Greater Moncton Real Estate Blog

Your Oil Tank Can Kill a Deal Faster Than You Think

It's there. It holds oil. The furnace works. Everybody carries on with their life.  Then a buyer comes along, their insurance company asks how old the tank is, and suddenly the rusty metal box in the basement is running the whole transaction.

If your home is heated with oil, especially in places like Salisbury, Memramcook, Cocagne and a lot of rural New Brunswick, this is something worth figuring out before you list.  Not after you have an accepted offer. Not three days before conditions are due. And definitely not when the buyer's lender, insurance company, lawyer and REALTOR® are all suddenly asking questions you don't have answers to.

WHY THE OIL TANK EVEN MATTERS

Most buyers aren't showing up with a suitcase full of cash. They're getting a mortgage.

And in most financed purchases, the lender wants confirmation that the property can be insured before they'll release mortgage funds. So if the insurance company has a problem with your oil tank, the lender may have a problem with the house.

And once the lender has a problem, everybody has a problem.

You'll sometimes hear people throw around numbers like 15 years for an exterior tank and 25 years for an interior tank. Those numbers have been used as general insurance-industry benchmarks, but they are not New Brunswick law and they are not universal cut-offs.

Insurance companies make their own underwriting rules. The material of the tank matters. Where it is located matters. Its construction matters. Its condition matters. Some modern double-wall, fibreglass and composite tanks can have significantly longer acceptable service lives than traditional steel tanks.

So the useful question isn't, "Is my tank more than 15 years old?"

The useful question is, "Will a buyer be able to insure this house with this tank?"

That's the question that can affect your sale.

NOT KNOWING THE AGE ISN'T A GREAT ANSWER

One of the worst answers a seller can give when asked about an oil tank is, "No idea. It was here when we bought the place."

It may be completely true.  It's also completely useless.

There is a significant difference between saying, "It was installed in 2014 and here's the invoice," and saying, "Could be 12 years old. Could be 32. Your guess is as good as mine."

If you have paperwork, find it before the property hits the market. An installation receipt, replacement invoice, previous inspection or the manufacturer's label can all help establish the tank's age.  Insurance companies tend to deal better with facts than folklore.

YES, THESE THINGS ACTUALLY LEAK

This isn't just insurance-company bureaucracy invented to ruin everybody's afternoon.

Nearly 40% of all oil spills reported to New Brunswick's Department of Environment and Local Government each year come from domestic oil tanks at private homes.  Outside tanks can develop condensation. Steel can corrode. Supports can fail. Fuel lines can leak. And sometimes the exterior of a tank looks perfectly fine while corrosion is occurring internally.

So standing beside it, kicking the leg and announcing, "Looks good to me," probably isn't enough.  That's how guys assess used lawn tractors.

The province recommends homeowners regularly inspect their tanks and have them professionally inspected annually by a licensed installer.

WHO GETS STUCK WITH THE CLEANUP?

This is where the conversation can get considerably more expensive than simply replacing an oil tank.

Under New Brunswick's Clean Environment Act, the province can potentially look to several different parties when contamination is discovered. That can include the person who caused the release, certain previous owners, and the current owner or occupier of the property.  

That does not mean the current owner automatically becomes responsible for every spill that ever occurred on the property.  But it does mean buying a property doesn't necessarily give you a clean slate if someone buried an oil tank in 1987, removed it badly, or allowed fuel to contaminate the surrounding soil.  

If there is evidence of an old underground tank, previous leakage or contaminated soil, stop guessing. That is the point where proper environmental and legal advice becomes considerably more useful than somebody's uncle telling you what happened with his neighbour's house twenty years ago.

WHAT ABOUT THE 2,000-LITRE RULE?

Another thing that gets misunderstood is New Brunswick's petroleum storage licensing requirement.

The province requires a petroleum storage site licence for systems with a total capacity of 2,000 litres or more.

Most typical residential heating-oil tanks fall below that threshold, so the average homeowner with a standard tank isn't unknowingly operating an illegal petroleum facility in the basement.  But being below 2,000 litres does not mean there are no rules or no consequences.  If a residential tank leaks, it is still petroleum contamination.

