What BRRETA requires of a broker
Georgia rule: under the Brokerage Relationships in Real Estate Transactions Act, a broker must make timely disclosure of adverse material facts about the physical condition of the property and improvements — including material defects and environmental contamination — that are actually known to the broker and could not be discovered by a reasonably diligent inspection by the buyer.
Two limits do the work: actually known, and beyond the buyer's own diligent inspection.
The trap: BRRETA expressly creates no duty to discover, so an answer requiring every defect a diligent inspection by the broker would reveal states a duty the statute does not impose. Revealing the seller's lowest acceptable price is also wrong — that breaches the duty to keep a client's confidences.
The one-mile neighborhood test
BRRETA also reaches adverse physical conditions in the immediate neighborhood within one mile, again only those actually known and not discoverable by the buyer through diligent inspection or by reviewing reasonably available governmental regulations, documents, records, maps and statistics.
Apply both halves. Fuel terminal contamination within a mile that appears in no public record must be disclosed. A landfill within a mile shown on the county zoning map need not be, because a reasonably available government map reveals it. Disclosing both ignores the discoverability limit; saying neither is covered ignores the neighborhood component; disclosing only the landfill because a government record makes it official reverses the test.
Stigma and the direct question
Georgia rule: Georgia bars a cause of action for failing to volunteer that a property was the site of a homicide. But the statute requires an owner or licensee to answer truthfully to the best of that person's individual knowledge when asked directly, unless answering would violate fair housing law, as with an HIV or AIDS question.
So when a buyer asks point blank about a homicide, answer truthfully. Refusing stops at the no-cause-of-action rule and misses the direct-question exception. The seller's written permission is not required, because a mandated truthful answer is not waivable confidential information. Referring the buyer to the sheriff's sex offender registry confuses the stigma rule with the separate registry safe harbor.