Rental Property Investor · Sedona, AZ · Member since 2018 · 260 posts · 141 votes
I'm in the process of studying for my California real estate license. Not for the purpose of becoming an agent (I'm a software engineer by trade), but rather for the purpose of learning more about the real estate industry, with a view to perhaps starting a business tailored to the industry.
I'm currently learning about conveyances and disclosures, specifically the Natural Hazards Disclosure Statement. It strikes me that discovering whether a property is in a natural hazard zone might be a task which is both:
a) time-consuming to do manually for each of the agent's listed properties, and
b) super-important for the agent to perform correctly, from a liability standpoint.
I'd love the opinions of any real estate agents in this forum on this topic:
1) How much time do you spend on these disclosures for a single transaction, in terms of both due diligence/research/looking up records and also filling out the required disclosure forms?
2) How many transactions do you do in a given month?
3) Are there any software tools which make this task easier, and have you used them before, and how easy/hard were they to use?
EDIT- the reason I was led to believe these disclosures are painful from an agent's perspective is because of the following excerpt in my CA licensee study materials:
Seems to me that there's significant risk on both sides:
1) If the agent marks "NO" (as in the property does not fall within any of the listed hazard zones) when a "YES" would be more appropriate, the transaction could be cancelled by the buyer.
2) If the agent marks "YES" when a "NO" may be more appropriate, the buyer may be needlessly scared away and the deal could collapse for no reason.
Nope, there are companies or services that do it for you. You only pick up the phone and order. You don't do the research. These companies have been in business for a while and insure the information. Check out myNHD.com or PropertyID.com
I'm in the process of studying for my California real estate license. Not for the purpose of becoming an agent (I'm a software engineer by trade), but rather for the purpose of learning more about the real estate industry, with a view to perhaps starting a business tailored to the industry.
I'm currently learning about conveyances and disclosures, specifically the Natural Hazards Disclosure Statement. It strikes me that discovering whether a property is in a natural hazard zone might be a task which is both:
a) time-consuming to do manually for each of the agent's listed properties, and
b) super-important for the agent to perform correctly, from a liability standpoint.
I'd love the opinions of any real estate agents in this forum on this topic:
1) How much time do you spend on these disclosures for a single transaction, in terms of both due diligence/research/looking up records and also filling out the required disclosure forms?
2) How many transactions do you do in a given month?
3) Are there any software tools which make this task easier, and have you used them before, and how easy/hard were they to use?
Hey Richie! I am a Real Estate Agent in the Inland Empire, and you have nothing to worry about with regards to Natural Hazard Disclosures (NHD's), or really any other type of seller/property disclosure.
Here is a timeline of my latest NHD report.
1) I am representing the seller, and I listed her home on the MLS at 10:00am in the morning.
2 Went to myNHD.com, typed in the address, ordered an NHD report in less than a minute.
3) Three hours later I had it emailed to my account, and I sent the report out for signatures. That is it. And even better, they take payment through the escrow account at closing, so nobody even has to pay for the report ($60) upfront!
Let me know if you have any other questions from your real estate class!
@James Gates the timeline you gave is helpful. Also, I wasn't aware that an agent could wait til closing to pay for the report, that's a surprise. All the above is useful, thanks for your input!