Should sellers disclose a house’s dark secret? In some states it’s the law
In Boston’s Little Italy, where tourists juggle coffee and cannoli, there is a 10ft-wide monument to revenge on the market that could be yours for $1.2m. It’s a spite house. An unusual architectural phenomenon, the property was built not with hope and love, but with venom and machiavellian planning, with the intention of irritating the neighbours.
It was reportedly built in 1862 and was the product of a feud between two brothers who inherited land from their father. When one brother returned from the civil war, he found his battle-shy sibling had constructed his own home on the lion’s share, leaving him a plot measuringabout 400 sq ft.
In retaliation, he erected the fourstorey home – directly in front of his brother’s, so that it blocks light and the view.
“You see that section of jagged wall?” says Vito, the realtor selling the property. “That’s what’s left of the first brother’s house. We know who won.”
A property is considered “stigmatised” by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) if it is “psychologically impacted by an event which occurred, or was suspected to have occurred, on the property, such event being one that has no physical impact of any kind.”
A building may be stigmatised because of a feud like the Boston house or a death. The building could be the former site of meth lab, the home of a cult or in some areas, a place that is allegedly haunted.
While roughly half the states in the US operate under some form of caveat emptor, Latin for “buyer beware”, putting the due diligence on the purchaser, the other half obligate sellers to disclose “stigmas”, or void the sale.
“It’s complicated,” said Deanne Rymarowicz, NAR associate counsel. “A seller can be subject to a law … that’s completely different to the town next door.”
As of 2019, at least nine states have death disclosure laws, according to Zillow. The strictest, California, re