Short Stuff: Haunted Real Estate

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

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
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.

(00:24):
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

(00:44):
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

(01:05):
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

(01:26):
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,

(01:46):
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

(02:06):
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

(02:27):
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

(02:48):
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,

(03:12):
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

(03:32):
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

(03:53):
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,

(04:13):
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

(04:34):
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

(04:57):
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,

(05:19):
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

(05:40):
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.

(06:01):
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

(06:39):
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

(07:03):
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,

(07:24):
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

(07:45):
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

(08:07):
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

(08:28):
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.

(08:49):
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

(09:09):
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

(09:31):
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,

(09:52):
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

(10:12):
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

(10:33):
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

(10:54):
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.

(11:16):
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,

(11:40):
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,

(12:04):
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

(12:26):
and see what you find and let us know what
you find too. And in the meantime, Short Stuff is apt.
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