Apparently oil does not become environmentally friendly because the tank was 1,100 litres too small to require a provincial licence.

WHAT ABOUT THE PROPERTY DISCLOSURE STATEMENT?

I've already written about New Brunswick's Residential Property Disclosure Statement before.

The RPDS is not automatically required in every residential transaction. That does not mean sellers should suddenly develop selective amnesia.  There is a meaningful difference between genuinely not knowing something and knowing about an issue but hoping nobody asks the right question.  If you know an oil tank has leaked, know there was previously an underground tank, know contaminated soil was discovered, or know there is an unresolved environmental concern, that needs to be taken seriously.  And if you're unsure what your legal disclosure obligations are, that's where your lawyer comes in.

I'd much rather have a seller spend a few minutes getting proper advice before listing than have lawyers discussing the same issue after closing.

Lawyers are great.

They're just considerably less enjoyable when they're billing you.

WHAT SHOULD YOU ACTUALLY DO BEFORE LISTING?

Start by figuring out how old the tank is.

Check the manufacturer's label. Look through the paperwork from when you purchased the home. Find installation invoices, service records or replacement receipts.  Then actually look at the thing.  Pay attention to corrosion, staining underneath or around the tank, unusual oil smells, damaged supports, cracks, dents or anything else that seems questionable.  If the tank is older, its age can't be established, or something simply doesn't look right, have someone qualified inspect it before you list the property.

Not after you receive an offer.

Before.

If the answer comes back that the tank needs replacement, you can deal with it calmly and make an informed decision.  That is considerably easier than discovering the problem while a buyer's financing and insurance conditions expire in 48 hours.

One is home maintenance.

The other starts to feel suspiciously like a hostage negotiation.

WHAT IF THE TANK NEEDS TO BE REPLACED?

Then deal with it.  Seriously.

A seller replacing an aging tank before listing is inconvenient.

A seller trying to replace one during conditions while the buyer's lender and insurance company are waiting for documentation is considerably more inconvenient.  

If the tank is nearing the end of its usable life anyway, it may also be the right time to look at whether continuing with oil makes financial sense.  That doesn't automatically mean ripping out a perfectly functioning heating system because somebody on Facebook bought a heat pump.  It just means look at the options before spending money replacing one component of a system you may already have been considering changing.

THINKING ABOUT GETTING RID OF OIL COMPLETELY?

If you're already considering replacing the oil tank or heating system, check the current SaveEnergyNB programs before assuming the entire cost will come out of your pocket.  The Oil to Heat Pump Affordability advance-payment stream stopped accepting new registrations in June 2026, but other heat-pump incentives remain available through SaveEnergyNB programs.

The important word there is current.

Government programs change. Rebates change. Eligibility changes.  So don't base a five-figure heating decision on what your neighbour's cousin received three years ago.  Check what is actually available when you're ready to do the work.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Having an oil tank isn't automatically a problem.  Having an old, undocumented, questionable oil tank can be.  And the worst time to discover that is after you've accepted an offer and everyone suddenly realizes the buyer may not be able to insure the property.

Before you list an oil-heated home, know the age of the tank. Know its condition. Know whether there are likely to be insurance issues. Keep whatever documentation you have.

It's not exciting real estate advice.  It's just one of those boring little things nobody worries about until it starts threatening a $400,000 transaction.

Then, strangely enough, everybody cares.

If you're thinking about selling and want someone to go through this stuff before it becomes a problem, give me a call.  I'll tell you what I think needs attention, what I wouldn't waste money on, and what may actually matter when a buyer, inspector, insurer or lender starts asking questions.

No pressure, just straight answers.

Shane MacPherson, REALTOR®, eXp Realty

506-852-6477

Strong Roots - Smart Moves

Every seller thinks their house is the exception. The one where starting a little high "just to see" doesn't really hurt anything. Worst case, you can always lower the price later, right?

Well... yes. You can.

You can also put ketchup on a steak.

