I am selling my house and I was filling out the seller’s disclosure notice the other day and one of the questions on there is if there were any deaths on the property that were not caused by suicide, natural causes or accidents not relating to condition of the property. I can see why you would need to disclose possibly hazardous conditions of the property, but I didn’t really understand why they wanted to know about homicides. Is it because some people are afraid of ghosts? I live in Texas, BTW.
Thanks,
Rob
I believe this is the reason. Or people are just uncomfortable living where someone has died.
That isn’t that uncommon. A lot of people really, really wouldn’t like to find out about the fact that there was a teenage suicide or triple murder in the kid’s bedroom. Some people may be worried about ghosts but you don’t have to be to be concerned about the issue. If the house is truly infamous, people may bring it up and there could be amateur researchers hounding you and God knows what else.
How would you like it if you moved to Houston from far away and found out that your new house once belonged to the Andrea Yates family where she drowned all five of her children in the bathtub one morning?
There isn’t much harm in asking for such information. You may not want to buy a house if one of your kids has to hear about a gruesome murder or suicide that took place in his/her new bedroom.
I just had one other thought. Suppose the premises had been the scene of an unsolved murder. Could the police come in any time after the fact to look for evidence?
Thanks,
Rob
What’s stopping someone from buying Jeffrey Dahmer’s steak knives at a yard sale?! :eek:
Wouldn’t the standard for entry/search be the same – probable cause, warrant, etc.
Although come to think of it, if they did barge in without a warrant and found evidence, the accused would have no recourse, would he? After all, after selling the house, he no longer had a privacy interest, and has no standing to object to a violation of the new owner’s 4th Amend. rights.
That question does not exist on my state’s official Condition Report form, but my WAG is such information could be considered an “adverse factor” to the price and must be disclosed. However, if your state is anything like mine, you are under no obligation to disclose what you don’t know or couldn’t find out without digging. For example, if there are big bloodstains all over the house, you could hardly say you didn’t know about it, but if the only evidence of foul play was a 100yo newspaper article in some dusty archive that everyone has forgotten about, you aren’t expected to know it.
Sure, the fact that the owner of the property is not a suspect in the crime does not prevent police from searching. http://www.lawskills.com/case/ga/id/64948/
Nor does the passage of time.
Is that the factor that would adversely effect the value of the home’s value? BTW, this is all theoretical. No one has ever been killed on my property to the best of my knowledge. I just had a hard time believing that a legal document would tip its hat to irrational fears. It’s one thing to be worried that the police are going to come over to your house and start digging up your yard looking for shallow graves and another thing to be worried about the boogeyman.
Thanks,
Rob
Nope, it’s just superstition and psychological intangibles.
I work in real estate, and know that some people hold very irrational fears about such things. One person refused to buy a house because she “heard” there had been a murder in it.
My wife sells real estate and according to her here in Georgia you are not required to automatically disclose that type of information in advance but you are required to do so if specifically asked.
She actually sold a condo a few years ago where the prior occupant had committed suicide. An initial buyer found out about the suicide after the contract was signed and went into a panic; she was afraid that the “spirit” of the suicide victim would convince her children to commit suicide as well. There was a bit of a fuss but they let her out of the contract. (It did sell later to someone else; I don’t know if they knew about the suicide or not.)
So in this case at least the person was afraid of ghosts