Haunted Real Estate – disclosing when someone dies on the property.

It is OCTOBER!!!  Spooky season is here, and I am your resident spooky realtor!  I love all things spooky, spoopy, and a bit macabre!

So let’s talk haunted houses!

One thing that fascinates me is ghosts!  Would you buy a haunted house?  I personally lean on the skeptical side of things, and I am not quite sure that I believe in ghosts.  So a haunted home wouldn’t bother me!  What if you moved into a home and things started moving?  What if you saw shadow figures? What if you heard creepy disembodied voices?  What would be the line that you draw and you say, heck no, get me out of this horror movie home!

You always see happy families moving into the homes in the movies and they are quickly driven batty with the haunted happenings.  To date, no one has called me to ask if I sold them a haunted house!  I am going to say, I have had previous clients that have had their homes blessed before moving in to rid the property of bad spirits.  Though, they didn’t think the place was necessarily haunted, it was more of a cleansing of sorts.

I have lived in Lubbock my entire life and you hear about a couple of haunted hotels, an evil spirit that hangs out at the old Lubbock  Cemetery, a student that still haunts the bell tower at Lubbock High, but I don’t know of any true haunted houses.  I may just be missing out on this though!  Do you have any haunted tales to tell?

On a serious note, in Texas, you do have to disclose death if it is NOT; natural death, suicide, or unrelated to the property condition.  When someone is murdered or a death occurs related to the property condition you DO have to disclose.  Best practice though is to disclose death when you are aware of it.

I don’t think all deaths turn in to hauntings, but reading your Seller’s disclosure notice when you purchase a home may save you from a ghost or two!

Would a disclosed death on a property make you think twice about purchasing?  I am curious to know!