Being allowed to do something doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.  And there is actually some pretty interesting data showing just how much those first few weeks on the market matter.

What Actually Happens When You Price Too High

A Realtor.com study released in June 2026 looked at the U.S. housing market and found a pretty significant relationship between time on market and what sellers ultimately received relative to their asking price.  Homes that closed around the four-week mark sold about 1.8 percentage points above the monthly average sale-to-list ratio for comparable homes. Homes that were still sitting around eighteen weeks sold about 1.3 percentage points below it. That's a spread of more than three percentage points between the two.

Even more interesting, the strongest performers in that four-week group had generally gone under contract within the first two weeks. Realtor.com's analysis also found that price reductions tend to spike after those critical opening weeks.

Now, that's U.S. data, and I'm not going to pretend American statistics magically become New Brunswick statistics because they're convenient for a blog post. But the psychology behind it certainly isn't exclusive to Americans.

A new listing gets attention. Buyers get alerts. Realtors notice it. People who have been watching that neighbourhood click on it. Buyers who have been waiting for the right house book showings. That's your window.  Price it properly and you're using all that initial attention to your advantage. Price it high because you want to "leave room to negotiate" and you risk wasting the period when your listing has the most attention it is ever going to get.

Buyers notice. They're not fooled. They're usually just too polite to tell you.

What Could That Look Like Here?

Again, the Realtor.com study is U.S. data. We don't have a Greater Moncton study proving that a home sitting eighteen weeks will automatically sell for exactly 3.1% less than one selling quickly, so I'm not going to tell you that we do.

But applying that 3.1 percentage-point spread to our July 2026 median sale prices gives us an interesting illustration of the kind of money we're talking about:

• Greater Moncton, median sale price of $362,000: roughly $11,220

• Dieppe, median sale price of $412,400: roughly $12,780

• Riverview, median sale price of $364,250: roughly $11,290

• Shediac and the coast, median sale price of $347,450: roughly $10,770

Those aren't measured local losses caused by overpricing. They're simply examples of what a three-point difference represents at the price levels we're dealing with here.

Ten or twelve grand isn't exactly pocket change.

More importantly, our local CREA numbers show why pricing can't be treated the same across every part of Greater Moncton. Different districts and sub-districts have different inventory levels, days on market, sale-to-list ratios and levels of buyer demand. Your neighbourhood can be behaving very differently from one ten minutes down the road.

That's why pricing a home based on "what houses are going for in Moncton" isn't nearly specific enough. The market doesn't care about Greater Moncton as one giant blob. It cares about what buyers are willing to pay for your type of house, in your area, right now.

Why "Leave Room to Negotiate" Is Backwards

I hear this constantly: "Let's price it a little high. We can always come down later."

Technically true. Here's the part nobody seems nearly as excited about.  Every week the house sits, buyers start asking a different question. At first it's, "What's wrong with the price?" Eventually it becomes, "What's wrong with the house?"

Those are two very different problems.

You finally reduce the price three or six weeks later, except now it's not a new listing anymore. The buyers who were most interested have already seen it. Some have bought something else. Others see the price reduction and smell blood in the water.  Now instead of negotiating from a position of strength, you're trying to convince buyers that the house they already passed over deserves another look.

That's not exactly the master plan.

Pricing properly doesn't necessarily mean pricing low, either. That's an important distinction. It means pricing at a number the current market can support. Sometimes that's aggressive. Sometimes it's conservative. Sometimes the market is strong enough that pricing slightly below where you expect to sell can create competition.

But the strategy should come from the market, not from the number we'd really, really like the house to be worth.

What I Actually Do When Pricing a Home

Here's the real process, not the marketing version.

I normally start with properties that have actually SOLD in the neighbourhood or district over roughly the previous 90 days. Current listings matter because they're your competition, but an asking price doesn't prove market value. Anybody can ask anything they want for a house. Sold properties tell us what buyers actually agreed to pay.

