New Brunswick, Canada, realtor Jake Palmer was having trouble selling this nice St. John house (looks like a Dutch colonial to me). So he decided to try sparking some interest in the property by adding some adjectives to describe how unique and desireable it is. First he tried noting that it had indoor plumbing. Well, that's sort of a given. Then he described it as a "Love Shack, Baby!" That should have gotten some bites, but no.
Then he had a brainstorm. Hey, buyers, in addition to all its other "must haves," as the popular real estate shows are fond of saying, it's "Not Haunted!"
Of course, because the owners of this particular house aren't claiming there's a resident ghost, buyers need not worry, but what's the responsibility of Canadian sellers to inform potential purchasers that a phantom might be about? John B. Brennan of Lerners gives us a rundown of the law in Ontario. Briefly, a plaintiff must show by clear and convincing evidence that a haunting, or other unusual events, make a property unfit for use (that it falls into the category of that the law calls "stigmatized property). More from Matthew Wilson, also of Lerner's, here.
See also what SBMB Law has to say here. SBMB Law also notes the famous New York case of Stamovsky v. Ackley, in which an unhappy buyer prevailed over a seller who had failed to disclose that she had actually celebrated the haunted qualities of the house she sold him.
Similarly, the law in British Columbia puts the onus on the buyer to check out these kinds of latent defects.
Photos of the house, with its succession of real estate signs, here.
Follow-up here.
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