Do I still need a Form 17 if I sell my house as-is?
By Austin Hellickson, Managing Broker, LPT Realty5 min read
Usually, yes. Selling as-is or to a cash buyer does not exempt you from Washington’s seller disclosure law (RCW 64.06), so you owe the buyer a completed Form 17 unless the buyer waives it in writing or the sale fits one of the statute’s exemptions, such as a sale by the personal representative of an estate or a foreclosure. Even with a waiver, the environmental section still has to be delivered if any of its answers would be yes.
What Form 17 is, and where the requirement comes from
Form 17 is the seller disclosure statement for a house in Washington. The questions themselves are written into state law, in RCW 64.06.020, and the Northwest Multiple Listing Service publishes the version most brokers in Pierce and King County hand to their sellers. That’s where the number comes from.
It runs several pages. Title and boundaries, water supply, sewer or septic, the structure, the systems and fixtures, the homeowners’ association if there is one, and a section on environmental conditions. Most questions can be answered yes, no, or don’t know, with room to explain.
Vacant land and commercial property have their own versions of the form. Everything below is about houses.
Selling as-is leaves the disclosure in place
“As-is” is a statement about repairs: you won’t fix anything the inspector finds and you won’t give credits for it. Disclosure is about information, meaning what you actually know about the house. The law treats those as two separate questions, and agreeing on the first doesn’t settle the second.
The same goes for a cash buyer. Paying without a loan changes the closing timeline and removes the appraisal, but the disclosure duty sits with the seller, and the kind of buyer across the table doesn’t move it.
A careful Form 17 often works in an as-is seller’s favor. An investor pricing a house with an older roof and a damp crawl space tends to assume the worst about anything they can’t see. The form asks about defects in the hot water tank, the electrical system and the plumbing, and whether the basement has ever flooded or leaked. A plain written answer, with the year the water heater went in and a note that the dehumidifier runs for summer humidity and nothing more (if that’s the truth), removes one of the unknowns a buyer would otherwise discount for.
When a buyer can waive Form 17, and the one section they can’t
RCW 64.06.010 lets a buyer expressly waive the right to receive the disclosure statement. On investor purchases the waiver usually shows up as a line in the purchase agreement. That choice belongs to the buyer. A seller can’t impose it.
There is one carve-out. If the answer to any question in the Environmental section would be yes, the buyer cannot waive that section, and you deliver it anyway.
The environmental questions cover things like flooding and drainage problems, fill dirt, fuel or chemical storage tanks, contaminated soil or water, and whether the property was ever used to make illegal drugs. In the older neighborhoods of Tacoma and Puyallup, a heating oil tank left over from before the house switched to gas or electric heat is a familiar reason a seller ends up answering yes, or don’t know.
A waiver removes the form. It doesn’t make it safe to hide a problem you know about, and a real estate attorney can tell you how far a particular waiver reaches. And a house built before 1978 carries a separate federal lead-based paint disclosure, which selling as-is doesn’t remove.
Sales that are exempt: estates, foreclosures, and a few others
The statute lists specific transfers that don’t need the disclosure statement. The ones sellers on this site run into most are in the table, with the ordinary cases for comparison.
| Situation | Form 17 owed? |
|---|---|
| As-is sale on the open market | Yes |
| Sale to a cash investor | Yes, unless the buyer waives it |
| Buyer expressly waives in writing | No, except the Environmental section if any answer would be yes |
| Sale by the personal representative of an estate | Exempt |
| Sale by a trustee in bankruptcy | Exempt |
| Foreclosure or deed in lieu of foreclosure | Exempt |
The list also covers gifts and transfers to a parent, spouse, domestic partner or child, transfers between spouses or domestic partners in a dissolution, a buyer who held an ownership interest in the property within the prior two years, and transfers of an interest less than full ownership.
The estate exemption comes up constantly with inherited houses. It applies to a sale made by the personal representative. If the estate has already been settled and the house deeded into the heirs’ own names, the heirs are now ordinary sellers, and the estate’s attorney can tell you which side of that line you’re on. The details of selling while the estate is still open are in how to sell a house still in probate in Washington.
Exempt or not, a seller who knows the basement floods and says otherwise is taking a risk the statute never protected them from.
The three-business-day window and what it does to a quick cash closing
Unless the contract says otherwise, the seller delivers Form 17 within five business days after mutual acceptance. The buyer then has three business days after receiving it to approve it or rescind in writing, and a buyer who rescinds in time gets the earnest money back.
On a listed house with a six-week escrow, that window barely registers. On a cash purchase with a short timeline, it can matter. If the form lands on day five, the buyer’s rescission window runs into the days you hoped to spend packing.
So fill out the form before any offer arrives. When you’re requesting a cash offer and preparing a listing plan at the same time, the completed Form 17 goes into the package buyers review, so an investor prices the house knowing what you’ve disclosed, and the three days run while escrow and title are still getting started.
State law also expects you to update the form if something changes before closing. A new leak in January is new information, even if the buyer has already signed off on the original.
Answering honestly when you don’t know
“Don’t know” is a legitimate answer on Form 17, and for some sellers it’s the only honest one. Someone who inherited a parent’s house, or who has rented a place out for years, may have no idea when the side sewer was last scoped or whether the attic was ever reinsulated.
Before writing it, look. Receipts in a kitchen drawer, the permit history on the city or county site, pumping records for a septic system (the Pierce County septic article covers those), an old inspection report from when you bought the house. A roof date you can document is worth more to a buyer than a guess.
Most trouble starts with a “no” written to fill a blank the seller wasn’t sure about. The opposite habit hurts too: don’t know on nearly every line reads as evasive, and a buyer tends to price it that way.
Who to check with before you sign
For the waiver language in a specific purchase agreement, or any question about how much you must disclose, a Washington real estate attorney. For whether an estate sale qualifies for the exemption, the estate’s attorney. Your broker can explain how the form and its deadlines fit into the transaction, and escrow can confirm dates, but neither one can give you legal advice.
Short answers
Can I just write “as-is” on the Form 17 instead of answering the questions?
No. The as-is terms belong in the purchase agreement. The form still needs real answers to its questions, including don’t know where that’s the truth.
Does the buyer’s inspection replace Form 17?
No. The inspection records what the buyer’s inspector finds on one visit. Form 17 records what you know from living with the house. A buyer usually gets both.
Do I have to mention a problem I already fixed?
Answer the question as it’s asked. Some questions ask whether a condition has ever existed, and a past problem counts there. A short note explaining the repair and when it was done usually helps more than it hurts.