From there I look for the closest comparable properties I can find, considering things like:

• Location and neighbourhood

• Property style and approximate square footage

• Bedrooms and bathrooms

• Age and overall condition

• Lot size

• Garage and outbuildings

• Finished basement space

• Renovations and upgrades

• Major components such as roofing, windows and heating systems

From those sales I build a Comparative Market Analysis, but that's only the first layer.

I cross-reference those comps against CREA statistics for the specific district and sub-district whenever the available data is meaningful. I'm looking at sale-to-list ratios, median days on market, months of inventory, current listings and recent sales activity. I also look at the MLS® Home Price Index and benchmark prices for the area and property type as another check against what the individual comparable sales are telling me.

Then there's something I informally call the neighbourhood ceiling.

Some subdivisions were largely built during the same period, with homes of similar size, style and construction. You might have a beautifully renovated house with $150,000 worth of upgrades, but if that neighbourhood has never produced a sale anywhere near the number you're hoping for, we need to pay attention to that.

Buyers don't suddenly forget where the house is because you installed a really nice kitchen.

There is usually a practical upper end to what a particular neighbourhood will support.

Finally, I look at the house itself. What's been renovated? What's original? What's been maintained? What hasn't? Are the roof, windows, heating system, kitchen and bathrooms relatively current, or are some of those things approaching replacement?

And no, something being twenty years old and not having exploded yet doesn't necessarily qualify as an "upgrade."

The comps tell me what buyers have been willing to pay. The active listings tell me what today's buyers can choose from. The market statistics tell me what is happening in that particular area. The house itself tells me where it belongs within that range.

Put all of that together and I arrive at the number I'm prepared to recommend, backed by actual market data rather than what I think you want to hear.

The Market Doesn't Care What You Need

This is probably the least popular part of the conversation.

Your mortgage balance doesn't determine market value. Neither does what you paid for the house, what you've spent renovating it, or how much money you need from the sale to buy your next home.

Those things absolutely matter to you, and they're important when deciding whether selling makes financial sense. But they don't change what a buyer is willing to pay.

I've had sellers tell me another agent said their house was worth considerably more than my analysis showed.

Could that agent be right and I be wrong? Absolutely.

I'm a Realtor®, not Moses coming down the mountain with your property's market value carved into a stone tablet.

But I can show you exactly how I arrived at my number. And if someone else's number is significantly higher, I'd want to see the sales and market data supporting it.

Because promising someone the highest price at the kitchen table is easy.

Selling the house for it is the part that counts.

The Bottom Line

Pricing a home isn't about finding the biggest number we can possibly justify and hoping somebody eventually pays it. It's about finding the number where the property, the neighbourhood and the current market intersect.

You want buyers paying attention while the listing is fresh. You want showings. You want interest. Ideally, you want more than one person deciding they want the same house, because that's where sellers get leverage.

Not three months later after two price reductions and thirty-seven conversations about why nobody is making an offer.

If you're thinking about selling, I'll run the actual numbers and show you exactly what I'm seeing.

You may love the number. You may hate the number. But at least it'll be based on the market instead of hope.

Call or text 506-852-6477. No pressure, just straight answers.

Strong Roots - Smart Moves

Shane MacPherson, REALTOR®, eXp Realty

This is one of those real estate questions where you can ask five people and somehow get six answers.

“Yes, sellers have to fill one out.”

“Nope, buyer beware. Sellers don't have to disclose anything.”

Both answers are usually delivered with impressive confidence, which unfortunately has never been a reliable indicator that something is actually true.

The real answer sits somewhere in the middle. The Residential Property Disclosure Statement, or RPDS, is not legally mandatory for every residential sale in New Brunswick. A seller can choose not to complete one. But before anybody gets too excited and interprets that as “excellent, I don't have to tell anyone anything,” there are some fairly important details worth understanding.

THE FORM ISN'T MANDATORY, BUT THAT'S NOT THE WHOLE ANSWER

New Brunswick's standard Agreement of Purchase and Sale specifically recognizes that a seller may or may not provide a current RPDS. Clause 10 gives the seller the option of indicating whether they WILL or WILL NOT provide one as part of the transaction.

