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Showing posts from February, 2012

Must a Seller Disclose a Home's Macabre History?

A home being offered for sale was the site of a grizzly murder-suicide. Is the Seller obligated to warn prospective Buyers? A recent decision from Pennsylvania held that (at least in that Commonwealth) the answer is yes. Back in 2008 , we reviewed an Alaska court opinion in which a Buyer's lawsuit against a Seller was dismissed. In that case, the home's former occupant's badly decomposed body was discovered   long after her death. The Sellers said nothing to the Buyer. The Buyer sued the Seller, but the Court turned that claim down. Working with an equally gruesome set of facts, a Pennsylvania Superior Court has held otherwise, upholding a Buyer's right to sue her Sellers and the real estate agents on both sides of the transaction  for failing to disclose a murder/suicide that took place in the house for sale.   Milliken v. Jacono, 2011 PA Super. 254 The crime in question took place in 2006. Konstantinos Doumboulis, allegedly shot his wife and then himself, leavi