Thanks to scary movie houses, it is every property buyer’s worst fear to invest in a house with a creepy and traumatic history. If you’ve seen movies such as The Amityville Horror, Pyscho or Bettlejuice, then you know what we are talking about.
If only walls could talk, it would be interesting what a house with a history will say about its predecessor.
Every piece of material on earth has a history. While some stories are sentimental, some are just down right unsettling.
Caption: The Monte Cristo Homestead House in Junee is a Victorian-era mansion that earned the accolade of “Australia’s Most Haunted House”. Despite the ghastly history of the current property owners, Reg and Olive Ryan still pursued with restoring the house back to its former glory.
Ghosts, graphic nightmares, murders and accidents are the bulk of scary house movies, but it is scarier if you happen to know that a property you are scanning for sale shares a real-life version of that.
Should the Estate Agent Disclose the Property’s Dark History?
If a property with a tragic past appears on the real estate listing you are checking out, should you be told what exactly went on? Is an explanation due every potential buyer scouring the listings?
This explanation is called a material fact. You will find it under the Property Stock and Business Agents Act of 2002.
To cut it short, the law requires real estate agents to be transparent with potential clients and disclose the history – an instance of death and tragedy among others – within the legal definition of the property in question. Some people take these matters very seriously and having an informed decision is definitely important to any home buyer.
Given the full disclosure clause and with all possible facts laid out in front of you, will you proceed buying a property with a history?
Stigmatised home is a term used in real estate, referring to a property on the market for rent or for sale that has been a site of a gruesome death.
Basically, your buying decision depends on you and the culture, religious beliefs and superstitions that you have.
As mentioned earlier, every piece of material on earth has a history, and histories that every home has come in different forms.
More importantly, home histories can be anything. A house could have been previously lived in by a convicted criminal, a former drug dealer or by a couple who died in a fatal car accident. Some people also believe that some houses have bad energy.
There are houses with a history of a bad plumbing problem, or have been damaged by flooding once. Would you buy a house with termites history problem or other untenable situations that can put buyers off.
When elderly people die naturally in their homes, do real estate agents really have to disclose that detail to their prospective buyer?
Again, depending on your religious and cultural perspectives, if you know that the property you are viewing and considering to buy has a traumatic past and you are certain that it will affect you at some point, then it is best to look around for a new property to consider buying.
But if you think you could live there peacefully and you think it’s a good buy in most aspects, go ahead. It’s not really uncommon for people to buy homes with even the darkest of pasts. Interestingly, stigmatised homes that are marketed with disclosure usually rent or sell without a significant variation to the market rate.
How about you? How would you feel about a home with a dark past?
