So you enter a property that you own and find somebody dead from suicide or murder.What should you do?
If you want to stay within the law, you should alert the police.
If you want to save money, drag that body off your property when nobody's looking.
It might not be legal, but convoluted Quebec law ensures you'll save some serious coin if you do so.
Conversely, under Quebec's contrived legal logic, a potential purchaser could cash in mightily by killing somebody in a home before making an offer on it.
Sounds crazy? That's because it is.
Since July 1, 2012 Quebec law orders vendors to report when a person has died an unnatural death on their property.
Until then, Quebec was like all other provinces still remain: vendors in the rest of Canada do not have to disclose any previous murders or suicides on their property upon sale.
Indeed Quebec's Civil Code never suggested that vendors be obliged to make any such revelations.
Judges didn't interpret the code's spirit of good faith requirement to extend to offering a historical recollection of the people who lived in the property, as witnessed in the Knight vs Dionne ruling.
"Deaths, suicides and even murder in a home can't be considered factors that the vendor is obliged to reveal to the purchaser," wrote Justice Gabirel de Pokomandy in 2006, in a decision that rewarded the plaintiff no money.
But in 2011 a judge awarded $1,000 to home buyers Kattia Pineda and Jorge Bautista who sought $7,000 (small claims court maximum) from vendors Lucillia Ferreira and Bernardino Ferreira, noting that the vendor's father-in-law had committed suicide on the property and they weren't made aware of it.
The plaintiffs admitted that they didn't suffer any lost income or goods but they said that they felt distress and anguish and had a hard time sleeping after learning of the suicide, although they produced no medical claims supporting their assertions.
Judge Henri Richard awarded them $1,000.
New form required since July 1, 2012
Soon after, vendors were forced to fill out a form called Declarations by the seller of the immovable which demands vendors they reveal past murders and suicides that took place in the building.It didn't take long for the first case to roll in.
A Quebec couple named Jean-Francois Fortin and Sandra Bolduc purchased a home from Jean-Guy Mercier on Oct. 19, 2012 for $275,000.
They knew that a murder suicide had taken place on the property but they were led to believe that it took place in the garage and not the basement.
Blabbermouth neighbours set the purchasers straight about the slightly-different location of the grisly slaying. The purchasers suddenly didn't want the property and a judge rewarded them a full refund and ordered the vendor to pay the plaintiffs $38,000.
Once again: Quebec is the only province with a stigmatized property law.
About half of American states require disclosure.
Suicides-murders cost vendors about $10,000
One study from 2001 in Ohio suggested that homes would sell for three percent less when purchasers were informed of murders and suicides on the property. The homes also stayed on the market 45 percent longer than others.That three percent represents about $10,000 on the sale of an average Montreal home which goes for about $340,000 nowadays.
These days courts are jammed with hidden defect shakedowns, many entirely frivolous and inspired by buyers remorse.
Now most of us are not the first inhabitants of our homes.
It's almost certain that in the entire life of your old house a whole slew of unpleasant things happened at the very spot you sit down on your couch or eat your spaghetti.
Did somebody poke someone's eye out 80 years ago in the exact spot you're sitting right now?
Would you lose sleep if they did? Are you a victim for not being informed of this?
What about verbal humiliation and mental cruelty, should a vendor be obliged to offer details of that?
Should landlords also be required to inform tenants of unpleasant things that happened in their units?
Anybody suffering angst about such things needs to know this: ghosts don't exist.
Prozac does, however.
The disclosure law also contradicts the government's own policy, which suggests that suicides are private affairs as the Quebec coroner insists that media never bring them to light. So it makes no sense that Quebec home sellers are required to gossip about the fate of previous inhabitants.
So somebody kills himself in a house, or gets killed. The body is carried out. People mourn. The house is emptied and gets a new beginning.