Realtors share property purchase horror stories
April 30, 2008
Ellen Roseman
Imagine buying a house, hiring professionals to inspect it and still finding skeletons in the closet (so to speak).
John Morand, a lawyer, bought a waterfront property near Port Hope, Ont., home of a former uranium refinery. He got a safety certificate from the low level radioactive waste office. But while digging a new foundation for an extension, he found radioactive soil and lots of it – nine barrels, to be exact.
After the soil was cleared away, the replacement sand wasn't drained properly. This led to a discovery that all the sill plates, along with many joists and studs, were rotten.
"The renovations have taken two years and more money than we paid for the house," he says in True Real Estate Stories, a book compiled by two realtors who have their own tale to tell.
Tom and Kerrie Everitt were resodding their Vancouver yard when they found a gravestone for Sergeant Joseph G. Morley, a World War I veteran.
They searched for a final resting place for the soldier's tombstone – now next to his wife on Vancouver Island – and started a website, www.truerealestatestories.com, where people could relay their own experiences.
They paid contributors $75 to $150 and used 69 stories in the book. Each has a movie title and a category – such as The Sum of All Fears, listed under Sci-Fi, about the lawyer's adventure with radioactive waste and rotting joists.
I asked the Everitts, who were in Toronto this week, about what clients can learn from their self-published book (available online at Chapters.Indigo.ca for $17.44).
"We wanted to show the human side of real estate, the most underrated side of the transaction," said Kerrie, a former corporate lawyer who joined her husband's real estate practice after having children.
"We get a lot of flak about commissions and wanted people to understand the realtor's side, what goes on behind the scenes that clients know nothing about," said Tom Everitt, who grew up in Mississauga before heading west.
Mark Weisleder has written a cautionary book for realtors that is also helpful to clients.
The Toronto lawyer is strongly in favour of more disclosure by sellers, even when it's not required by law.
Is there any difference between disclosing a physical defect, such as moisture leaking into a basement, and disclosing a psychological defect, such as suicides committed at the property?
"I believe there is no distinction whatever," he says in Real Estate Salespeople, Beware! (ECW Press, $29.95).
"Psychological defects or stigmas are probably matters that you would like to know about if you were buying the property for yourself."
He mentions a British Columbia case, where a buyer sued after not being told that a public beach next door to a property was actually a nudist beach.
"I know what you are thinking: Wouldn't a nudist beach add value to the property?"
The seller won at the B.C. Court of Appeal. But both sides had to deal with stress and lost time over a three-year period. Meanwhile, the lawyers' fees added up to more than $100,000.
He doubts this will become an ironclad precedent. In some U.S. states, sellers have to disclose suicides or murders at a property – and this may soon extend to neighbourhood conditions, such as group homes or subsidized housing.
His advice to realtors: Disclose everything you know to be true.
The book is sold at Chapters and at the author's website, www.markweisleder.com.
Ellen Roseman's column appears Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. You can reach her at eroseman@thestar.ca by email.
Toronto Star