Property disclosure statement
The BrokerFold Team — Product + Engineering
Last reviewed
The property disclosure statement is the standard BC form on which a seller answers, in writing, a battery of questions about the property: water ingress, unauthorized suites, buried oil tanks, renovations and their permits, past grow operations, systems and their known troubles. There are versions for detached homes, strata lots and rural parcels, and the seller completes it to their current actual knowledge — it is a snapshot of what they know, not a warranty of what is true.
Voluntary, but loud
Nothing in BC law compels a seller to fill one out. The form’s power comes from practice: buyers expect it, agents request it, and a seller who declines is making a statement of their own. Some refusals are innocent — an executor selling a parent’s house may genuinely know nothing — but the gap is real either way, and a buyer facing a blank PDS should size their inspection and subject clauses accordingly.
What it is once signed
The PDS becomes contractually interesting the moment it is incorporated into the contract of purchase and sale, which standard clauses commonly do. At that point its answers are terms a buyer relied on, and a knowingly false one supports a claim after closing. Two limits matter in both directions. The form doesn’t promise the house is sound — “no known problems” from an honest seller who never went in the crawlspace is a truthful answer. And it doesn’t exhaust the seller’s obligations: a known material latent defect must be disclosed in writing whether or not any PDS exists. The form asks questions; the duty stands on its own.
The Ontario contrast
Ontario ran a cousin of this form — the seller property information statement — until OREA withdrew it from its standard forms in 2020 after years of litigation over half-remembered answers. Ontario practice now leans on caveat emptor, the latent-defect disclosure duties, and the buyer’s own diligence, with no structured seller questionnaire in common use. BC kept the structured-disclosure habit, which is one of the quiet ways the provinces’ paperwork differs: an agent moving between markets inherits a different set of instincts about what the seller has told anyone. For agents building a BC practice — and the websites that explain it to clients, a theme our BC realtor website page picks up — the PDS is a vocabulary word clients will ask about by name.
Frequently asked questions
Is a property disclosure statement mandatory in BC?
No statute forces a seller to complete one. It's standard practice in residential resale, and buyers' agents expect it — but estates, courts and sellers who barely knew the property routinely decline, and a refusal simply shifts more weight onto the buyer's own inspection and subject clauses.
Does a PDS replace a home inspection?
Never. The form reports what the seller currently knows; an inspection reports what the property actually is. A seller can honestly answer 'no' about a problem they've never noticed, so the two documents answer different questions and a careful buyer wants both.
Keep reading
- Material latent defect A material latent defect is a hidden problem a seller must disclose — how BC and Ontario define it and where the line sits with buyer beware.
- Contract of purchase and sale BC's standard purchase contract — subject clauses, deposit timing, the three dates, and the rescission period Ontario deals don't have.
- Form B The Form B Information Certificate is a BC strata corporation's formal disclosure — fees, reserve fund, litigation and bylaws — before a buyer commits.
- Realtor websites BC Board coverage, BC's VOW-only sold-data rules, and the compliance chrome a BC realtor website carries by default — plus live templates and CAD pricing.