The Michigan Seller Disclosure Statement: What Sellers Have to Tell You and How to Read It

Somewhere in the middle of every Michigan home sale there’s a two to four-page form called the Seller Disclosure Statement. Most buyers I work with give it a quick look and move on to the inspection. It’s mostly checkboxes. It’s also the only place in the whole deal where the seller signs their name to what they know about the house, and that makes it worth a slower read.

So here’s how the form works under Michigan law, where it falls short, and what I tell Midland buyers and sellers to do with it.

Who has to fill one out

The Seller Disclosure Act passed in 1993 and took effect in January 1994. You’ll find it at MCL 565.951 and the sections after it. It covers homes with one to four units, and it reaches most of the ways a home changes hands around here: a regular sale, a land contract, a lease with an option to buy, and a few less common setups.

Some sales skip it. The exemptions I run into most in Midland County are estate sales handled by a personal representative or trustee who never lived in the house, foreclosures and other court-ordered sales, brand new homes a licensed builder sells before anyone has moved in, and transfers to a spouse, parent, grandparent, child or grandchild. If you’re buying one of those, expect no disclosure and lean harder on your inspection.

The 72-hour rule

The seller is supposed to hand you the completed form before you sign a binding purchase agreement. When houses are moving fast, that doesn’t always happen.

If it shows up after you’ve signed, Michigan gives you a way out. You can terminate the agreement in writing within 72 hours if the form was delivered in person, or within 120 hours if it came by registered mail. Once the deed or land contract transfers, that right is gone.

One catch. Delivery to your agent counts as delivery to you, so the clock starts the moment your agent gets it. Ask them to send it to you right away.

What’s on the form

The form is spelled out word for word in MCL 565.957. It opens with a checklist of appliances and systems: range, dishwasher, furnace, central air, water heater, plumbing, electrical, well and pump, septic, sump pump and more. The seller marks each one yes, no, unknown or not available.

Next come twelve questions about the property’s condition. They cover water in the basement or crawl space, insulation, roof leaks and the roof’s age, the well and any water testing, the septic system, the age of the heating system, plumbing, electrical problems and past infestations. They also ask about environmental hazards like radon, lead paint, fuel tanks and contaminated soil, plus flood insurance and mineral rights.

The last section has eleven more yes, no or unknown questions. Easements and encroachments. HOA authority. Structural work done without a permit. Settling or drainage problems. Major damage from fire, wind or flood. Underground storage tanks. Nearby farms, landfills, airports or shooting ranges. Unpaid utility or municipal assessments. Pending lawsuits.

Two notices sit near the end. The first says sex offender registry information is public and points buyers to local law enforcement. The second tells buyers to get the home’s state equalized value (half the assessor’s estimate of market value) and principal residence exemption (Michigan’s homestead tax break) information from the assessor, and to plan for a tax bill that could look very different from the seller’s. I wrote a whole article on that second notice. And in capital letters, the form says: “BUYER SHOULD OBTAIN PROFESSIONAL ADVICE AND INSPECTIONS OF THE PROPERTY TO MORE FULLY DETERMINE THE CONDITION OF THE PROPERTY.” Take that one literally.

What sellers are on the hook for

A seller answers for what they actually know. The law protects them from mistakes outside their personal knowledge, and from information they got from a public agency or a qualified expert and passed along with ordinary care. What it does require is good faith, which the statute defines as “honesty in fact.”

Two Court of Appeals cases show how that plays out.

In Roberts v Saffell (2008), the sellers checked “no” on the infestation question. After closing, the buyers found termites. A jury awarded them $86,813 on a theory called innocent misrepresentation, which lets a buyer recover for a false statement the seller believed was true. The Court of Appeals threw that verdict out. It held that an honest mistake on the disclosure form isn’t enough to win, and that a buyer who can prove the seller knew about a problem and hid it can still sue for fraud. The Michigan Supreme Court affirmed in 2009.

Bergen v Baker (2004) went the other way. The sellers disclosed a roof replacement and a porch leak they said had been fixed. They left out repairs to the skylights over a sunroom, and after closing the sunroom leaked. The court sent the case to trial, because the disclosure could be read as describing a solved problem while the leak was still active.