I didn't want to rely on the usual real estate version of legal research, which is basically “I'm pretty sure somebody told me this once,” so before writing this I spoke directly with the Director of Education at the New Brunswick Real Estate Association. The answer was exactly what I suspected: the RPDS itself isn't mandatory.

The guidance to agents, however, is pretty straightforward. DISCLOSE, DISCLOSE, DISCLOSE! 

Sellers should be encouraged to disclose what they actually know, answer honestly, and where they genuinely don't know the answer to something, say so rather than guess.

So if somebody tells you every seller in New Brunswick is legally required to complete an RPDS, that's not accurate. But choosing not to complete the form does not magically exempt a seller from the laws surrounding misrepresentation, concealment or certain known defects.

The form is optional. Honesty isn't.

NEW BRUNSWICK IS STILL A BUYER BEWARE PROVINCE, MOSTLY

New Brunswick generally operates under the common-law principle of caveat emptor, which is Latin for “buyer beware.” Apparently unpleasant legal concepts sound considerably more civilized if you say them in Latin.

The basic principle is that buyers are responsible for doing their own due diligence. They're expected to inspect the property, ask questions and satisfy themselves with what they're buying. Sellers generally aren't required to point out defects that are plainly visible and reasonably discoverable by the buyer.

Those are known as patent defects.

A visibly cracked window, an obviously tired roof, damaged siding, or a deck that moves enough under your feet to make you suddenly rediscover religion are examples of things a buyer can reasonably observe.  You've got eyes. Your home inspector, hopefully, has better ones.  Caveat emptor generally puts the responsibility on the buyer to identify those types of problems before buying. Things become considerably more interesting when the problem isn't something you can reasonably see.

LATENT DEFECTS ARE WHERE THINGS CHANGE

A latent defect is a defect that wouldn't ordinarily be discovered during a reasonable inspection. It's the stuff hiding behind walls, underneath floors, inside systems or somewhere else a buyer couldn't reasonably be expected to find during the normal buying process.

This is where the seller's actual knowledge becomes important.

A good New Brunswick example is Duplessis v. Harrison. The buyers purchased a four-unit apartment building and later discovered extensive wood rot underneath it. The court found that the seller knew about the rot before the sale and that it was a substantial latent defect that should have been disclosed. The seller ended up responsible for the repair costs.  That's a pretty important distinction.

There is a large difference between:

• A seller genuinely not knowing a hidden problem exists.

• A seller knowing about a serious hidden problem and saying nothing.

• A seller actively doing something to prevent the buyer from discovering it.

Those are not the same situation legally, even though somebody somewhere will inevitably reduce all three of them to “buyer beware.”  So no, declining to complete an RPDS does not create some magical force field around everything the seller already knows.

YOU STILL CAN'T ACTIVELY HIDE A PROBLEM

There's another line sellers really don't want to cross, and that's actively concealing something.  Painting over a water stain without addressing the leak, covering a significant crack specifically so buyers won't see it, closing a wall over known mould or taking some other deliberate step to prevent a buyer from discovering a problem is very different from simply failing to volunteer information.  

Drywall is not a legal strategy.

Neither is paint.

If you're deliberately trying to prevent someone from discovering a defect you already know exists, you're moving away from a simple disclosure question and toward active concealment or potentially fraud. That's a much uglier conversation to have after closing.

IF A BUYER ASKS A DIRECT QUESTION, ANSWER TRUTHFULLY

Let's say the seller declines to complete an RPDS. Fine. They're entitled to do that.  Then the buyer's agent sends a written question asking, “Has the basement ever flooded?”  The seller knows it flooded twice in the last four years.

At that point, “No” isn't one of the available answers.

Once a seller makes a representation, whether that's on an RPDS, in an email, through their REALTOR® or in another written response, a buyer may rely on that representation. If the answer is knowingly false or misleading, the fact that the seller declined to complete an RPDS isn't going to make the false statement disappear.

Choosing not to fill out the form gets you out of filling out that particular form.  It doesn't give you permission to make things up afterward.  I wish that distinction didn't need explaining, but real estate has taught me never to underestimate the creative interpretation of a simple sentence.

