Learn common safety standard conditions and violations found on residential properties and how to provide terms to remedy safety issues in a real estate transaction.
Safety standards for improvements
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Due Diligence and Disclosures
Get the most for your clients and protect your hard-earned fee by reviewing the forms you’ll encounter in brokerage services. Stay current on the latest news, videos, forms, and updates for Due Diligence and Disclosures.
Recent updates to the course e-book
Chapter 2: The MLS environment. The updated statutory Agency Law Disclosure
and confirmation provision went into effect the beginning of 2019. Both the
content of the form and when it is to be used have been modified. For a
thorough analysis of the new disclosure and confirmation practices, see the
January 2019 article, What you need to know about the refreshed – and mostly
improved – Agency Law Disclosure.
Chapter 32: The breaching buyer’s responsibilities. The first subhead on page
350 should read “Interest depends on property use.”
06/25: The 2025 rules for buyer representation and fee-splitting avoidance are currently being edited into this e-book.
Newly published related content
Development impact fees require reasonable cost estimates
When a development project increases the capacity of an existing water or sewer connection, a local agency may charge only for the additional capacity — not as though it were an entirely new connection.
DRE Bulletin Digest: Spring 2026
The California Department of Real Estate (DRE) in their Spring 2026 Real Estate Bulletin reminds licensees of fiduciary duties, advance fee requirements and how to become a real estate broker.
Opinions with erroneous conclusions
Learn the difference between opinions, assurances and guarantees as well as estimates, projections and forecasts.
Federal housing bill passes, to little effect
How much — or how little — the new housing laws affect housing in California’s communities is up to local gatekeepers, including real estate brokers and mortgage lenders.
Form-of-the-Week: Escrow instructions, and beneficiary statement — Forms 401 and 415
An agent or escrow officer uses RPI Form 401 when preparing instructions to open a purchase escrow with an escrow officer, and RPI Form 415 when escrow requests mortgage information from a mortgage holder regarding their lien on a property to confirm the terms of the debt or obtain a payoff demand.
Federal guidance pushes MLOs to weigh applicant immigration status
Federal guidance now encourages MLOs to discriminate based on immigration status. How does that impact MLO practice in California?
Park your EVs (and your HOA) outside
SB 770 removes an HOA from a homeowner’s mandatory insurance when they install an electric vehicle charger in a common area.
The seller agent and the prospective buyer
Learn the difference between a broker’s specific agency duty owed only to their client and the limited general duty they owe to others in a transaction and how to observe and disclose conditions adversely affecting value and qualify statements when they are opinions, not facts.