Hold Harmless Letter: Fill & Download for Free

Thanks for the A2A Vince. A novice buyer…maybe, but usually a novice buyer has an agent who can vet it for them.Often it is the same as buying a house at a foreclosure auction. It doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t buy it, just that you need to be more cautious.I’ve seen some where the problem was a missing board in the back yard deck and some soft wood pieces. No reason not to buy that house because it needs some deck repair.You need to do your own “due diligence” and they are warning you that this is maybe not what we call a “turnkey” house that needs nothing. It likely needs something important that is not safe, but it could be as simple as a rotted deck in the yard.So no, having to sign a hold harmless letter doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy it. Someone’s going to buy it. That someone will likely make a lot of money buying low and selling high. But usually that is someone who has enough extra money to fix things.IF you only have a little bit of money and will have NO money after you buy the house, then yes. Stay away. These are usually not houses for the cash poor who barely have enough to make the downpayment and pay their closing costs.

As a long time pool owner, sometimes in areas where getting to a public pool was at best difficult, I have had a lot of experience with kids asking and some just helping themselves to the use of my pools.At first there was some pride in being able to share, but there was an accident where a child messing around on our large curved slide went off the side into the deck instead of the pool. They got pretty skinned up but fortunately no bones broken or worse. The parents were livid at me for not providing ample supervision and threatened to sue. Not long after another child was hurt when messing around on my diving board. He slammed his side into the side of the pool and broke some ribs. Frankly, he got lucky as things could have been much worse. I did get a nasty letter from that child’s parent’s attorney that my insurance company had to take care of. They never told me if they paid the family off or what.We had a bully who refused to behave and I cut him off. After for him what was a long wait I let him come back with promises he would behave. Within minutes he was dunking smaller children and laughing as they were fighting for their lives to just breathe. I had to manhandle him out of the pool and escort him to his parents. I told his parents he was not welcome back ever to either the home or pool. They got nasty saying that meant he could not play with his friends who all regularly played and swam at our home. I said they needed to do a better job raising their child as he was a mean nasty bully who would never be welcome in our home again, let alone our pool. They actually had an attorney call me and threaten to sue. I laughed at that attorney for trying to intimidate me and said he also was not welcome to come to my home or swim with us either.We tried many other things such as permission slips from parents with hold harmless clauses, etc. and none proved workable.Regardless, the school of hard knocks better known as life slowly built up a set of rules that got put in place to protect me and those who used my pool.Nobody ever was allowed to use our pool without permission and anyone caught was referred to the local police for trespass. I had one neighbor whose teens were slipping into my pool and skinny dipping late at night. They successfully jumped the back fence the first few times the police were called, but then were very surprised to find the police waiting for them on the other side of the fence. They did some nasty stuff in retribution after such as throwing dog poop into the pool. A stiff talking to by the police finally got them under control. They were still nasty and we were happy to see that family move not long after.All children who used our pool had to be certified as being able to swim or wear the life vests we provided when near or in the pool. Most children in our last two neighborhoods did not know how to swim, so I paid for an instructor to come in and give group lessons to get all of my neighbor children to the point they were swimming well enough to be relatively safe in our pool. The cost was little more than just getting my own children swimming and was worth its weight in gold. A few of those children went on to do well in competitive swimming and a few earned their WSI cards and worked as lifeguards. One came back years later and said after being a lifeguard they had far more respect for our “rules”.All were required to read and agree to abide by our posted pool rules. If any failed to abide they were kicked out and may or may not be allowed to return, solely at my discretion. I put up a plastic poster that had an excellent set of rules covering running on the decks, peeing in the pool, only getting into the pool if you were clean, no using the pool if you had sores, wounds, casts, etc., no rough housing permitted, dunking resulted in automatic expulsion as was pushing anyone into the pool, what toys were acceptable in the pool, never have glass or ceramics in or around the pool, food and drink in the pool were not allowed, always wear sun screen, never swim alone, always stay hydrated, etc..No children were allowed to use our pool without either their parent there to oversee them or me or my other half. We found adult children and others unreliable to babysit others, so finally just said no.

I've had to sign a couple. One had significant mold issues, the other was a meth lab house.The letter usually isn’t specific about the hazardous condition but rather lists any and all possible hazardous conditions.If there is a specific condition that directs that you can't go somewhere, that is usually also posted at the house. “Don't walk on the deck" is often clearly posted in the house on the door to the deck, as example.