My takeaway for sellers is simple: write down everything you know. For buyers, the form only goes as far as the seller’s memory and honesty, so check every answer against your own inspection.

One more thing on liability. An agent is on the hook for a seller’s violation only if they knowingly worked with the seller to break the law. That’s part of why I have my sellers fill out the form themselves, in their own words.

When something changes before closing

Houses keep aging after the purchase agreement is signed. If something changes before closing, the form requires the seller to tell you in writing, and that covers changes to the structure, the mechanical systems and the appliances. Under MCL 565.954, an amended disclosure starts a fresh 72 or 120 hours for you to terminate.

Picture a Midland January. The furnace quits two weeks before closing. That goes on a written amendment, every time.

Rules that live outside the form

A few other rules sit on top of the state form.

If the house was built before 1978, federal lead paint rules apply. The seller has to give you the EPA pamphlet “Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home,” disclose any lead paint or hazards they know about, hand over any reports they have, and attach a signed Lead Warning Statement to the contract. You get 10 days for a lead inspection or risk assessment. You and the seller can agree in writing to a different window, or you can waive it in writing.

If the property is contaminated, Michigan’s Part 201 environmental law (MCL 324.20116) comes into play. An owner who knows the property is a “facility” has to give you written notice of the release and any land use restrictions before the sale. In plain terms, a facility is property where a hazardous substance above the state’s residential cleanup criteria has been released.

Then there’s flood insurance. When a home in a FEMA special flood hazard area secures a loan from a federally regulated lender, or a loan sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, federal law requires flood insurance. That’s most mortgages. The disclosure form asks whether the seller carries flood insurance. It never asks whether the house sits in a flood zone, so look the address up on FEMA’s Flood Map Service Center yourself before you write an offer.

Three questions I ask on every Midland house

Has water ever come into the basement? Michigan Realtors, citing a 2006 Court of Appeals case, reads the basement question to cover the whole time the seller has owned the home. The roof question asks only about current leaks. Read those two answers side by side with that in mind.

What happened in May 2020? When the Edenville and Sanford dams failed, homes along the Tittabawassee and around the Four Lakes flooded. The form asks about major flood damage and about flooding and drainage problems. If the house is anywhere near the river or the lakes, read those answers slowly, then ask what was repaired and who did the work.

Was the yard part of the Midland Area Soils cleanup? In 2012, state regulators approved a plan for Dow to sample residential yards in parts of Midland for dioxin. Where a yard tested above the cleanup level of 250 parts per trillion, the top 12 inches of soil were dug out and replaced. The state reports that more than 1,700 Midland properties were cleaned up between 2012 and 2016, and Dow still monitors the area. Ask the seller whether the yard was sampled or cleaned up, and ask for the paperwork.

If you’re buying

Treat every “unknown” as homework for your inspector. When the inspection report comes back, sit down with it and the disclosure and go line by line. My home inspection article walks through what an inspector checks and what falls outside the job. Pull the public records too: the assessor’s card, any permits from the city or township, and the FEMA flood map. And if anything changes before closing, get it in writing.

If you’re selling

Fill the form out yourself, in your own words. If you want help with the writing, ask a family member or a friend. Answer for the entire time you’ve owned the house, and check “unknown” only when you don’t know. Attach whatever you’ve got: the roof invoice, the radon test, the receipt for the new sump pump. If something breaks or gets fixed after you sign, let your agent know that day so the amendment goes out.

A complete, honest disclosure protects you. It also gives buyers fewer reasons to come back and renegotiate after the inspection.

A bill to watch

House Bill 4110, introduced in February 2025, would update the form. One change adds a line estimating the yearly property taxes based on the home’s current assessed value. As of this writing it’s sitting in the House Committee on Regulatory Reform.

Before you sign

Read the disclosure, get a good inspection, and pull the public records. Do all three and very little about the house should catch you off guard after closing.

I’m a real estate professional, and this article is general information. If you have a specific disclosure question, talk to a Michigan real estate attorney.

Thinking about buying or selling in Midland? Get in touch.