NHD Report vs. TDS: What's the Difference?
New agents constantly mix up two of California's core disclosure documents: the Transfer Disclosure Statement (TDS) and the Natural Hazard Disclosure (NHD) report. Both are required in most residential sales, and both protect the buyer — but they answer completely different questions. Here's how to keep them straight.
The TDS: the seller's own disclosure of condition
The Transfer Disclosure Statement is governed by Civil Code § 1102. It's the form where the seller personally discloses the condition of the property based on what they actually know: roof leaks, past flooding, additions built without permits, neighborhood nuisances, disputes over boundaries, and so on.
The defining feature of the TDS is that it's subjective and first-person. It reflects the seller's knowledge and honesty. The seller completes it; the seller's agent and the buyer's agent each add a visual-inspection portion. No third party "verifies" the answers — the value of the TDS lies in the seller's candor and the agents' inspections.
The NHD report: a third-party hazard determination
The Natural Hazard Disclosure report backs the disclosure required by Civil Code § 1103. Unlike the TDS, it is objective and third-party: a professional provider analyzes government maps to determine whether the property sits inside any of the six statutory hazard zones — flood, fire, and seismic.
The NHD doesn't ask what the seller knows; it establishes what the maps say. That's why it can shift hazard-determination liability away from the agent and onto the provider — a protection the TDS, by its nature, can't offer.
How they complement each other
Think of the two documents as covering different halves of "what a buyer needs to know":
- The TDS covers the property itself — its physical condition, defects, and history, as known to the seller.
- The NHD covers the property's location — its exposure to mapped natural hazards, as determined by government data.
A buyer needs both. A pristine TDS tells you nothing about whether the home sits in a floodplain; a clean NHD tells you nothing about the leaky roof. Together they give the buyer a complete picture.
Who prepares each?
TDS: the seller completes the main disclosures, and both agents add their inspection portions. It cannot be delegated to a third-party vendor — it's a personal disclosure.
NHD report: ordered from a professional NHD provider, usually by the listing agent, escrow, or the transaction coordinator. Because it's a data-driven determination, it's the piece that should always be outsourced.
Common points of confusion
- "They're the same form." They're not — different statutes, different purposes, different preparers.
- "If I do the NHD, I can skip the TDS." No. Both are independently required in most transactions.
- "The agent can just fill in the hazard zones." Eyeballing the maps forfeits the liability protection a professional NHD report provides.
Bottom line
The TDS is the seller's first-person account of the property's condition; the NHD report is the third-party determination of the property's hazard exposure. Both are required, both protect the buyer, and they cover different ground. To go deeper on the NHD side — and on who pays for it — see our complete guide to NHD reports and who pays for the NHD report in California.