This agreement is conditional for a period of 30 days from acceptance hereof upon the Buyer conducting a building and/or other inspection of the property and being satisfied in its sole discretion with the results of such inspection(s), which shall form a condition hereof which only the Buyer may, at its option waive in hold or in part at any time during the conditional period. The Seller shall allow the Buyer and its agents access to the Property on two (2) occasions prior to closing, during normal business hour, upon two-(2) days written notice to the Seller, for the purpose of conducting such inspection.

In the marketplace, the big issue has always been whether there is an obligation to disclose the nature and existence of the stigma to potential buyers.

In the early 1980s Dorris Reed purchased a house in California from Robert King. Neither King nor his real estate agents told Reed that a woman and her four children were murdered there 10 years earlier. Reed learned of the gruesome episode from a neighbour after she moved in. She discovered that no one wanted to buy the house because of the stigma, and sued to set aside the sale. The California Court of Appeals ruled in Reed's favour, declaring that there was a duty to disclose facts known or accessible only to the seller if the information has a significant, measurable effect on market value.

Shortly afterward, California became the first state to pass a law defining the disclosure responsibility of an owner and real estate agent when selling stigmatized property. The law requires an agent to disclose the fact of a murder on the property for a period of three years after the event.

A similar case occurred in 1989 when bond trader Jeffrey Stambovsky put a deposit on a $650,000 house overlooking the Hudson River in Nyack, N.Y. Unknown to him, the vendor had published stories in Reader's Digest about the home's ghost, a cheerful little fellow in a revolutionary war uniform. The house had also been included in local walking tours and described as a "riverfront Victorian (with ghost).

The court said the real estate broker, as agent for the seller, was "under no duty to disclose to a potential buyer the phantasmal reputation of the premises," and admitted that Stambovsky hadn't a "ghost of a chance" of proving fraud.

Nevertheless, Stambovsky got his deposit back because the house had a prominent reputation and the non-disclosure of its history struck at the very essence of the contract between buyer and seller due to the reduced value of the house.

It has been said that about half of all American states have laws requiring disclosure of property stigma and in other areas the rule is caveat emptor, or buyer beware.

In California you have to disclose up to 3 years if someone has passed away on the property, I have to double check, but pretty sure. I'm sure as an agent you can get away with not knowing but always better to disclose, disclose, disclose even if it is a rumor that won't go away.

I wonder why it is 3 or 10 years?? Is that the period when the ghosts leave! What made the state congressional leaders pick those numbers?