AND IF YOU DO COMPLETE ONE, ANSWER IT PROPERLY

The RPDS is not a home inspection. It isn't a warranty that nothing will ever go wrong with the house, and it certainly isn't a certificate declaring the property perfect until the end of time.  It's a disclosure of what the seller actually knows about the property at the time they complete it.

Nothing more mystical than that.

If you know there was a problem, say so. If it was repaired, say that too. If you've got invoices, receipts, warranties, reports or documentation showing what was done, provide them. “Here's the invoice from the contractor who repaired it” carries considerably more weight than “Don't worry, Bob looked after it.”

If you don't genuinely know the answer to something, say “unknown.”  That's not avoiding the question. It's answering it accurately.  What I don't want sellers doing is staring at a question for ten minutes trying to engineer the least damaging possible version of a yes, or guessing because they think every box needs a confident answer. An honest “I don't know” is considerably safer than a confident answer somebody pulled out of thin air because an empty box made them nervous.

A CLEAN RPDS DOESN'T MEAN A PERFECT HOUSE

This works both ways.  Buyers shouldn't receive an RPDS with every box neatly completed and decide they can skip their own due diligence. The disclosure statement tells you what the seller knows. A home inspection is intended to help identify the things the seller may not know.

Those are two completely different jobs.

If a defect exists but the seller genuinely had no knowledge of it, the mere existence of the problem doesn't automatically mean the seller misrepresented anything. That's very different from Duplessis, where the court found the seller actually knew about the hidden rot.

This is exactly why I don't treat an RPDS as a substitute for a home inspection, and neither should a buyer.  One tells you what the seller knows.  The other helps you figure out what's actually there.

REFUSING AN RPDS ISN'T AUTOMATICALLY A RED FLAG

I also wouldn't automatically assume a seller is hiding something simply because they decline to complete an RPDS.  There are plenty of legitimate situations where the seller may know very little about the property. An estate may be selling a house where the people handling the sale never lived there. A landlord may have owned a rental for years without ever occupying it. An investor may simply not know the detailed history of every system in the building.  In those situations, a disclosure statement could end up containing more “unknown” answers than useful information anyway.

So “seller will not provide an RPDS” doesn't automatically mean there's a body buried under the shed.

But if I'm representing the buyer, it does mean I'm probably asking more questions, not fewer.

THE AGREEMENT OF PURCHASE AND SALE CAN CHANGE THIS

Here's another part that's easy to overlook.  The province may not require a seller to provide an RPDS, but the contract can.  Clause 10 of the standard New Brunswick Agreement of Purchase and Sale allows the seller to indicate whether they WILL or WILL NOT provide a current RPDS, and if they agree to provide one, the contract establishes a deadline for doing it.  Once the seller checks WILL and signs the agreement, “the province doesn't require me to provide one” isn't particularly helpful anymore.

You signed a contract saying you would.

Nobody forced the obligation on you. You volunteered for it, put it in writing and attached a deadline to it.  Contracts have an annoying habit of remembering those things.  The clause also gives the buyer an opportunity to review the disclosure statement and, depending on the wording and deadlines in the agreement, terminate if they aren't satisfied with what they receive.  That's why I don't treat Clause 10 like some meaningless checkbox everyone blows past on the way to the purchase price.

Words in contracts occasionally matter. Who knew?

REALTORS® HAVE THEIR OWN OBLIGATIONS

This is another important piece because a seller's obligations and a REALTOR®'s professional obligations aren't necessarily identical.

CREA's REALTOR® Code requires REALTORS® to make reasonable efforts to discover facts about a property that a prudent REALTOR® would discover in order to avoid error or misrepresentation. It also specifically says a REALTOR® shall not be party to an agreement intended to conceal facts pertaining to a property.

So if a seller tells their agent, “The basement floods every spring, but I'm not filling out the disclosure statement, so don't tell anybody,” that isn't where the REALTOR® says, “Brilliant. You've cracked the code.”

There isn't a code.

