[WSBARP] HB 1951 Seller Disclosure Statement

[Kary Krismer]

I sent this out earlier today to the Google RP group, but forgot this group:

Washington Realtors put out a "Call to Action" on this bill, which 
requires sellers to answer yes/no to Form 17 questions they don't know.  
A Call to Action requests brokers contact their legislators.  I'm taking 
that as meaning that the bill is getting some traction.

I would suggest real estate attorneys and their regular clients do the 
same.  You can find your representatives in the House here: 
https://app.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/

[RANT] As an aside, I'm getting rather discouraged if not depressed by 
the quality of legislation that has been coming out of Olympia for the 
past 15 years or so.  My attention was first drawn to that with the 
first version of the Distressed Property Law, but after that I noticed 
piece after piece of legislation that was not necessarily a bad idea, 
but at a minimum just poorly drafted.  It's like inertia just carries 
these things through without all the fixes necessary.

But then there's this recent work on the Seller Disclosure statement.  
Last year they amended the thing twice, with neither bill recognizing 
the other.  One change was totally unnecessary (yet another notification 
the buyer gets that racial covenants are not enforceable) and one of 
questionable necessity but clearly poorly thought out (Internet provider 
where no service available and no service currently connected get the 
exact same answer). And now this year, where rather than deal 
intelligently with the problems Form 17 has had for years they introduce 
legislation that can only be described as ignorant.[/RANT]

Anyway, please consider doing what you can to let your legislators know 
about what a bad idea this legislation is.

-- 

Kary L. Krismer
206 723-2148