Impact of Standard Conditions on Seller’s Duty of Disclosure
The Standard Conditions reduces the seller’s common law duty of disclosure, as the seller is not obliged to disclose the encumbrances. When the Standard Conditions are being used, the safest thing would be to disclose all the known defects and encumbrances and to let in a special condition in the contract, thereby preventing the purchaser from raising any requisition or objection to them. The Standard Condition also aims at restricting the seller’s liability for non-disclosure. In a non-commercial context, this may be ineffective because of the possible interference of the reasonableness test in the Unfair Contract Terms Act, 1977.
