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Duty to Disclose: Selling Stigmatized Property
Stigmatized property is a home or apartment where there has been a suicide, murder, cult activity, AIDS, famous adulteries, or other misfortunes and crimes. Examples include the house that Nicole Simpson was murdered in, which sold for much less than desired. Homes that Christie Brinkley’s ex-husband had affairs in had to be taken off the market.
The general rule in property buying and selling is caveat emptor – let the buyer beware. Also, a seller cannot be held responsible for failing to do something. Based on these traditional legal rules, sellers do not have to tell buyers whether the property is stigmatized.
The main exception to this rule, however, is where the seller makes a “misrepresentation,” or lies, about an aspect of the house. A seller has a duty to reply truthfully about important facts, and in a manner not aimed toward misleading the buyer. Even silence or evasive answers can constitute a misrepresentation if an average buyer would have been misled.
The next exception to the general rules is that a seller must disclose an important fact affecting the price of the property where that fact would not have been thought of by the buyer. For example, in some states, a buyer must inform a seller that a house is haunted, because a reasonably prudent buyer could not be expected to take this possibility into consideration.
However, sellers do not have to tell buyers if previous owners had AIDS or if registered sex offenders live nearby. The buyer is responsible for finding out this information on her own. Ultimately, a seller should use commonsense and disclose information that materially affects the price of the property, and that the buyer wouldn’t have been expected to ask about.
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