Does your dream home have skeletons in its closet?
The house you’re eyeing could be hiding spooky secrets. Perhaps a murder happened upstairs, or maybe there’s a body buried in the backyard. A ghost could even be lurking in the basement.
Don’t let the chilling past of your dream home take you by surprise. According to the National Association of Realtors, 47 states and Washington, D.C., have laws requiring sellers or listing agents to disclose or answer questions about a property’s condition or a home’s history, including death, violence and things that go bump in the night.
Got a creepy feeling about a home that you just can’t shake? You can investigate by using Google and the city’s newspaper archive at the library. And you can see if the address is listed as a crime scene, as many police reports are public record.
Here are real-life terrifying tales of houses with a horrific past:
· A medium who can communicate with the deceased kept hearing sounds, voices and screaming. She called her landlord to ask if someone had been killed on the property. Though Florida law didn’t require him to disclose the death, he told her that yes, in fact, a murder had taken place on the lot.
· An upgraded home on the water in an upscale neighborhood in St. Petersburg, Fla., could easily fetch $400,000 if there were no issues, but the house will likely sell for only $75,000. Blame it on the American Indian burial ground in the backyard. The Indians were Calusa or Seminole, but either way, the Realtor must disclose the burial ground because it’s a material fact about the physical condition of the property.
· A bank-owned home in Sioux Falls, S.D., became home to an undisclosed infestation of bats. They buyers wrote the bank a letter to get out of the contract, and the bank gave them their escrow money back.
Stigmatized houses don’t scare everyone away, though. Bargain hunters swarm to these properties with hopes of paying 10 cents on the dollar.
