California Seller Disclosure Obligations: TDS, NHD & Beyond

What you're legally required to tell a buyer, and when — plus what you're exposed to if something gets left out.

California puts most of the legal disclosure burden in a home sale on the seller, not the buyer or either agent. This guide is the seller’s-eye view: what you’re on the hook for, when it’s due, and what happens if something is wrong or missing. If you’re reading these forms as a buyer instead, see our companion guides to the Transfer Disclosure Statement and the Natural Hazard Disclosure.

The Transfer Disclosure Statement (TDS)

Under Civil Code §§ 1102–1102.19, most sellers of one-to-four-unit residential property must complete a TDS in their own words, covering known defects in the property’s major systems and any other material facts about its condition you’re aware of. It has to come from you personally, not your agent — an agent can help format it, but the statements themselves are your own sworn account. There’s no obligation to disclose something you genuinely don’t know and have no reason to suspect; the exposure is around what you did know and left out, or should reasonably have known given your own experience living in the home.

The Natural Hazard Disclosure (NHD)

Separately, Civil Code §§ 1103–1103.14 require you to disclose whether the property falls inside any of six government-mapped hazard zones — flood, dam-failure flooding, fire severity, wildland fire responsibility area, earthquake fault, and seismic hazard. Unlike the TDS, this isn’t your personal knowledge; it’s a factual lookup against public maps, which is why most sellers order it from a licensed hazard disclosure provider rather than complete it themselves.

Beyond TDS and NHD

The TDS and NHD get most of the attention, but California layers on several more disclosure duties that are easy for a seller to overlook, especially without an agent prompting for each one:

• Mello-Roos / special tax notice.If the property sits in a Community Facilities District, Civil Code § 1102.6b requires you to make a good-faith effort to obtain a Notice of Special Tax from the district and deliver it to the buyer before closing, disclosing the current and maximum annual tax. This is also typically bundled into the hazard-disclosure report.
• Lead-based paint disclosure.For any home built before 1978, federal law (the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act) requires you to disclose any known lead-based paint or hazards, provide the EPA pamphlet “Protect Your Family From Lead In Your Home,” and give the buyer a 10-day window to test for lead before the contract becomes binding (unless they waive it in writing). This is a federal requirement independent of anything in the Civil Code, and it applies regardless of whether you have an agent.
• Death in the home.Civil Code § 1710.2 requires disclosing a death on the property, and its manner, only if it occurred within the 3 years before the buyer’s offer. Beyond that 3-year window, you’re not required to volunteer it — but the statute doesn’t protect a direct lie if a buyer asks you outright. The manner of a death from HIV/AIDS specifically is exempt from disclosure at any time.
• Megan’s Law database notice.Purchase contracts for residential property are required to include a standard notice, under Penal Code § 290.46, that a public sex-offender database exists and where to find it. Neither you nor your broker is required to search that database yourself — the obligation is to include the notice, not to investigate.
• Smoke detector and water heater compliance. Under Civil Code § 1102.19 and Health & Safety Code § 19211, you must give the buyer a written statement that the home has operable smoke detectors as required by law, and that its water heater is braced, anchored, or strapped in place. This is often folded into the TDS or another transaction document rather than sent as a standalone form, but the underlying certification still has to be made.

How this differs from what a buyer sees

Our buyer-facing guides to the TDS and NHD are about reading and interpreting what lands in your inbox — what the form means, what it doesn’t cover, and what to do if it arrives late. As the seller, your relationship to the same paperwork is the opposite: the forms exist because the law puts the burden of completing and delivering them on you, and the legal exposure for getting them wrong or leaving something out is yours, not the buyer’s. A buyer who misreads a disclosure mainly risks buying a property with a problem they should have caught; a seller who fills one out carelessly, or skips one of the “beyond” disclosures above, risks being sued for it well after the sale has closed.

What you’re exposed to for getting it wrong

Under Civil Code § 1102.13, a seller who willfully or negligently fails to meet a TDS disclosure duty is liable to the buyer for their actual damages. The sale itself isn’t automatically undone by a disclosure mistake — the statute is explicit that a transfer isn’t invalidated solely because a disclosure requirement wasn’t met — but you can still be sued afterward for the buyer’s provable losses, and the burden of proving what you knew (or should have known) at the time falls on the facts, not on good intentions. The federal lead-paint disclosure carries its own separate exposure, including potential civil penalties and treble damages in a private lawsuit, independent of anything under the Civil Code.

In practice, the sellers who run into trouble aren’t the ones who disclosed something ugly — buyers generally accept a well-documented, honest problem — it’s the ones who left something out, whether by omission, by assuming it didn’t count, or by rushing the forms. If you’re genuinely unsure whether something needs to be on a disclosure, that’s exactly the kind of question worth a few minutes with a real estate attorney before you sign, not after a buyer finds out later.

Keeping yourself covered

A few habits go a long way toward reducing your exposure. Fill out the TDS yourself, in writing, rather than letting anyone else guess at your knowledge on your behalf. If something changes between when you sign the TDS and closing — a new leak, a system that fails, anything material — update the disclosure and get it to the buyer again rather than assuming it’s covered by the original version. Order your NHD and Mello-Roos reports from a licensed provider instead of trying to look up hazard-zone maps yourself, since the report itself becomes the record of what you disclosed and when. And keep copies of everything you deliver, with proof of when the buyer received it — if a dispute ever surfaces after closing, that paper trail is what your position rests on.

This is educational guidance, not legal advice. Consult a California real estate attorney for legal questions specific to your transaction.