Suicide and Other Violent Deaths Must Be Declared

Patrick Lagacé, one of La Presse's liveliest columnists, recently had a piece about a West Island couple who were having trouble selling their family home. You can read it here.

In an unimaginable turn of events, their 25-year-old son had committed suicide in the home three years before. They had many visits, but  potential buyers walked away when they learned of the unnatural death.

Quebec is the only jurisdiction in North America where vendors are obliged to disclose when a suicide has taken place in a property. It has been a standard question on the vendor's declaration since 2012.

In Lagacé's opinion this requirement is ridiculous. He hammers away at the fact that ghosts aren't real and don't haunt houses. He does not see why a grieving family should be doubly victimized, first by suicide and again by having their home stigmatized.

The courts disagree and have come down heavily on vendors and brokers who try to whitewash this information.

In 2013, a Superior Court judge cancelled the sale of a $275,000 home and ordered that the vendor pay the buyers $15,000 in moral damages and $23,000 in expenses after the vendor went out of his way to hide a double suicide in the the home he sold them.

The guilty vendor had picked the house up cheap from the estate of the double-suicide couple. He then tried two different listing brokers, both of whom told him the suicide had to be disclosed, before selling the property himself on Du Proprio. He told the buyers that with Du Proprio there was no such thing as a vendor's declaration. (An agent would have told them differently but hey, they thought they were saving money by cutting out the agent. Pffft!)

It did not take long for the buyers to hear about the double suicide from a neighbor. They were devastated. Instead of a first home in which to start their family, they were saddled with a place notorious among the neighbors and wreathed in sadness. They never even moved in.

 Lagacé also pointed to the case of a South Shore real estate agent fined $2,000  after she "minimized" the importance of disclosing such information to a prospective buyer. The home in question might have been the scene of a violent death some 40 years before. It was the home where Quebec Justice Minister Pierre Laporte was held hostage during the October Crisis. Laporte was killed by his FLQ kidnappers but it has never been established whether he was killed in the house.  

Peu importe, the disclosure form also covers violent death and asks whether the vendor is aware of any factors related to the property that might be likely to reduce its value, restrict its use, reduce the revenues it generates or increases the expenses associated with with operating it. (It isn't just about violent death. You would also have to disclose if the house had ever been a brothel, a motorcycle clubhouse, a gambling den...)

To the La Presse columnist the disclosure rule is ridiculous. He falls back on the very logical assertion that "There's no such thing as ghosts."  Case closed.

If only we were Spock-like creatures ruled entirely by logic...

I've twice had to deal with properties touched by suicide. It is true that selling such a home can be a tricky thing requiring tact, empathy and forthrightness.

Columnist Lagacé can assert that ghosts don't exist all he wants. I'm here to tell you firsthand that some people care very much whether there has been a violent or unnatural death in a home.

I sold a home for the estate of a well-regarded professional a few years back. He had lived alone in a nice house in a good neighborhood.Nearly every single person who walked into that house could tell that there was something off about it. There were no outward signs of violence because his death had not been violent. There was a certain sadness that dusted the place.

Each time I disclosed the nature of the vendor's death, people gasped, even took a step back, as though trying to evade the information. I was amazed at how many times I ended up on the sofa, listening to complete strangers share the devastating details of suicides among their own family and friends.

A Vietnamese family, mother and father as well as their adult children, was ready to make an offer but backed out as soon as they heard about the suicide. Death is not necessarily a dealbreaker, the father told me.
 "If an person lived a good life and then died in his own bed of old age, that would be an auspicious death," he explained. Suicide was never auspicious.

Ultimately, I sold the house to another immigrant family. The woman with whom I dealt absorbed the news. She did not care much about the suicide. Her cousin had commited suicide in her 20s, she mentioned. She asked whether I thought the kids of the neighborhood would single out  her kindergarten-aged son because of it? Would they refuse to come over to play?

I told her that I couldn't imagine they would. Kids aren't like that. With time, the stigma of the house would fade. Instead of being the house where Mr. X killed himself, it would become the house where the Y family lived.

