today's hot topic is a rather, well it's a strange one, but it's something that you need
to know and be aware of because it does exist.
Now, this is the deal, I want to give you an example of something.
Let's assume you're dealing with a buyer, hell, let's assume you are a buyer, and your
excited.
Most buyers are excited.
It's an emotional time when you're buying a house, and your excited and you and your
spouse are like, oh, I can't wait to buy the house, it's gonna be big, we're gonna do this
to it, we're gonna design it.
Anyway, it's an exciting time right, and then you find that house of your dreams.
You find the house of your dreams.
It's beautiful, it's just what you expected.
So, it's a beautiful house, and you get in the escrow.
Seller accepts your offer and now you're in escrow.
You're in a legal and binding contract.
Next step of course is the seller provides the buyer, the seller provides you the buyer
with disclosures.
Now, we know what disclosures are, we discussed that in the past.
The word disclosures, cut it down, disclose.
They tell us everything there is to know about this house, and the general area of this house.
You get that information, and you review it and you're looking at it, and you say yeah,
I know, I accept, I accept, I accept.
Today I wanna talk to you about a disclosure that's very, that's extremely necessary, and
it's extremely important, in some cases, it can be uncomfortable to talk about, but dog
gone it, it's really necessary to talk about, and that's the Megan's Law disclosure.
I want you to think about this.
Some of you don't know what a Megan's Law disclosure is all about, but I want you to
make sure you understand how it is, how it works, I want it to be crystal clear when
it comes to the Megan's Law data base disclosure.
It dates back to 1994, in July of 1994, think about this, in late July in 1994 there was
a little girl named Megan Kanka.
Megan Kanka, a little girl, seven years old.
This little girl is seven years old in New Jersey was raped and murdered by a hooligan,
and her parents weren't gonna have any nonsense as far as why did this happen.
They wanted to know how the hell did this happen, and they caught the felon.
It just so happened that he had a past.
He had done it before.
And if course the parents are like, oh my God, how could this happen.
How could they let this person fall through the cracks and now he did it to my daughter.
Seven year old girl he raped, and he murdered her in 1994.
So soon thereafter, I'm talking months thereafter, they came up with a law, and they named the
law after the little girl named Megan, so now the law is Megan's Law.
What Megan's Law does is this, it completely, completely, helps the buyer know and become
familiar as to who lives in the vicinity of the house that they are possibly going to
buy.
Now, wouldn't you wanna know what's going on in your neighborhood?
What happens is this, based on the Megan's Law, you can now, a buy can now, anybody can
now because it all public information, you can as a homeowner, if you are, or if you
just wanna know what's going on in the neighborhood you live in.
Shouldn't we have the right to know what sexual predators are living in our neighborhoods?
To go to this website, meganslaw.ca.gov, M-E-G-A-N-S-L-A-W.CA.GOV, and it gives you all the information on a
particular area.
You can type in your address, any address you want.
Let's assume your gonna buy a house at 1234 Main Street.
You're gonna buy a beautiful house, your dream house at 1234 Main Street.
You type in 1234 Main Street, boom, map comes up.
It'll show you any sex offenders that live in that area.
It'll show you a picture of their face, the offense they committed, it'll show you how
old they are, everything there is the know about them.
This is all public information.
Doesn't that benefit a buyer?
Doesn't that benefit all of us to know what's going on in our neighborhood?
I had a buyer many years ago, gosh maybe 15 years ago, I had a buyer.
He was in the military, Air Force, beautiful guy.
He had a beautiful wife, a beautiful little baby, they just had a baby, a few months old,
and they were excited to buy their house.
I showed them a house in a cul-de-sac, a cul-de-sac, let's see if you remember, a cul-de-sac is
a house on a dead end street.
It was a house at the very end of a dead end street, which is perfect for kids, right?
And they were so excited to buy this house, they were so excited.
They knew about the Megan's Law data base disclosure, so they went to the website and
they went ahead and typed in the address that they were in escrow with.
The property that they were in escrow with.
They typed it in there, sure enough, there was a sexual predator that lived on that street.
You don't think that bothered my clients?
They were gonna buy a property, they were in escrow on a property that was at the end
of the block, at the end of the cul-de-sac, and this particular sex offender, sex predator,
lived at the very beginning of the block.
Wasn't that kind of, I don't know, creep you out.
Wouldn't that make you feel aware, like oh my God, should we buy this house honey.
We're still in escrow and based on this new information, which is called a disclosure,
we can cancel.
Sure they wanted this house, but they sure wanted it to be a safe area.
Now, they get to make a decision, do we take the risk and buy this house knowing somebody
that we don't particularly want to live in our area, does live in this area.
Without my knowledge, they went and knocked on the neighbor's door, next door to the sexual
predator, which is all public record now, and they said, I just wanted to ask you something,
I'm thinking about buying a house on the block, have you ever met or do you know of the person
who lives next door?
The person who came out on the Megan's Law website, and they said, oh, no, he's just
moved out a few months ago, he no longer lives in this area.
Now, wasn't that a nice peace of mind now for our clients.
Now my clients have peace of mind that this particular person no longer lives in their
neighborhood.
So, of course they were a lot more comfortable saying, yep, Rico let's close this deal.
We still wanna continue with the escrow and close this house.
But if they hadn't went and knocked on the door, they would have been extremely skeptical.
They probably wouldn't have bought the house, and I don't blame them.
So is this website crucial?
Absolutely.
You want people to be aware of this website?
Absolutely.
Should every buyer be aware of this website?
Absolutely, I mean hell, ask yourself, would you wanna live next door to somebody, you
know who's got that type of criminal background?
Now, in regards to you as a realtor, how does this benefit you?
It's very simple.
See, disclosures, disclosures, disclosures is the name of the game and it's the law.
The law says that you as a realtor, if you are the listing agent, you represent the seller.
You and the seller are on the boat and you got the buyer here.
You and the seller must tell the buyer everything there is to know about this house and the
area.
The one thing that you and the seller do not know about, is if there are any type of sexual
predator in that area.So, because you don't know, you must provide what we call, ready,
wait for it, the Megan's Law database disclosure over to the buyer.
You're going to provide the buyer with one page and it says Megan's Law database disclosure.
You're gonna say, hey buyer, listen, I don't know who lives in this neighborhood, and if
I were you, take a look at this website here.
If I were you, I'd pay a visit to this website and see what's going on here.
That's what the law says, so as an agent, you don't know what's going on in this area,
and it's not your job to know what's going on in this area.
It's your guide to guide the buyer to where they can find this information.
So, what do we do?
As a listing agent with the seller, you provide the form to the buyer, and the form is called
the Megan's Law database disclosure.
That's why as agents we must protect our sellers by knowing what forms, what disclosures to
give to the buyer.
Because if the buyer moves into this area, without being given that disclosure, and they
do find out that one of these hooligans live in this area, they're gonna come after the
seller and they're probably gonna come after you as a listing agent, so play it safe, disclose,
disclose, and what's the third?
That's right, disclose.
I hope this helps you out.
It's not here to scare you.
Its here to let you know, hey, do it the right way.
Provide the form and say, hey listen, we don't know what's going on in this area, but if