The Files tab's Required here rail lists the point-of-sale requirements LetterScript finds for this property, the starting point for the question every California sale begins with: what does selling it involve?
What you're looking at
Point-of-sale requirements are the disclosures and compliance items LetterScript finds for the property, derived from the property itself:
- Jurisdiction — city and county ordinances (sewer lateral inspections, energy and water conservation rules, transfer taxes, seismic gas shut-off valves, …). Requirements differ street by street; LetterScript matches the address to the right city, county or unincorporated area, including unincorporated pockets that look like they're in a neighboring city, and lists the local rules it has for that place. Where it has no local rule for a place, the list shows state and federal items only, which is not proof that the city or county has none.
- Hazards — overlay zones for the property: fire hazard severity, FEMA flood zones, seismic zones, special districts like Mello-Roos.
A few rules turn on facts the property itself can't show, such as whether a tenant lives there. Those sit under May also apply until the transaction settles them: the statewide Tenant Protection Act notice, for one, moves up to the required list only when the form set's answers say a tenant lives there and no exemption or local ordinance takes the tenancy out. The POS disclosure checklist explains how such a row moves and what its note says.
A single chip in the card's header gives the checklist's headline state — Complete (everything on the list is collected; the list itself may not be exhaustive), In progress, Needs review, Not started, or, when the property itself isn't pinned down, Address not set or No POS data. On a cancelled or withdrawn transaction it reads Deal ended: nothing left on the list is owed, so the rail shows no progress counter or Missing count and says so.
A transfer tax paid when the deed records reads Due at close until the close date passes, so it doesn't inflate the missing count or the counter while you're mid-escrow.
Approximate parcel match means the address sits outside every lot on the county's map — usually a condo unit, a new subdivision, or an address point placed in the street — so LetterScript tied it to the nearest parcel and tells you so, with the distance when the county data records one. Everything in the rail is that parcel's, which is right only if the parcel is. Check the APN against the property tax bill; if it's another property, use Not this property? Re-pick the address.
Linked by APN means the county's records have no address point for the street address at all — typical of a vacant lot with no street number yet — so LetterScript matched the parcel by the parcel number (APN) on the transaction's documents instead. Nothing in the county's address data confirms the link, so treat it the same way: check the APN against the property tax bill, and use Not this property? Re-pick the address if it's wrong.
Link needs re-check is the one worth knowing: LetterScript keeps its property data current, and if a refresh leaves it unsure that this transaction still points at the same parcel, it withholds the requirements rather than show you another property's rules. The transaction's needs-you list says Property link needs re-checking, and the rail explains itself in place with a Correct the property address button — re-pick the address and the requirements come back. An empty requirements card in this state means "we won't guess", not "nothing is required".
The property's hazard profile, and what "Not determined" means
Below the requirements, the rail shows the overlay zones for the address as chips — jurisdiction, wildfire severity, State Responsibility Area, FEMA flood zone, fault, liquefaction, landslide, dam inundation, sewer and fire district, and the FIRM panel the flood answer came from.
Under the chips, Official hazard maps as of names the vintage of each official map those answers come from — FEMA's flood map, CAL FIRE's fire hazard maps, the California Geological Survey's earthquake zones, and the state's dam-failure maps. A date appears only once LetterScript has confirmed its copy still matches what the publisher serves; a map that hasn't been confirmed is left out rather than given a guessed date.
Wildfire reads the zone the way the Natural Hazard Disclosure (NHD) statement does. The statement's fire item has three boxes — High in a State Responsibility Area, Very High in a State Responsibility Area, and Very High in a Local Responsibility Area — so a Very High zone, or a High zone in a State Responsibility Area, reads as an NHD item. A High zone in a Local Responsibility Area has no box, and whether the statement must say Yes for it is unsettled, so the chip reads NHD answer unsettled; ask your NHD provider instead of a plain yes or no. The home-hardening and defensible-space disclosures apply in High and Very High zones either way (the home-hardening notice to homes built before 2010). Local Responsibility Area zones come from the State Fire Marshal's recommended 2025 maps, and a city or county may have adopted a different zone, so confirm the zone locally.
State Responsibility Area is a separate NHD item: land where the state is primarily responsible for wildland fire. Its chip reads Yes, No (a Local Responsibility Area), or Not determined, which means CAL FIRE's maps don't classify the land — federal land, or local land with no mapped fire zone. The free Disclosure Map reads the fire zone and the State Responsibility Area the same way.
