Practical Massachusetts rules and steps for people buying and selling a home: inspections, required certificates, offers and closing. Agents can display these on their own sites via the feed.
The real estate feed has everything. Each part below has its own feed too. Subscribe to the real estate feed and you get all of them.
Under M.G.L. c. 188, every Massachusetts owner-occupant gets $125,000 of automatic homestead protection. Recording a declaration of homestead at the Registry of Deeds raises it to $1,000,000.
Before you sign a Purchase and Sale Agreement on a Massachusetts home built before 1978, you must get the Property Transfer Lead Paint Notification. You then have at least 10 days to get a lead inspection.
MassHousing offers income-eligible first-time homebuyers down payment assistance of up to $30,000, paired with a MassHousing mortgage, in every Massachusetts city and town. Homebuyer education is required.
Massachusetts home sales usually have two contracts: the Offer to Purchase and the Purchase and Sale Agreement. A signed offer can be binding on its own, so read it before you sign.
Massachusetts has no mandatory statewide seller disclosure form. Sellers still owe the lead paint notification, Title 5 reports and honest answers, and agents must disclose known material defects.
Selling a home after decades, or after a death, adds steps. In Massachusetts a personal representative may need a court license to sell, and the usual Title 5, smoke and CO, and lead paint rules still apply.
When you sell a Massachusetts home, the local fire department inspects the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and issues a certificate of compliance. Book it once you have a closing date.
Most Massachusetts home sales with a septic system need a Title 5 inspection done within two years before the sale, by a MassDEP-approved inspector. Some family transfers are exempt.
Lyn Robinson — Lyn Robinson Real Estate, LLC
Massachusetts real estate broker, REALTOR and real estate instructor based in Blackstone, and a Seniors Real Estate Specialist (SRES). Serving Blackstone, Bellingham, Milford, Franklin, Uxbridge and nearby towns.
New posts appear on your site automatically. Keep each post's canonical link pointed at the hub article.
Your feed, with your name on each post: Lyn Robinson.
The shared feed has no personal byline: real-estate/feed.xml.
Want a site that can pull these as editable drafts?