Seller Disclosures: What Unknown and a Blank Mean

The federal lead-paint attachment gives a seller two lines to initial and no third one. Line (a)(i) says known lead-based paint or hazards are present in the housing, with space to describe what is known. Line (a)(ii) says the seller has no knowledge of any. That is the entire menu on EPA Form 9600-040, the sample disclosure EPA publishes for the rule (read 29 August 2026).

So when both lines come back empty on a house built in 1961, nothing has been disclosed. Not "unknown." Nothing — and the buyer's own signature at the bottom of that page is the record of it.

State forms are wordier, and most of them do have an unknown box, which is where the confusion starts. Buyers read a state form's unknown and a federal form's blank as the same shrug. They are different documents, written under different statutes, with different exemptions and different consequences, and in the five states below they are not even the same kind of document. None of this is legal advice, and disclosure law is state law; every rule here links to the text it came from so your own file can be checked against it.

Three states ask about the house. One warns you off. One prints no form at all.

Virginia is worth reading once even if you are buying elsewhere, because it shows what a disclosure statute looks like when the legislature decides the buyer should do the work. The statutory heading is literally Required disclosures for buyer to beware. Item 1 is the owner making no representations as to the condition of the property. Item 2 is lot lines. By item 14 it is radon, by 15 defective drywall, by 16 lead pipes, and nearly all of them close on the same clause: purchasers are advised to exercise whatever due diligence a particular purchaser deems necessary. Item 9, on solar energy collection devices, does not even offer that — the owner makes no representations, and the paragraph stops. The form's last page is the useful one, because it names sections that do impose a real duty — among them pending building code or zoning violations (§ 55.1-706), a filed lis pendens (§ 55.1-706.1), prior methamphetamine manufacture (§ 55.1-708), privately owned stormwater facilities (§ 55.1-708.1), and — in a different title of the Code altogether — the validity of a septic operating permit (§ 32.1-164.1:1). Check the date on the copy you are handed, too. The Board's current form carries a 7/2026 footer, and § 55.1-703 is published in two versions, one effective until 1 January 2027 and one effective from it.

Florida's answer is scattered differently. The legislature has never prescribed a general condition form, so the disclosure page attached to a Florida contract is whatever the parties' forms provider supplies rather than a document the statute writes. What the legislature has written is two notices. Section 689.302 requires a flood disclosure at or before the time the sales contract is executed, in the exact form the statute prints: three lines, each a pair of boxes — has or has no knowledge of flooding, has or has not filed a claim, has or has not received assistance. No third option anywhere. First enacted in 2024, amended in 2025. Section 404.056(5) requires that notification appear on at least one document, form or application executed at or before the contract for sale, which is why that radon paragraph turns up in the middle of an otherwise unrelated page. The general duty to speak comes from Johnson v. Davis, 480 So. 2d 625 (Fla. 1985) (opinion), and the court stated it in one sentence: where the seller of a home knows of facts materially affecting the value of the property which are not readily observable and are not known to the buyer, the seller is under a duty to disclose them to the buyer. The word carrying that sentence is knows. In Jensen v. Bailey, 76 So. 3d 980 (Fla. 2d DCA 2011) (opinion), sellers who had checked "no" beside a question about work done without permits were held not liable, because the trial court found they had no actual knowledge of it — and the appeal court held that a "should have known" standard is not enough to make out the claim.

"Unknown" is an answer. An empty box is not.

Look at what each form permits. New York's instruction (d) to the seller is explicit: check "NA" if an item does not apply, check "Unkn" if you do not know the answer. Yes, No, Unkn, NA sit beside almost all of the 56 numbered items across seven pages. The few without them ask for a figure instead of a judgment — how long you have owned the property, the age of the structure, the type of sewage system, the school district.

