Named on RECO's own material-facts list — but repaired-and-resolved is a different answer than patched-and-ongoing.
Short answer
Flooding history is a named material fact under RECO's own guidance, so if you know about it, you must disclose it to your client. Whether a seller must volunteer it to a buyer depends on its status: fully repaired flooding with no recurrence generally reads as resolved history, while cosmetically patched or unresolved flooding reads as an active latent defect that must be disclosed. A direct question must always be answered honestly, regardless of repair status.
RECO's Bulletin 7.3 — Material Facts puts “a history of flooding, structural damage, or any previous dwelling fire” directly on its own list of items “often considered to be material facts.” If you're aware of it, your obligation to disclose it to your own client — buyer or seller — is not in doubt.
Whether a seller must proactively tell a buyer runs through the same patent/latent framework as any other defect. RECO's Bulletin 7.4 ties the seller's legal obligation to whether the condition is a latent defect — one that makes a property unfit for habitation or dangerous, and not apparent on reasonable inspection. A working legal explainer applies exactly that test to flooding: fully-repaired flooding with no recurrence and a properly identified, fixed cause is generally treated as resolved history rather than a live latent defect, while “cosmetically patched, unresolved flooding looks much more like an undisclosed, ongoing latent defect” that must be disclosed.
Regardless of how the repair status shakes out, “direct questions call for honest answers.” If a buyer or their agent asks specifically whether the basement has ever flooded, the seller (through you) must answer truthfully — concealing evidence with a cosmetic fix ahead of a showing can itself amount to active concealment, which defeats any “as-is” protection regardless of the underlying defect analysis. The same honesty-on-direct-question rule governs stigma questions like a past death and a neighbour dispute.
A 30-minute call is enough to tell you whether your process holds up.
