What a clean disclosure package actually looks like

In California, before you offer on a home, the seller is legally required to give you a stack of documents about the property. In the Bay Area, that stack is often a hundred-plus pages of PDFs delivered through Disclosures.io, Glide, or a similar platform. For a first-time buyer, opening one for the first time is genuinely overwhelming.

This post is the orientation I give every new buyer I work with: what’s in a disclosure package, what each piece is for, and what the words “clean” and “concerning” actually mean when an agent uses them.

The core forms every package includes

These are the seller-side forms required by California law. You’ll see them on almost every disclosure package, in roughly this order:

• TDS — Transfer Disclosure Statement. The seller’s signed list of known issues with the property. Mandatory for most residential resales. Read it word for word.
• SPQ — Seller Property Questionnaire. Optional, but almost always included in the Bay Area. A longer, more detailed cousin to the TDS, with more open-ended prompts. Often reveals things the TDS doesn’t.
• NHD — Natural Hazard Disclosure. A third-party report showing whether the property is in a flood zone, earthquake fault zone, wildfire risk area, or similar designation. Don’t skim this one.
• AVID — Agent Visual Inspection Disclosure. What the listing agent observed walking through the property. Looks innocuous; sometimes contains the most useful sentence in the entire package.
• Preliminary Title Report. Liens, easements, recorded restrictions. Boring until it’s not. CC&Rs, HOA rules, and recorded easements live here.
• Lead-Based Paint Disclosure. Mandatory for any home built before 1978.

The third-party reports

These aren’t always included, but in the Bay Area they almost always are:

• General home inspection. A licensed inspector’s report on the major systems. The single most important document in the package after the TDS.
• Pest report (Section 1 / Section 2). Wood-destroying organisms — termites, fungus, dry rot. Section 1 is active infestation or damage; Section 2 is conditions likely to lead to Section 1.
• Roof inspection. Sometimes a separate report, sometimes folded into the general inspection.
• Sewer lateral scope. Critical in older Bay Area neighborhoods. Many homes still have original clay laterals. Replacement runs $8,000 to $25,000.
• Chimney, pool, foundation, or structural inspections. Property-specific. If you see one in the package, the seller had a reason to commission it.
• HOA package. If the home is in an HOA, this is a separate stack — CC&Rs, current budget, reserve study, recent board minutes, and any pending special assessments. The reserve study is the most important page.

What “clean” actually means

When I tell a buyer a disclosure package is clean, I don’t mean perfect. No Bay Area home built before 1990 has a perfect disclosure package. I mean three things:

• The seller’s statements are internally consistent. The TDS, SPQ, and AVID don’t contradict each other. The seller didn’t say “no water intrusion” on the TDS while the AVID notes a stained ceiling in the garage.
• The third-party reports don’t contain surprises. What the seller says and what the inspector found line up. If the seller says “no foundation issues” and the inspector flags a six-foot crack at the southwest corner, that’s a different conversation.
• The major systems are documented. Roof age and condition are reported. Sewer lateral is scoped or disclosed. Electrical panel is identified by type and capacity. The water heater age is noted.

A clean disclosure package isn’t a guarantee. It’s a baseline that lets us focus our inspection contingency on the right things instead of starting from zero.

What concerning looks like

The opposite is often more useful. Concerning packages share patterns:

• Heavy redaction. Whole paragraphs blacked out. Sometimes this is privacy (prior owner names); sometimes it’s something the seller didn’t want highlighted. We ask why.
• Missing reports the seller “didn’t get.” No sewer lateral scope on a 1958 home is a missing report, not a non-issue.
• The pest report says “see Section 1” and Section 1 is three pages long. Active infestation or significant damage will affect your loan and your timeline.
• HOA reserve study underfunded. A reserve study that shows the building is one major assessment away from a five-figure-per-unit hit is a real cost not reflected in the price.
• TDS says “no” to ten things in a row. A perfectly clean TDS on a 70-year-old home is sometimes a signal that the seller wasn’t asked to think hard about each question. Worth probing.

How I read a package

I read in this order, roughly: NHD, then TDS, then SPQ, then AVID, then the general inspection, then the pest report, then the sewer scope, then anything else. I read the title report last because I don’t want what’s in it (or not in it) coloring how I read the seller-side disclosures.

I take notes. I flag every single statement that’s either internally inconsistent or that I’d want to ask the listing agent about. By the time I sit down with you, I have a list — usually six to fifteen items — that we walk through together.

Rule 2 from the playbook. Read the disclosures. Full stop. This is where deals are won or lost. The TDS, SPQ, NHD, AVID, and inspection reports tell you what you’re actually buying.

What you should do

Read the TDS. Read the SPQ. Read the inspection report. Read the pest report. Don’t try to read the title report on your first pass — it’s a different document for a different specialist.

Take notes. Write down every question. Don’t be embarrassed by basic questions; the people who ask the basic questions buy the better home. Bring the list to me. We’ll go through it together, and I’ll tell you what’s normal, what’s concerning, and what we should investigate before we write.

If your agent doesn’t sit down with you and walk through the disclosures line by line, you have the wrong agent. This is not a checkbox. This is the job.