Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

As a general proposition, a seller must disclose anything he/she/it knows about that is likely to affect the buyer's impression of the house's desirability and value. Certainly, the presence of asbestos as a component of the building materials wold be such a factor. Nevertheless, there are two additional things to be said about this. First, if the seller is genuinely unaware that the house contains asbestos, the seller need not make speculative declarations and may just say "don't know" if that is a fact. Second, the mere presence of asbestos in a house is not in itself an immediate cause for alarm. A lot of older-house asbestos is bound up in other building components such as concrete, and is not immediately dangerous or legally actionable.