Selling a Westchester Home Built Before 1960? What the Earthquake Safety Disclosure Asks

If your Westchester home was built before January 1, 1960, and it is a wood-frame house with one to four units, California asks you to do two things when you sell. You give the buyer a booklet called the Homeowner's Guide to Earthquake Safety, and you fill out the short earthquake hazards disclosure at the back of it. That disclosure is seven questions about how the house is built, and you answer them based on what you actually know.

That is the whole requirement. You do not have to hire an engineer. You do not have to open up a wall. You do not have to retrofit anything before you sell. The law asks you to be honest about what you know, and the guide does the work of explaining the general earthquake risks to the buyer.

A large share of Westchester's houses were built in the years after World War II, as the neighborhood filled in around the airport and the bluff. That puts many of them on the older side of the 1960 line. If you have owned your home for a long time, or you inherited it, there is a good chance this disclosure applies to you.

The quickest way to know for sure is to check the year built on the county assessor record or your property profile from title. If the record says 1958, the guide is part of your sale. If it says 1962, it is not, although you still disclose anything you know about the house through the regular disclosure package. If you suspect the county record is off for your home, this guide to a county record mismatch explains how to sort out what the record says against what is really there.

The disclosure asks whether you know that the house has any of these conditions. Each one is a common weak point in older wood-frame houses during an earthquake.

1. The water heater is not braced, strapped, or anchored. A loose water heater can tip, break its gas line, and start a fire.
2. The house is not bolted to its foundation. Anchor bolts tie the bottom wood plate of the house to the concrete so the house cannot slide off.
3. The cripple walls are not braced. If your house sits up off the ground with a crawl space, the short wood walls between the foundation and the floor are called cripple walls. Without plywood or diagonal bracing, they can fold over in a strong shake.
4. The first-story walls are not braced. This covers houses that sit directly on the foundation without a crawl space.
5. The perimeter foundation is unreinforced masonry. Brick or stone foundations without steel can crack apart.
6. The walls of the house are unreinforced masonry. This is rare for a Westchester tract home but common enough elsewhere that the form asks.
7. There is a living space over the garage. A bedroom or family room above a wide garage opening can be a weak spot because the garage wall has so little solid wall to hold it.

For each one, you answer yes, no, or that it does not apply, and you note anything you know about work that has been done to fix it. If a previous owner bolted the foundation and you have the paperwork, say so.

Sellers often get nervous about this form because it sounds like a structural inspection. It is not. The instructions in the guide itself say that you do not have to remove siding, drywall, or plaster to answer the questions, you do not have to hire anyone to inspect the house, and you do not have to fix the weaknesses before you sell.

What you do need to do is answer honestly from what you know. If you have been in the crawl space and seen anchor bolts along the whole foundation, you can say yes with confidence. If you have never looked, you are answering from what you know, and that is fine. When you are unsure whether something has been done, I would rather we take a look or say so plainly than guess.

One detail in the instructions trips people up. If only part of the house meets a standard, the guide tells you to answer as though it does not. A house that is bolted on three sides but not the fourth is not fully bolted, so the honest answer is no.

The earthquake guide is one piece of a larger package. You will also complete the Transfer Disclosure Statement, the natural hazard disclosure report, and the seller questionnaire, and there may be city items as well. In the City of Los Angeles, there is also a short list of retrofit items, like water-saving fixtures and working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, that need to be handled before closing. This walkthrough of Westchester retrofit requirements covers that list.

Notice the overlap. California separately requires sellers to confirm the water heater is braced, so the first question on the earthquake form and the retrofit list point at the same strap. Handle it once, early, and both are covered.

If you want the bigger picture of how all the forms fit together, this overview of California seller disclosures walks through the full package. The natural hazard report also tells a buyer whether your parcel is in a mapped seismic hazard zone. That is a separate question from how your house is built, and the two should not be confused.

Sometimes, but it is a choice, not a rule. Here is how I would think about it.

• The water heater strap is almost always worth doing. It is a small job, it is on the retrofit list anyway, and it turns a yes into a no on the form.
• Foundation bolting and cripple wall bracing are bigger projects. They usually need a permit and a contractor who does this work regularly. For some houses it is a modest job. For others, especially with tall cripple walls, it needs an engineered plan.
• A buyer's inspector will look in the crawl space anyway. If the house is not bolted, the inspection report will say so. Knowing that ahead of time lets you decide whether to fix it, price for it, or simply disclose it and let the buyer plan the work.

California has also run a grant program called Earthquake Brace + Bolt that helps owners of older raised-foundation houses in eligible ZIP codes pay for this kind of retrofit. It opens registration in set windows, and the permit has to come after you are accepted, so it tends to suit an owner who is staying put more than one who is about to list. If you are a year or more away from selling, it is worth checking.

A pre-listing inspection is the simplest way to answer these questions with confidence. An inspector will go into the crawl space, look for anchor bolts and bracing, and photograph what is there. You then know exactly how to fill out the form.

If you are thinking about selling a Westchester home, I check the year built with you at the start, and if the earthquake guide applies, we put it in the disclosure package from day one. We look at what you know about the foundation and the water heater, decide whether anything is worth doing before listing, and answer the seven questions in plain language. Nothing about it should surprise you or your buyer.

No pressure, just real answers. I'm here when you're ready. Call or text me at 310.708.7717, or send me a note here.