they genuinely didn't know. When you're not sure whether something is worth mentioning, the safer move is almost always to mention it, with whatever explanation you have, rather than leave it off and hope it doesn't come up.

I walk through this form with every seller line by line before it goes anywhere, so nothing gets left off by accident and nothing gets over-disclosed out of nerves either. It's part of how I sell your home, right alongside figuring out what's actually worth fixing before you list and what isn't.

The disclosure conversation is one of the first things I walk through with a seller, before pricing and before the yard sign. If you're getting close to listing, reach out and we'll go through what you actually need to disclose, together, before anything is written down.