That's where the agent's own professional obligations kick in. Depending on the circumstances, the managing broker needs to become involved and the seller may need legal advice about what must be disclosed.  Representing your client's interests is part of the job.  Helping somebody conceal or misrepresent their property most definitely isn't.

WHAT I ACTUALLY TELL MY SELLERS

Every property is different, but the basic advice isn't terribly complicated: answer based on what you genuinely know, disclose things honestly and don't guess simply because you think the paperwork looks better with every box filled in.  If you've lived in the property for twenty or thirty years, you're naturally going to know considerably more about it than somebody selling an investment property they've never occupied.  If you've never lived there, maybe it's a rental property, an estate or an investment, you're naturally going to have more unknowns. That's fine.

My general approach is:

• If you know about an issue, disclose it.

• If it was repaired, explain what was done.

• If you have invoices, warranties, reports or receipts, provide them.

• If a tenant previously reported a problem and you dealt with it, that's information you know.

• If you genuinely don't know the answer, say “unknown.”

• Don't guess in either direction just because you think one answer looks better than another.

The goal isn't to make the form look perfect.  The goal is to make it accurate.

And if the answer starts getting complicated enough that we're debating legal liability rather than filling out a disclosure form, that's when I stop pretending to be a lawyer and tell you to speak with one. I already have enough paperwork in my own profession.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The Residential Property Disclosure Statement is not legally mandatory for every residential sale in New Brunswick. A seller can decline to complete one.  What a seller can't safely do is treat that decision as permission to knowingly conceal a substantial latent defect, actively hide a problem or make a false statement when asked about the property.  And buyers shouldn't treat an RPDS as proof that a house is problem-free either. It is one piece of the due diligence process, not a replacement for the rest of it.

The cleanest way I can put it is this:  The form is optional. Honesty isn't.

If you're getting ready to list a property anywhere around Greater Moncton and you're not sure what belongs on the RPDS, what should be marked unknown or whether something needs to be disclosed at all, that's exactly the conversation worth having before the listing goes live, not after an offer is sitting on the kitchen table.

And when the answer starts touching actual legal liability, that's a conversation for your lawyer.  Not Facebook, your neighbour or somebody's cousin who sold a house in 1997 and has apparently been practicing real estate law ever since.

Call or text 506-852-6477. No pressure, just straight answers.

Strong Roots - Smart Moves

Shane MacPherson, REALTOR®
eXp Realty

My sellers just spent $10,000 fixing up a house they didn't even live in anymore.

It was the best money they spent all year, and I can prove it with the numbers. Even by the most conservative math, that $10,000 came back as more than $33,000 at the closing table.

The Story

Back in 2019, I helped a young couple buy their first home, a semi-detached in Riverview. We stayed in touch over the years, and this spring they called me. They were moving out to the country, they had a baby on the way, and it was time to sell.

The house was 16 years old and it showed. Dated paint colours, worn flooring in the basement, dinged up baseboards, and all the normal wear and tear that piles up when you're busy living your life instead of maintaining a showpiece.

There was one more thing, and it's the thing nobody wants to talk about: pets. This was a home with big dogs and cats, and it smelled like it. Chewed baseboards, scratched trim, damaged paint, and a strong animal odour throughout the house. If you have pets, you know exactly what I mean, and you also know that you stop noticing it in your own home. Buyers notice it in the first ten seconds.

Nothing here was unusual. Nothing was broken. Just a house that had been thoroughly lived in.

When I did the evaluation, I gave them two numbers.

Sell it as-is: list in the $324,900 to $329,900 range, and be prepared for it to sit.

Do the work first: list at $364,900.

That's a gap of $35,000 to $40,000 on paper. The estimated cost to close that gap was about $10,000.

What They Did

They took the advice. Here's what the $10,000 covered:

A professional painter went through the whole house, which handled the dated colours and the pet-damaged walls in one shot. The house was professionally deep cleaned top to bottom (windows, walls, baseboards, trim), and then cleaned a second time, because one pass does not get pet odour out of a home. New flooring and baseboard trim went into the basement level, which took care of the worst of the wear and the chewed trim. The basement stairs were cleaned and painted, mini splits were serviced/repaired and a new dishwasher was credited in the sale. The deck got pressure washed and the yard was cleaned up.

