Short Stuff: Haunted Real Estate

Published Oct 21, 2020, 9:00 AM

Do you have to disclose the notion that your house may be haunted upon sale? Listen in to find out.

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Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. This is Josh talking, and there's Chuck sitting there waiting on standby to launch this short stuff about real estate. But wait, wait scary real estate. Yeah, and this is one that you were pretty convinced we had done before. We may have talked about it, I think I but I cannot, for the life of me figure out where Like we don't have We've never done an episode on selling your house. We've never done one on haunted houses, like we've done haunted house attractions, we did ghosts. But I don't know where this would have come up. Yeah, someone will know. Yeah, they'll be like, you guys really screwed up again. This time you did a short stuff with something you've done already. I quit. How could you be such idiots? I'll never listen to you, and I question everything you say from now on and everything you've ever said, and stopped being so liberal. I hate you. Stop talking about politics. Oh man, election, Your emails have been fun. But this is about something else. This is uh the scary season, and this is about something that I was kind of curious of, uh, not that I've ever looked at a haunted house. But I just kind of wondered if your house is haunted, or at least you think it is, and you believe in that kind of thing, if you have to tell a potential home buyer, if you have to disclose that, like, you know, the basement links some the windows are fairly drafty, and there's a spectrum the third floor. What excuse me, I didn't catch that? Did you say a specter? The specter says, what, Yeah, so your house is pretty old. Do you suspect it's haunted? No, although it's funny you mentioned that last week. They were like there was one night where a few weird things happened and they weren't like noises. They were just like all of a sudden, something would be in a weird part of the house. Or uh, there were just a few I can't remember what they were, but three very not intuitive placements of things where I was like, did you put this there? And it's like, uh what? And then suddenly you guys look like little or Fananny with cartoon sweat jumping off your foreheads and your pupils were gone. Maybe, but and you know what kind of laugh We're like, is this house haunted, but I think after, you know, thirteen or fourteen years, we would have seen something by now. So so I agreed, And sorry to get off truck because I know this is short. So, but have you watched The Haunting of bly Manner yet? Oh? My god, is it really scary? Maybe the best of the best anyone's ever put to film. It's so well done. It's so great. And I wasn't a fan of the Haunting of hill House. This is everything you wanted the Haunting of hill House and basically every ghost movie or TV show to be. It's so good man, you're going to love it. I put it on par with like the others and the Orphanage. Um, it's just beautifully done. Okay, awesome, I'll check it out. Okay, I didn't see the other one. Yeah, I watched a little of it and then just kind of stopped. But but check this one out. Okay, all right. So, so the question you posed was if you think your house is haunted, do you have to disclose it? And the short answer is no, you don't have to disclose it. But the longer answer is, if you don't disclose it, and you actually do think your house is haunted and everybody else thinks your house is haunted, then you could actually get sued if the person you sold your house to finds out that the house is haunted and decides they don't want to own a haunted house, and you might have to give their money back. And now you own two houses, the one you bought after you sold that house and the one you sold originally. And that's actually based on case law from the ninety eighties in New York, isn't it. Yeah, there was a woman named Helen Actley, and she and her family lived in an old Victorian an upstate New York. And she claimed that they had ghosts there and she didn't keep it quiet. She was in the newspaper, she was in reader's digest. She kind of talked to anyone who would listen about they were on the ghost tour of the town. And uh, everybody knew this, I guess except for the guy that bought it one, Jeffrey Stambowski. And in nine he came from New York City bought the place for a tidy sum of six and fifty grand. Back in the eighties, there was a lot. Yeah, totally, I mean, this must be quite a house, and then the neighbors were like, oh, so you bought the old haunted actually place and he was like what and he got mad and uh sued and originally the judge said no, sorry, it's kind of buy or beware, and then that was overturned in an appeal. And I think you should read the part of the decision there. It's pretty good. Okay, this is me doing an appeals court judge from New York reversing the decision in Stambovski versus Actley. Okay, yes, whether the source of the spectral apparitions seen by defendant Sela a parapsychic or psychogenic. Having reported the presence in both a national publication Rioto's Darn Dressed and the local press in nine and two, respectively, wrote the court defendant is stopped prevented from going back on our word to deny their existence, and as a matter of law, the house is haunted. So for those of you listening, this is just a little preview of what's to come for our annual Halloween episode. I'm down to one accent. Basically, I got one accent. He's doing accents now, everybody twelve years in, I'm doing accent. It's the best news that I've had in a long time. Jash is doing accent. Well, I was doing it for the Halloween episode, and I just thought I'd trot it out for this. Yeah, because in real time we just read that. But this will serve as a little teaser. So just hold onto your hats for that one, everyone, And