The process of buying a home in Massachusetts is changing this week and the industry is expecting that the reform policymakers made to ease things for buyers will roll out smoothly.
The 2024 housing law that Beacon Hill Democrats expect will ratchet up production also included a section to address one pain point in the process of buying from the limited inventory of homes already on the market.
Starting with contracts entered into on or after Wednesday, sellers are barred from conditioning the acceptance of an offer to purchase on the buyer’s agreement to waive, limit, restrict or otherwise forego their right to have the property inspected. Buyers do not have to conduct an inspection, but they are banned from letting sellers know before an offer is accepted that they intend to waive the home inspection.
There are some exceptions written into the regulations the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities promulgated this summer, and there’s new paperwork to add to the homebuying process.
“A home inspection is an important step in buying a property. Homebuyers must have the ability to make informed financial decisions and be given a clear picture of needed repairs or safety issues that could arise,” Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Ed Augustus said in June. “This new regulation creates a fairer, more even playing field for buyers and sellers.”
Home inspections can help buyers uncover issues with a property they may purchase and for years have played an important role in the negotiation of a final sale price and conditions. But prospective buyers in Massachusetts “have too often been pressured to choose not to have a home inspection so their offer to purchase will be considered competitive,” the Healey administration said.
For Bob Driscoll, the director of residential lending at Rockland Trust Bank, the change is probably going to mean “very little disruption” for approvals or rates, but is likely to change the course of negotiations depending on current market conditions.
When the sellers have more leverage, home inspections become less common as buyers forgo them to make offers more appetizing. But Driscoll said they are more prevalent in a buyer’s market.
“I do think it’s going to be an adjustment for everybody. I do think the impact’s probably going to be further down the road as they get more consistent and as the market shifts,” he said. Driscoll added, “I think the good thing about this is, as we migrate towards there, you’ll have people regularly doing that and then the law will be in effect for the next time it is a seller’s market. And so I do think this law probably has a lot of impact as you go further down the road.”
Some of the thinking may change for sellers, Driscoll said. When competition for a home is expected to be high, a seller might be able to avoid having to either address deferred maintenance issues or negotiate a change in sale price as a result of them if a buyer agrees ahead of time to forgo a home inspection.
“It’s going to force people to think about that. And now, right now, they don’t. Right now, they might sit there and say, ‘Listen, all we have to do is paint the rooms … we’ll make the house pleasing, we’ll stage the house, looks beautiful.’ Now you have to get to the next stop, which is, ‘OK, what are they going to pick apart in this house?'” he said. “Those are the things that I think now they’re going to have to address. And I think that can’t be anything but positive, because a seller today is a buyer tomorrow.”
The law also requires sellers, as of Wednesday, to provide a separate written disclosure form informing the buyer that the acceptance of their offer is not contingent upon the waiver of a home inspection and that the buyer may choose to have the home inspected.
Anthony Lamacchia, owner and CEO of Lamacchia Realty, said on Instagram last week that he had “hundreds and hundreds of people” requesting that form in advance of the law taking effect Wednesday.
“I see those questions in the comments to other videos that I’ve done, and people say, ‘Wait, so the buyer has to do an inspection? The buyer is forced to…’ — No. The law doesn’t force a buyer to do an inspection, but it does make it so that the buyer cannot convey the message of not doing the inspection when they make their offer,” he said. Lamacchia added, “It just means that they can’t say that they’re not going to do an inspection. I know it kind of sounds like semantics, but it’s not.”