None of this was a renovation. No kitchen gut, no new bathroom, no additions. Just paint, cleaning, flooring, maintenance on existing appliances, and elbow grease.

And here's the part that matters: when we listed, the smell was gone. Completely. Buyers walked into a home that felt cared for instead of walking in, wrinkling their nose, and mentally knocking $30,000 off their offer before they'd seen the second bedroom.

The Result

We listed at $364,900.

We had an accepted offer in 8 days.

Final sale price: $363,000. That's 99.5% of list price.

Run the math, and let's use the conservative version. Even if the as-is listing had sold at the very top of that range, $329,900, they still sold for about $33,000 more by doing the work. After covering every dollar of the $10,000 in prep, they put over $23,000 extra in their pocket. Compare against the bottom of the range and it's closer to $28,000. Either way, every dollar they spent came back at least double.

And that's the optimistic version of the as-is scenario. In reality, an as-is listing in today's market probably doesn't sell at the top of its range, or at list at all. It sits, it gets stale, buyers start asking what's wrong with it, and the eventual offers come in well below asking. The real gap was likely bigger than these numbers show.

Why This Matters Right Now

The Greater Moncton market has shifted. Buyers have more options than they did a year ago, and they know it.

Here's what that looks like in practice. Buyers walk through an as-is listing and make a list of everything that needs doing. Paint, flooring, that railing, the deck. Then their agent takes that list and uses it to justify a lowball offer. And they're not offering you the cost of the repairs off the price. They're offering the cost of the repairs plus the hassle plus a margin for the unknown. A $10,000 prep job becomes a $30,000 or $40,000 price reduction in a buyer's offer.

In a hot market, sellers could skip the prep and buyers would compete anyway. That market is gone. Right now, the homes that sit are the ones where the seller decided the buyer could deal with it.

What This Means If You're Thinking About Selling

When your REALTOR walks through your home and tells you it needs work before it hits the market, that's not criticism and it's not them being picky. That's them protecting your money.

A good listing agent should be able to give you two honest numbers: what your home is worth as-is, and what it's worth after the right prep. Then you can decide if the gap is worth the investment. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the work costs more than it returns, and as-is is the smart play. But you can't make that call without both numbers.

That two-price evaluation is exactly what I did for these sellers, and it's what I do for every seller I work with.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I renovate my house before selling it in Greater Moncton?

Usually no, not in the full renovation sense. Major renovations like kitchens and bathrooms rarely return their full cost at sale. What does pay off is prep: paint, deep cleaning, flooring repairs, fixing the obvious wear and tear. The example above returned at least $2 for every $1 spent, and none of it was renovation.

What does selling a house as-is mean?

It means listing the home in its current condition with no repairs or prep work done. Buyers see everything, and in a balanced or buyer-leaning market, they price everything into their offer, usually with a heavy margin on top.

Can I sell a house with pet smell?

You can, but it will cost you far more than fixing it would. Pet odour is one of the fastest ways to lose a buyer, and most won't tell you that's the reason. They just don't come back. The fix is usually not complicated: professional deep cleaning (sometimes twice), fresh paint, and replacing any flooring that's absorbed odour. If you've lived with pets for years, assume you can't smell your own home accurately and get an honest outside opinion before listing.

How do I know if the prep work is worth the cost?

Get both numbers from your REALTOR: the as-is value and the after-prep value. Compare the gap to the estimated cost of the work. If the gap is meaningfully bigger than the cost, the work is worth doing. If it's not, list as-is with your eyes open.

How long does it take to sell a house in Moncton right now?

It depends heavily on condition and pricing. Well-prepped, accurately priced homes are still selling quickly. The home in this example sold in 8 days. As-is listings and overpriced listings are the ones sitting.

Thinking about selling? Before you list, get the full picture. My free Seller's Guide walks through the entire process, including real closing cost numbers for New Brunswick, so you know exactly what to expect.

[Download the Seller's Guide]