Texas is not consistent within its own form, and this is the detail that changes how you read it. The grid on page 1 — range, dishwasher, septic system, roof age — says to write Yes (Y), No (N) or Unknown (U). The defect and condition lists on pages 2 through 4 do not offer the third letter. They say: write Yes (Y) if you are aware, write No (N) if you are not aware. Termites. Water damage not due to a flood event. Asbestos components. Radon gas. Previous fires. Unplatted easements. Room additions made without permits. There is no unknown for any of those, because the question is not about the house. It is about the contents of the seller's head.

That distinction is the whole architecture. Florida's statutory flood disclosure gives the seller a pair of boxes on each line and stops. The federal lead form gives two initial lines. None of them are asking for a survey of reality; they are asking a person to state what that person knows, which is why a blank means only that the question went unanswered. Texas says the rest of it out loud. Subsection (d) of section 5.008 directs that the notice be completed to the best of the seller's belief and knowledge as of the date it is signed, and that if the required information is unknown to the seller, the seller shall indicate that fact on the notice — and by that act is in compliance with the section. Saying you do not know is performance of the duty. Leaving the line empty is not. New York closes the loop at signature: the statement is true and complete to the seller's actual knowledge as of the date signed, and if the seller later learns something that makes it materially inaccurate, a revised statement is owed as soon as practicable — though never after title transfers or the buyer occupies, whichever comes first. California states the standard instead of the mechanics. Section 1102.7 requires each disclosure to be made in good faith, and defines good faith as honesty in fact in the conduct of the transaction.

None of it substitutes for the inspection you pay for. The Texas notice says so in capitals across the top of page 1; New York's buyer acknowledgement says the statement is not a substitute for any home, pest, radon or other inspection. Which is fair, given the six things a general inspection never covers. A disclosure that says "unknown" beside radon and an inspection that excludes radon leave exactly the same gap, and it is a specialist you order yourself who closes it.

The clock a late disclosure starts, and the sections that have to be finished first

If the form arrives after you signed, several states hand you a short exit. The windows are not generous and they are not the same.

California gives three days after delivery in person, or five days after deposit in the mail or delivery of an electronic record, to terminate the offer by written notice to the seller or the seller's agent. The sentence that matters is the next one in section 1102.3: the period commences when Sections I and II — and Section III, where the seller has an agent — are completed and delivered. A form with a section left blank has not started your clock running.

Which raises a small oddity worth knowing if you ever try to check a California form against the statute. The code section that contains the form does not contain the form. Open section 1102.6 on the state's own site and where the form should be there is a row of asterisks and a notice of incomplete text, pointing to Section 25 of Chapter 370 of the Statutes of 2020, pages 34 to 38. Open the chaptered bill and the same place reads: PRINTER PLEASE NOTE: TIP-IN MATERIAL TO BE INSERTED. The authoritative text of California's disclosure form is a physical insert in a printed volume of session laws.

Virginia is the strictest about the window and the plainest about what you get. Section 55.1-709 makes termination the purchaser's sole remedy for a late disclosure and ends that right at the earliest of six events: three days after delivery in person or electronically, five days after a mailed postmark, settlement, occupancy, a written waiver signed separately from the purchase contract, or the buyer's mortgage application, where the application itself discloses that applying ends the right. Texas keeps the rule in the code and the mechanics in the contract. Section 5.008(f) requires the notice to be delivered on or before the effective date of the contract, and provides that if a contract is entered without it, the purchaser may terminate for any reason within seven days after receiving the notice. Paragraph 7B of TREC No. 20-19, dated 05-04-2026, is where that becomes three checkboxes: the buyer has received the notice; the buyer has not, and the seller must deliver it within a blank number of days, after which the buyer may terminate within 7 days of receiving it or before closing, whichever comes first, earnest money refunded; or the seller is not required to furnish it at all. If the notice never arrives, the contract's version of the right runs to closing.

Put those dates where you keep the others. They belong on the 45-day map beside the inspection and financing deadlines, because a three-day window that started the moment a PDF landed in your inbox is the easiest deadline in the file to lose.