Still, when the Y family does decide to sell, they will have to disclose the suicide, too. I can't imagine that anyone will care in 25 years but what I think and what the law says are two different things.

A Few More Thoughts on On Dream Home as the Scene of a Crime

Yesterday, by pure accident, I stumbled upon an MLS property where the listing broker noted discreetly that the home had been the scene of a suicide. It was mentioned in a note to other agents, not visible to the general public.

I investigated a little further. Yup, the vendor noted the suicide in the vendor's declaration. Here's the interesting part. The suicide occurred before she bought the property. Date and details unknown.  That sent me scampering back through the previous MLS listings for this particular property (What can I say? It was a slow day and I didn't feel like vacuuming. Or folding laundry. Or raking leaves.)
None of the three previous listings mentioned the suicide, either in a note to other agents, or in the vendor's declaration.

It could be the the previous vendor verbally disclosed the suicide to the buyer. It is also possible that the info was written in the declaration but that the declaration was not posted to the MLS site.

I found it curious that the current seller has left an online signpost about the violent death, one that won't be easily erased. From now on, the house's sad history will be there for brokers to see. She gets points for honesty, though I suspect that honesty might make it harder to sell her house.

When Your Dream Home Was the Scene of a Nightmare

Yahoo News picked up a Toronto Star story today about a Bowmanville, Ont. couple who bought what they thought was their dream home, only to discover that the property was the scene of a double murder 15 years earlier.

The owners are now suing their real estate agent, claiming she should have disclosed the house's sordid past to them. They are also suing the former owners, who purchased the property after the crime.

According to the Toronto Star story (link here until it goes dead): 

"The Real Estate Council of Ontario, which regulates the industry, issued a warning to (agent Mary) Roy last month on the grounds that she “deliberately withheld a material fact known to her” regarding the murders from the buyers, contrary to the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act. The decision followed a complaint by the (buyers) earlier this year.
The council cited several provisions in the act’s code of conduct, including not engaging “in any act or omission that, having regard to all the circumstances, would reasonably be regarded as disgraceful, dishonorable, unprofessional or unbecoming a registrant.”

The Star story goes on to say that the case raises questions about what a real estate agent is obliged to disclose.

"Lawyers say the case involves a grey area in common law on the issue of “duty to disclose” — and how to assess what information that entails.
If the claim proceeds to trial, it could become a test case for the doctrine of “caveat emptor,” or buyer beware, and whether the couple’s situation is an exception to that general rule."

You will be glad to know that in Quebec there is no such ambiguity about what an agent is obliged to disclose to a potential buyer. The Real Estate Brokerage Act (REBA) says:

 A broker or agency executive officer must inform the party represented
and all other parties to a transaction of any known factor that may adversely
affect the parties or the object of the transaction.

In plain English, if I know something about a house,I must disclose it, whether the buyer asks or not.
The law goes further. Each time a client and I sign a brokerage contract before listing a property for sale, we also complete a Vendor's Declaration. This six-page checklist is where sellers declare everything they know about their house, from the age of the roof to - oh yeah, by the way -  someone was killed here.

"To your knowledge, has there ever been a suicide or violent death in the immovable?"

In case that is too narrow a question, the declaration also inquires:

"To your knowledge, are there any other factors relating to the immovable not mentioned in these declaration that are liable to significantly reduce the value or restrict the use thereof, reduce the income generated thereby or increase the expenses relating thereto (e.g. development or construction project, environmental problems (e.g. radon, abnormally high noise level, unpleasant odor, etc.)"

The latter question covers pretty much any other eventuality, whether the house was used as a brothel, a marijuana grow-op or a slaughterhouse for chickens. (Where did THAT come from?)

The vendor's declaration is attached to the listing so that other agents can see it. Buyers are given a copy before they make their offer and must sign and date the declaration as proof that they are aware of all a house's quirks and defects.

There's no gray area in Quebec law about whether or not you must disclose. When in doubt, disclose.