3.2 Indiana Property Disclosure Requirements

Which Transactions Are Covered?

IC 32-21-5 is Indiana's residential real estate sales-disclosure chapter. It covers a sale, exchange, installment sales contract or lease with an option to buy residential real estate containing no more than four dwelling units, subject to the exemptions in section 5-1. It is not a universal form requirement for every transfer of every property.

For a covered transaction, the owner completes and signs the Seller's Residential Real Estate Sales Disclosure, State Form 46234, and supplies it to the prospective buyer before an offer is accepted. The current form linked by PLA is marked R/9-26. Use its current questions, rather than assuming that a summary of an old form lists every disclosure.

The form concerns the owner's current actual knowledge. It is not a warranty and does not replace the buyer's professional inspection. Unknown information can be identified as unknown; an approximation must satisfy the statute's conditions and cannot be used to circumvent disclosure. The absence of a duty to discover every hidden defect is not permission to conceal a known one.

The form's environmental questions are not merely recommendations to test. A seller who actually knows about a listed condition must answer truthfully when the chapter applies, even if no law required the seller to commission a new test.

Exemptions Have Exact Conditions

An exemption from this chapter does not erase separate duties under federal lead law, agency law or prohibitions on misrepresentation. Always identify which duty a question is testing.

Condition Disclosure Is Not the County Sales Disclosure Form

Indiana also uses a Sales Disclosure Form (SDF) in its assessment/conveyance-recording process under IC 6-1.1-5.5. That tax/recording document is different from the seller's condition statement. The DLGF filing instructions describe review by the county assessor, forwarding to the auditor, filing conditions and fee exemptions. Do not assume that every transaction requiring one document necessarily has the same requirement for the other, or turn a conditional filing fee into a universal seller-condition-form fee.

Late Delivery, Updates and Remedies

Under IC 32-21-5-10, the owner supplies the signed condition form before acceptance. Before closing, the statute addresses enforceability against the buyer until both have signed, but also states that a buyer cannot invalidate a transaction merely because the buyer failed to sign a form already received or acknowledged. After closing, missing delivery does not by itself invalidate the transaction.

IC 32-21-5-12 requires disclosure of a material change in physical condition at or before settlement, or certification that the condition is substantially the same as when the form was provided. The current official form also instructs the seller to notify a potential buyer in writing upon learning a fact that changes an answer before closing.

There is a specific rescission rule in section 5-13: if a form or amended form received after acceptance discloses a defect, the buyer may nullify the contract by delivering written rescission to the owner or agent within two business days after receipt. A buyer who validly uses that provision is entitled to return of deposits. Neither any omission nor every inaccurate statement automatically voids a contract.

Psychological History and Physical Conditions Are Different

Current IC 32-21-6-3 defines psychologically affected property by specified facts or a reasonable suspicion of those facts:

• An individual died on the property.
• The property was the site of a felony.
• It was the site of criminal-organization activity.
• It was the site of a firearm discharge involving a law-enforcement officer engaged in official duties.
• It was the site of illegal manufacture or distribution of a controlled substance.

Do not replace this list with "anything unsettling near the property." The current definition does not list HIV/AIDS status or a nearby sex offender. Absence from this definition does not itself create permission to investigate or disclose someone's medical information; it simply means that this chapter is not authority for a fabricated statutory list.

The statute supplies a three-part response rule for psychological history. Section 6-5 removes a duty to volunteer it. Section 6-6 protects refusal to disclose the fact or its details. The same section prohibits intentional misrepresentation in response to a direct inquiry. Declining to answer and knowingly answering falsely are different actions.

Example: A prospective buyer asks whether a death occurred in the house. The owner or broker may decline to disclose that history. They cannot knowingly say "no" when choosing to answer a direct inquiry about a known death. There is no three-year death lookback in these provisions.

A Stigma Rule Does Not Conceal a Hazard

Illegal drug manufacture appears in the psychological-property definition, but IC 32-21-5-7 separately requires the owner's disclosures concerning specified controlled-substance contamination and methamphetamine manufacture or waste in a residential structure. A broker must also apply the separate agency duties. One fact pattern can trigger more than one rule.

Under IC 32-21-5-11, protection for an error or omission depends on the statutory conditions: the matter was outside the owner's actual knowledge or based on specified reasonably believed third-party information, and the owner was not negligent in obtaining and transmitting that information. "The seller said they acted in good faith" is not a substitute for that analysis. Deliberate concealment or misrepresentation can present different liability issues.

The broker's agency duties are distinct from the owner's form. IC 25-34.1-10-10(d) requires a seller/landlord agent to disclose to a prospective buyer or tenant actually known adverse material physical-condition facts or risks and facts required by statute or regulation, with the provision's reasonable-and-timely-inspection qualification. It imposes no independent inspection duty for that buyer or tenant. A buyer's agent separately owes the client duties under section 10-11, including disclosure of actually known adverse material transaction facts and advice to obtain expertise beyond the licensee's competence. Do not turn these role-specific provisions into an unlimited duty to investigate for everyone.

The Separate Federal Lead Rule

EPA states that the Lead-Based Paint Disclosure Rule applies to most pre-1978 housing, with federal exemptions. For covered sales and rentals, the responsible parties disclose known lead-based paint/hazards, supply available reports, provide the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead In Your Home, and provide the required warning and acknowledgments before the buyer or tenant becomes bound.

For a covered sale, the buyer ordinarily receives a 10-day inspection or risk-assessment opportunity. The parties may agree in writing to a longer or shorter period, and the buyer may waive the opportunity in writing. That is not a right to government-funded abatement, a mandatory seller inspection or an automatic price reduction. The sale inspection opportunity is not an identical ten-day right in every rental.

EPA's listed exemptions include specified zero-bedroom housing, certain short-term rentals, qualifying elderly/disability housing, certified lead-free housing and foreclosure sales. Apply the relevant exemption conditions rather than concluding that construction before 1978 always settles the question. Signed disclosures are retained three years after the sale is completed or the lease begins.

Two Worked Applications

A 1965 ranch: Assume an ordinary covered resale with no federal exemption. The seller knows about a cracked sewer line and a prior natural death. The sewer condition belongs on the state form. The death follows the psychological-history rule. Federal lead disclosures, records and the pamphlet remain required even when the seller has no particular lead report to produce; unknown lead information does not exempt an otherwise covered transaction.

A late amended form: Assume a buyer receives an amended form on Tuesday after the offer was accepted, and it discloses a defect. With no intervening holiday, Wednesday and Thursday are the next two business days. Section 5-13 requires delivery of written rescission within the statutory two-business-day period to use that right. Merely deciding privately not to proceed or assuming that the contract automatically vanished is not the prescribed step.

Read the official 2026 Title 32, the current form, the applicable agency provisions in Title 25, and EPA's current disclosure instructions. Keep transaction coverage, knowledge, timing and the particular remedy separate.