in fact, maybe we should take a little break and then I can get myself together and then come back right after this. Okay, So chok. That judge reversed the decision and staid, nope, I think you mean magistrate, mrs actly, you have to give that six dollars back to Mr Strombovski and um Or Stanbovsky. I'm sorry. And she she did, she had she was stuck with two houses. Now. The reason why, you know, traditionally with law, it's buyer beware cavy emptor, which is basically saying like, if you didn't take the time to examine a house, um you you are it's your own fault, basically, But this this circuit, the or the appeals court judge said, well, this is a material defect. Everyone knows it's haunted. So if you tried to sell it, whoever you sell it too, is gonna find out it's haunted. So it's a problem unless somebody wants to buy a haunted house, so it's affected, the real estate is affected. But then secondly, you couldn't possibly find this out just by examining the house, right, um, And so that was that it's an old Victorian and of state New York. You right, right, But he was saying like so by or but ware doesn't doesn't um doesn't apply in this situation, and actually overturned it. So when he did that, there's no state laws on the book. There's no state. I think Zillo did a survey. There's no state that says you have to disclose whether people think a house is haunted or not. But because that decision was made, there's now um precedence for it, and we can point to it when they try to see other people and say, look, see other people have said this is correct, so fine in our favor. Yeah. I think Minnesota has UH in its disclosure law, something that says you, um, it free sellers up from having to disclose non material facts, including if the home has any perceived paranormal activity. So it is actually listed, but it's listed in reverse right, like saying if your house is on it, you don't have to say so. Um. And I think it depends on what state you're in, as I mean, I guess this is precedent in New York, But would that be true for everywhere? Yeah, I think that that would apply in the country and possibly even in other Western countries to um, because it's such a rare, unique ruling, I think you could cite it else right. I don't know if it would hold up, um, depending on where you were, but it is legal precedents in the United States. Yes. Well, there's a woman named Cindy Hagley, Uh, Cindy with an eye and she is a real estate broker in California who I think she was forced to change the Y two and I when she became a real estate broker. Yes, so she get died at with balloon hanging above the sign that's right, that says open house. She's with the Hagley Group and also president of something called Past Life Homes, which is a business uh where she consults to sell houses that may be haunted. And her deal is She's like, listen, um, you've got to disclose it. In a couple of cases, if it will affect the value of a home, kind of like what the court case said, like, Hey, like this thing, you can't sell it for as much in the future, so you have to say something. Uh. That's one reason. And the other reason, she says, is if it's um open and notorious, like if everybody in the town knows about this, Like if just the person that lived there said, hey, there's a ghost, trust me, all this weird stuff happened. It's been a reader's digest. Yeah, if it's been a reader's digest and it's on a ghost tour, she thinks she feels like she has to disclose it. Uh. And the other sort of sticking point here is if someone asked directly, hey, is this old spooky farmhouse haunted, then you have to answer if you know something, yeah, which I think is pretty cool. But that's really really um, that's a useful thing for everybody to know when you're buying a house. Just always ask. I think it's I mean, what the worst they could do is be like you're a cuckoo, but yeah, I know. Then just just send them, send them our way and tell him to listen to this episode and they'll be like, oh, Okay, now that makes sense. But what about if it's not necessarily haunted. What about if there was you know, if father killed all of his family in their sleep one night twenty years ago. Creepy chuck. So that would be something that's called psychologically affected real estate UM or stigmatized real estate, something that was like the side of a murder, a meth lab um, the something that's openly and notoriously haunted, as are called stigmatized properties. And when it comes to an actual physical death, not a haunting or anything like that, but somebody has died in the house, especially if they've died violently, whether by suicide or by homicide. There are actually some states that say you have to disclose this. Almost all states don't say you have to disclose it again, though you would be probably better off in the long run just to cover your your bass legally afterward, to disclose it after you're basically signing papers. You're like, by the way, you know, my grandmother died in this in your bedroom, um, and then just run out the door with their check. But in Alaska, California, and South Dakota, you actually are required to disclose it ahead of time, right and so if someone said is blind man or haunted, you would have to say, oh, yes, this is pretty cool stuff it is. I love stuff like this. Um so yeah, I guess The thing here is to be truthful, is to be honest and open about everything from homicides to hauntings too. If you've been making math, you know, let the people know. I've been making math here, No big deal. This house is probably just infected forever. Right. Well, that's it. That's it about distressed real estate. And if you want to know more about it, go home shopping and see what you find and let us know what you find too. And in the meantime, Short Stuff is apt. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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