A chip you don't see is not a clean result. Some of these zones have never been determined for some California addresses, and that is a different fact from "determined, and the property is outside". Where that is the case you get an explicit dashed Not determined chip naming the topics involved, and a footnote explaining which one:
- FEMA flood — Zone D. Zone D is FEMA's own designation for areas where flood hazards exist but have not been analyzed. It is not a low-risk finding, and a lender may still require flood insurance.
- FEMA flood — unmapped. No effective Flood Insurance Rate Map covers the location at all.
- Liquefaction and landslide. The California Geological Survey only maps designated Seismic Hazard Zone quadrangles, which do not cover the whole state.
- Dam-failure inundation. Built from California's Division of Safety of Dams (DSOD) maps, which by law cover only state-jurisdictional dams — federally operated dams such as Folsom, Shasta and Friant are excluded, so a clear result is not a guarantee.
Verify before close
Some obligations depend on facts no public dataset can settle. Those appear as Verify before close notes rather than as requirements, because treating them as either a yes or a no would be wrong:
- Special taxes (Mello-Roos / CFD). Where our data shows a likely district, the note names it. Where it doesn't, the note says which kind of "no" that is — we hold the county's assessment roll and found nothing on this parcel, our coverage in that county is incomplete, we don't carry the county yet, or this specific parcel is missing from the roll we hold, which is an unchecked parcel and not a clean result.
- Sewer lateral / on-site wastewater. An always-on backstop, so a jurisdiction we don't carry a rule for reads as "verify", never as "no sewer obligation".
- Federal lead paint when the year built is unknown, plus the age-triggered state disclosures (pre-1960 earthquake booklet, pre-1994 water-conserving fixtures, pre-2010 home hardening in a fire zone). Home hardening applies only in a High or Very High fire hazard severity zone, so where the fire zone isn't determined for the address the note says that and asks you to check the zone, rather than saying the disclosure is due.
- A manufactured or mobile home's own year. County records date the lot, not the home. In a mobilehome park the year is the park's, so it says nothing about a coach that may be decades older. When the form set says the property is a manufactured or mobile home (the property-type question under About this property, or the manufactured-home answer in the questionnaire), a lead-paint item that came from the county's year reads May not apply until the home's own year is known, each year-based note says whose year it is, and where the county's year left lead paint off the list a note asks for the home's year instead. Federal lead-paint rules treat a manufactured home built before 1978 as target housing, with the rule's own exemptions: housing reserved for residents 62 or older, or for people with disabilities, where no child under 6 lives or is expected to live, a unit with no bedroom, and a foreclosure sale. Answer What year was the home built or manufactured? from the home's data plate, HUD label or HCD registration card (ticking Built before 1978 in the questionnaire counts too); until you do, the transaction's timeline treats "built before 1978" as unknown and shows a Check item asking for the year.
These are the same notes the public address lookup on letterscript.com shows, so what a client sees there and what you see here agree, with one exception: on a manufactured or mobile home, only the transaction knows the property type, so only the transaction says that the county's year is the lot's. The public lookup still reads that year as the home's.
A By status / By phase toggle controls how items are grouped. By status (the default) sorts them into what's collected, what's outstanding, and what's not applicable; By phase arranges them from pre-listing through close, so the tab reads as a to-do list in the order the transaction will actually need things. Either way, the legal basis is cited on each item.
How it connects to the rest of the transaction
The same property data drives the POS disclosure checklist in that rail — requirements that take the form of a document show up there, matched against what you've uploaded in the table beside it. Select a requirement to filter the table to it, or drag a document row onto a requirement to say that's the one that satisfies it.
A requirement someone settled by hand with Override… says so under its name, with who and when and the note they left: "Waived by Dana · Oct 12 — buyer's lender waived it", or "Marked satisfied by you · Oct 12". A requirement matched to a document that has since been removed says who matched it, and Reset to auto in Override… clears that match. On a disclosure the law won't let anyone waive, such as the Transfer Disclosure Statement, Override… offers Satisfied and Not applicable but not Waived; see the POS disclosure checklist for which rows those are.
Informational only — not legal advice. Rules change and the list may be incomplete; confirm each requirement with the city or county before close.