Wow - to disclose or not to disclose.........what are your thoughts? Interesting article following regarding state laws and disclosure regarding violent crimes, haunted houses and your new homes history.....
A family in Central Florida is outraged that they were kept in the dark about their new house's dark secret: A triple murder and suicide happened within the four walls they'd just begun to call home.
John and Kathy Johnson and their 24-year-old daughter Christina were horrified to learn that their bucolic Lake County ranch home was the scene of such a bloody crime — and worse, that the realtor and seller kept quiet about the grisly homicide.
But on May 5, when the Johnsons moved into the Greenbrier Street residence, a neighbor mentioned that local police Cpl. Michael Mount of Eustis, Fla., gunned down his estranged wife Kim, fellow cop Joe Gomez and Gomez' wife Serena in a jealous rage in February 2006, according to The Orlando Sentinel.
He then shot and killed himself. The crimes took place in what was then the Gomez family's house. A minor in the family inherited the property. "There was no way we could ever stay here," Christina Johnson told the Sentinel as she stood in the master bedroom, where three of the four victims perished. "It would be like living in a morgue."
Her mother, Kathy Johnson, said the family thought about staying in the home, but after finding out what had happened, they were scared to death and felt fearful whenever they were inside.
"We couldn't live with someone dying in the house," she said in a telephone interview with FOXNews.com. The house cost the Johnsons $227,000, but a Florida state law — one they want amended — allows real estate companies to withhold information about their properties' unsavory pasts, including homicides, suicides or deaths that occurred on the premises.
The fact that realtors are required to tell prospective homeowners about problems like leaky faucets but not about violent crimes and deaths that happened in the houses they're showing stuns Kathy Johnson. "They don't have to reveal that three people died and a person committed suicide in the home," she said.
Larry Beard, the owner of Beard Pippin Properties Inc. — who sold the Johnsons the house — told FOXNews.com that his real estate agency was not allowed to disclose information regarding the murders because of the Florida law.
Instead, a court-appointed personal representative for the estate of the former homeowner — a minor in the Gomez family — obtained an order preventing details of the murders from being revealed to potential buyers when the house was on the market, according to Beard.
The Johnsons told their realtor they wanted to put the home back up for sale May 7, and Beard said someone is interested in buying the property.
But the Johnsons will lose money because they have to sell the house for less than they bought it for, according to Kathy Johnson.
Beard said that he keeps in touch with the Johnson family almost daily, and the two sides are not on bad terms. He wishes he could have told them about the tragedy before they bought the ranch house, he said.
"We feel like we should fully disclose everything," Beard said. "It's the right thing to do."
FOX News' Catherine Donaldson-Evans and Audrey Bright contributed to this report.
So, what do you think? Do you know what the North Carolina law is? Does your prefessional representative know?
