Oregon's seller property disclosure statement: what goes on it, and the five-day right it gives the buyer

shaan794

Sep 24

3 min read

Somewhere in the stack of paperwork in an Oregon sale is a form called the Seller's Property Disclosure Statement — the SPDS. It's several pages of yes/no/unknown questions about the house, filled out by the seller, and it carries more weight than its plain appearance suggests.

Sellers tend to treat it as a chore. Buyers tend to skim it. Both are mistakes, for different reasons.

What it is

A written statement from the seller about the condition of the property, based on what the seller actually knows. It covers the things you'd expect — roof, water, sewer or septic, heating, electrical, structural issues, pests, flooding and drainage, hazardous materials, boundary and easement questions, whether there's an underground storage tank, whether work was done without permits.

The important framing: this is a disclosure of knowledge, not a warranty of condition. A seller isn't promising the roof is sound. They're stating what they know about the roof. "Unknown" is a legitimate answer when it's true, and a dangerous one when it isn't.

The buyer's five business days

This is the part most people miss, and it's genuinely unusual.

Under ORS 105.475, once the seller delivers the disclosure statement, the buyer has five business days to revoke their offer — in writing. Not five calendar days. Five business days.

If the buyer revokes inside that window, the statute is blunt about what follows: the buyer "is entitled to immediate return of all deposits and other considerations," and the offer is void. Escrow can release the earnest money without the usual requirement of matching instructions from both sides.

If the buyer doesn't revoke in time, the right simply expires. There's no extension and no partial credit.

And if the seller never delivers the statement at all, the buyer's right of revocation stays alive until the transaction closes. That's the detail that should make any seller who's tempted to skip it reconsider.

What sellers get wrong

Three patterns, all of them avoidable.

Answering "unknown" to dodge a hard question. If you know the basement takes water in a heavy November, "unknown" isn't a neutral answer. It's a statement you'd have to defend later.

Disclosing the problem but not the repair — or the repair but not the problem. Both halves matter. A past leak that was properly fixed, documented and disclosed is a non-event. A past leak that shows up in a neighbor's offhand comment after closing is something else entirely.

Forgetting that the duty doesn't stop when the form is signed. If something changes between disclosure and closing — a pipe fails, a storm takes shingles off — that gets disclosed too. It doesn't always require a fresh form; an email to the other side is often enough. What isn't enough is silence.

What buyers should actually do with it

Read it next to your inspection report, not separately. The two documents answer different questions, and the interesting material is where they disagree — something the inspector flags that the seller marked "no," or a repair the seller mentions that the inspector didn't notice.

Then ask about the "unknown" answers specifically. Sometimes unknown is honest: an estate sale, a rental the owner never lived in, an inherited house. Sometimes it's a shrug where an answer should be. Which one you're looking at usually becomes clear when you ask.

Where this fits

The disclosure statement is one of three documents that shape the middle of an Oregon deal — the other two being your inspection results and the earnest money terms that decide what your deadlines are actually worth. On older Portland housing stock, the disclosure's questions about underground tanks and sewer lines connect directly to oil tank decommissioning and sewer scope findings.

The statute itself is short and readable: ORS 105.475, Buyer's statement of revocation of offer.

Selling and not sure how much to say on the form? That's a conversation worth having before you list. Start a conversation.