A seller in West Vancouver had a straightforward plan for the Property Disclosure Statement on his $6.2 million property. He drew one diagonal line through every question, left every box unanswered, and added a single note: "Tenanted Property, Owner has never occupied." For twenty years, that maneuver was considered airtight. A 2005 BC Supreme Court decision had all but blessed it. Say nothing, sign nothing, and the buyer takes the property as it stands.
In 2025, the BC Court of Appeal disagreed. In Sewell v. Abadian, the court found that a blank, crossed-out disclosure form is not neutral silence. It is still a representation, specifically a claim that the seller has no knowledge of the items listed. The seller in that case did have knowledge. He had received a disclosure statement of his own when he bought the property, one that flagged an unpermitted addition in two separate places. The buyer got her $300,000 deposit back.
That ruling reaches well past West Vancouver. It reaches every waterfront lot along Comox's shoreline, from the bluffs above Kye Bay to the low-bank stretches near the marina, and it changes what a smart disclosure strategy looks like for anyone listing a high-bank or oceanfront home here in 2026.
Why This Hits Waterfront Listings Differently
Most inland resale homes have a fairly short list of things a seller might not know. Waterfront and rural-adjacent properties in the Comox Valley carry three categories that inland buyers rarely think about at all: septic systems, wells, and shoreline stability. These are exactly the categories where checking "do not know" used to feel like the responsible, low-risk answer. After Sewell v. Abadian, that habit works against the seller instead of for them. A vague or blank answer in a category where a seller plainly should know something, because they have lived on the property and used the septic system for a decade, is no longer read as caution. It is read as a claim.
Three Boxes That Got Riskier to Leave Blank
Septic systems. Vancouver Island properties on septic are regulated under the province's Sewerage System Regulation, and any installation, repair, or maintenance has to run through an Authorized Person, either a Registered Onsite Wastewater Practitioner or a professional engineer. Island Health keeps filing records for most systems built from 2005 forward, but the older the system, the less likely a paper trail exists. That means a Comox seller with a decades-old field cannot honestly write "unknown" and expect the form to shield them if they have watched the tank get pumped every few years or know it was never upgraded. The safer move is ordering a performance inspection from an Authorized Person before the home ever hits the market, not after a buyer's inspector finds something first.
Well water. The province's own guidance to well owners puts it plainly: sellers are strongly encouraged to disclose what they know about a well's construction, maintenance, yield, and water quality. Every domestic well should also be searchable in the province's Groundwater Wells and Aquifer registry. For a waterfront property where the home has always run on a private well, silence on water quality history reads very differently under the new standard than it did a year ago.
Shoreline stability. This is the category most unique to Comox waterfront, and the one with the clearest paper trail if a seller knows where to look. Within town limits, the Town of Comox's own planning department fields questions about whether a geotechnical review is required for hazard areas along the water, and a report triggered by that review does not disappear once the work is done. Further up the valley, in the unincorporated stretches the regional district oversees, the same mechanism plays out on the public record. A February 2026 Comox Valley Regional District staff report on a Driftwood Road property near Saratoga Beach shows exactly how it works: a site-specific exemption from the standard floodplain setback was approved on the condition that the engineer's report be registered as a permanent covenant against the property's title, one that also notes no Disaster Financial Assistance funding is available for the structure. That covenant does not go away when the property changes hands. It is a document sitting on file, discoverable by any buyer's lawyer doing a title search, and a seller who does not mention it is not protecting themselves. They are hoping the buyer's side does not look.
What Happens When the Form Doesn't Match the File
The consequences are not limited to sellers. BC's regulator has disciplined real estate agents directly over waterfront and coastal disclosure failures. In one Vancouver Island case, a listing agent was fined $60,000 for failing to disclose a protected archaeological site on a property, a designation that made the buyer's planned development impossible and forced a resale at a six-figure loss. In another case, two agents from a Sechelt-based office were penalized a combined $200,000 for not disclosing that a Pender Harbour waterfront property was restricted to seasonal use only.
Neither case involved a hidden defect in the traditional sense, a leaky roof or a cracked foundation. Both involved land-use restrictions that were fully discoverable in public records, the same kind of restriction a CVRD-registered covenant creates. The pattern is consistent: the paperwork existed, someone chose not to connect it to the sale, and the regulator treated that as a serious failure rather than an oversight.
A Better Approach for This Listing Season
None of this means disclosure has become more dangerous in the abstract. It means the old shortcut, treating the form as a formality to get through quickly, no longer works the way it once did. For a Comox waterfront seller, the more reliable path looks like this before the home ever goes live on MLS:
- Order a septic performance inspection from an Authorized Person, especially if the system predates 1990, when Island Health's filing records become far less reliable.
- Pull any well records through the provincial groundwater registry and have water quality tested if it has not been done recently.
- Ask directly whether any geotechnical report, floodplain exemption, or shoreline covenant has ever been registered against the title, and request a copy from the Town of Comox or the regional district, whichever has jurisdiction, if one exists.
- Fill in what is actually known, rather than defaulting to blank boxes as a way to move the transaction along faster.
Sellers who front-load this work tend to close faster and negotiate from a stronger position, because there is nothing left for a buyer's inspector or lawyer to surface later that changes the deal. It also lines up with the kind of listing presentation that photographs and video walkthroughs are meant to support: a home that has nothing to hide markets better than one that does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a Property Disclosure Statement legally required in BC? No. A seller can decline to provide one and sell as-is. But Sewell v. Abadian makes clear that choosing to provide a form and then leaving it blank is treated differently than never providing one at all, so the old workaround of signing a blank form no longer offers the protection sellers once assumed.
What if I genuinely don't know the answer to a question on the form? "Do not know" remains an honest and legitimate answer when it's true. The risk arises when a seller has lived with a system, a septic tank they've had pumped, a well they've tested, a shoreline report they've received, and answers vaguely anyway. Courts have shown they will look at what a seller reasonably should have known, not just what they claim not to.
Does a covenant on title always mean a problem? Not necessarily. Many waterfront homes in the Comox Valley carry covenants tied to routine floodplain or setback exemptions that were properly handled at the time. The issue is not the covenant itself, it's whether a seller discloses it clearly so a buyer can evaluate it with full information rather than discovering it during their own title search.
Selling a waterfront home in Comox comes with more moving pieces than a standard resale, and getting the disclosure conversation right at the start protects both the sale price and the timeline. If you're weighing a listing this season, Jane Denham Real Estate Group can walk through what your specific property's history actually requires. Start with a free home valuation and we'll help you figure out exactly what's worth documenting before a single buyer walks through the door.
