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This Dutch Colonial in Amityville,on the South Shore of Long Island, better known as the Amityville Horror house. Ronald DeFeo, Jr. shot and killed six members of his family at the house.
This Dutch Colonial in Amityville,on the South Shore of Long Island, better known as the Amityville Horror house. Ronald DeFeo, Jr. shot and killed six members of his family at the house.
If you're even slightly squeamish, get ready to do some extra detective work.
If the property was the site of bloody crime, the seller does not have to divulge that scrap of information.
In a decision handed up in Pennsylvania last week, a panel of Superior Court judges reaffirmed that the sordid reputation of a home - no matter how gruesome - does not count as "material defect" and does not have to be disclosed to the buyer.
"The fact that a murder once occurred in a house falls into that category of homebuyer concerns best left to caveat emptor" - let the buyer beware, the court wrote.
For those of you shopping on the other side of the Delaware River, the same rules apply in New Jersey.
Janet S. Milliken bought a 14-year-old Delaware County McMansion in 2007 from Kathleen and Joseph Jacono. The Jaconos had spent $450,000 to buy the Thornton property at auction in April and flipped it, selling it to Milliken in August for $610,000, according to court records.
In September, Milliken learned her new home had been the site of a murder-suicide the previous year.