The federal attachment has its own ten days, and its own arithmetic

The lead rule is not a state disclosure and does not follow state exemptions. Subpart F of 40 CFR Part 745 (eCFR text current through the 27 August 2026 issue, read 29 August 2026) applies to target housing, which section 745.103 defines as housing built before 1978, excluding housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities and zero-bedroom dwellings, unless a child under six lives or is expected to live there. Section 745.101 exempts sales of target housing at foreclosure. On the sale side, that is the whole list.

Before you are obligated under the contract, section 745.107 requires the seller to give you an EPA-approved pamphlet, to disclose known lead-based paint and hazards along with the basis for the determination, the location and the condition of the painted surfaces, and to hand over any records or reports available — with "available" defined as in the seller's possession or reasonably obtainable. Section 745.110 gives you a 10-day period, or a different period agreed in writing, to have a risk assessment or inspection done, and lets you waive it in writing. On the form, that waiver is line (e)(ii). One initial wide.

Two things in the same subpart are easy to miss. Section 745.115 puts the compliance duty on the agents as well, and then shields an agent who told the seller about those obligations from liability for what the seller went on to conceal. And section 745.118(c) makes a knowing violator liable to the purchaser for three times the damages, with costs, attorney fees and expert witness fees available to a prevailing party under paragraph (d) — a heavier remedy than any of the state statutes below. One curiosity while you are in there: the regulation still names the pamphlet by its 1994 document number, while the booklet EPA currently distributes is a 2026 edition.

Estates, banks, and sellers who never slept there

The exemptions turn on the transferor, not on the property, which is why an empty disclosure file is not automatically a warning sign. California's section 1102.2 excludes court-ordered sales, foreclosures and deeds in lieu, transfers by a fiduciary administering a trust, guardianship, conservatorship or decedent's estate, transfers between co-owners, transfers to a spouse or a lineal relative, and transfers under a dissolution judgment. Read the fiduciary paragraph twice, because it carries its own exception: the exemption does not apply where the trustee is a natural person, is trustee of a revocable trust, and was a former owner of the property or an occupant in possession within the preceding year. The statute is quietly tracking who has actually lived in the house.

Virginia's list, in section 55.1-702, runs parallel and adds the first sale of a dwelling — but subsection B claws part of that back, since the builder of a new dwelling must still disclose in writing all known material defects that would violate the building code. New York's section 463 exempts newly constructed property that had not previously been inhabited, and the definition of residential real property printed on the form excludes condominium units and cooperative apartments, so a New York condo purchase produces no statement at all.

None of that touches the lead attachment. An estate selling a 1948 house sits outside the state form and squarely inside 40 CFR 745, and only a foreclosure escapes on the federal side.

What a missing disclosure is worth after the deed records

Less than buyers expect, and the ceiling is set by statute rather than by how badly anyone feels about it.

California's section 1102.13 says no transfer is invalidated solely because someone failed to comply, and that a person who willfully or negligently violates a duty under the article is liable for the actual damages suffered by the transferee. You do not unwind the sale. You argue about a number. New York's section 465 is narrower on fault: a seller who provides a statement, or provides or fails to provide a revised one, is liable only for a willful failure, and then for the buyer's actual damages in addition to any other existing equitable or statutory remedy. Its first subdivision matters as much as its second, because it preserves every cause of action that existed outside the article. Virginia is blunter still — under the Act, termination before settlement is the sole remedy, and after settlement the Act gives you nothing. What remains everywhere is the older, harder claim: fraud or intentional concealment, argued outside the disclosure statute, on facts a buyer has to prove the seller knew.

Which is the practical reason to read the form the day it arrives instead of the week before closing. Its value is front-loaded. Before you sign, a "yes, explain below" tells you which specialist to book; a "no" narrows what your inspector has to chase; a page of "unknown" usually means the person signing it has never lived in the house, and that this house has no narrator. Afterwards the same page is only evidence — and evidence of what somebody once said they knew is the most expensive kind of evidence to argue over.