What repairs am I actually required to make before selling in Massachusetts?

Short answer: Legally, almost none of the ones you're worried about. Massachusetts does not require a seller to fix a house up to sell it. The genuinely required list is short and specific: a smoke and carbon monoxide certificate at closing, a Title 5 inspection if the house has a septic system, and your lead paint obligations if the home was built before 1978. Everything else a buyer asks for — the roof credit, the furnace, the peeling paint — is negotiation, a lender's rule, or market pressure. Not law.

The Massachusetts specifics: the actual legal list

1. The smoke/CO certificate. Before a Massachusetts home changes hands, the local fire department inspects the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and issues a certificate of compliance (M.G.L. c. 148, §26F). The seller arranges it and pays the small inspection fee. It's a closing requirement, not a suggestion — the closing doesn't happen without it. If your detectors are expired or in the wrong places, this is the one "repair" that is truly mandatory: bring the detectors into compliance and get the certificate.

2. Title 5, if you have a septic system. Homes on septic need a Title 5 inspection at transfer — the seller arranges it, a passing result is good for two years, and a failure starts a repair obligation (our Title 5 post in this series walks through what a fail actually means). On town sewer, this never comes up.

3. Lead paint duties, for homes built before 1978. Two separate obligations get confused here. First, sellers must give buyers the state's lead paint notification — the form that says what is and isn't known about lead paint in the home. Second, and stronger: if a child under six will live in the home, Massachusetts' Lead Law (M.G.L. c. 111) requires the home to be deleaded or brought into interim control — that duty falls on the owner, and it can't be avoided by refusing to sell to families with young children; that's illegal discrimination on top of everything else. What the law does not do is require every seller of an older home to strip paint before listing. Notification for every sale; deleading where a young child will live.

4. Honest answers. Massachusetts has no general seller's disclosure form that most home sales must include — but answering a direct question falsely, or actively hiding a known problem, is misrepresentation, and it follows you past the closing. The legal duty is narrower than "disclose everything." It is: don't lie, and don't conceal what you know when asked.

That's the list. Nobody at the statehouse has an opinion about your dated kitchen.

What feels required but isn't: your buyer's lender

Here's where the confusion comes from. If your buyer is financing — most are — their lender has its own property standards, and for FHA, VA, and USDA loans those standards have teeth: peeling paint on a pre-1978 home, missing handrails, a roof at the end of its life, no working heat. A lender can refuse to fund until those are addressed. That's not Massachusetts law requiring you to fix them. It's a loan condition on the buyer's side — which you can refuse, at the price of that buyer. Sellers of older homes who want the widest financed-buyer pool fix the lender-list items because the market pays them to, not because a statute does.

What also isn't law: the inspection negotiation

Since October 15, 2025, Massachusetts buyers have a protected right to a home inspection — a seller can't make accepting an offer depend on the buyer waiving it (760 CMR 74.00). So an inspector will walk your house, and their report will become a negotiation: requests, credits, or a price conversation. Every item on that report is an ask, priced against the deal — not a summons. Some asks are worth doing (the safety items are usually cheap and calm everything down). Some are worth crediting. Some are worth declining, politely, with the price already reflecting them. Our fix-up-or-sell-as-is post in this series is the per-item test we use: will this dollar come back at the closing table?

So what should you actually do?

Treat the legal list as non-negotiable homework: detectors certified, Title 5 handled if it applies, lead notification ready if your home predates 1978. Then sort everything else into two piles — blocks a loan or scares every buyer (fix it, it's cheap relative to the damage) and everything else (disclose it honestly, price it in, and let it be negotiated rather than pre-paid). Sellers lose money in both directions here: fixing things nobody required, and refusing the small fixes that would have kept a financed buyer in the deal. The required list is short. Knowing exactly where it ends is worth real money.

Frequently asked questions

Can a buyer force me to make repairs after the inspection?
No. Inspection findings create requests, not obligations. You can agree, offer a credit, or decline — the buyer then decides whether to proceed under their inspection contingency or walk. What you can't do in Massachusetts is require the buyer to waive the inspection in the first place.

Do I have to fix a failed septic system before I can sell?
The sale isn't prohibited, but the system must be repaired or upgraded under Board of Health oversight, generally within 12 months of the failed inspection, and the obligation can pass to the buyer only by written agreement. Lenders usually require the fix, so in practice most sellers repair or price it in.

Do I have to disclose problems I know about?
Massachusetts has no general mandatory seller-disclosure form, but you must answer questions honestly and must not conceal known problems — and specific notices (lead paint, Title 5) are required where they apply. Practically: the defects you'd have to hide are the ones an inspector will find anyway. Honesty is both the legal floor and the better strategy.

Not sure which of your repairs are required, which are lender bait, and which are money down the drain? That's a kitchen-table conversation we have with every seller — Dan Pezzano, 617-417-9108 · Pete Pezzano, 617-913-2730 — or start at the free Home Seller's Workshop, Wednesdays at 7 PM on Zoom.

This is general information about Massachusetts rules, not legal or tax advice for your situation.

Published by The Pezzano Group | Powered by Rise Signature Homes · Licensed Massachusetts real estate team
Rules: M.G.L. c. 148 §26F (smoke/CO certificate), 310 CMR 15 (Title 5), M.G.L. c. 111 (Lead Law), 760 CMR 74.00 (inspection rights) — verified November 2026.