Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:04]

Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh, there's Chuck, this is Josh talking, and there's Chuck sitting there waiting on standby to launch this short stuff about real estate.

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But wait, wait. Scary real estate.

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Yeah. And this is one that you were pretty convinced we had done before. We may have talked about it, I think I but I cannot for the life of me figure out where like we don't have we've never done an episode on selling your house. We've never done one on haunted houses like we've done a haunted house, attractions with a ghost. But I don't know where this would have come up.

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You know, someone will know. Yeah. And they'll be like, you guys really screwed up again.

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This time you did a short stuff with something you've done already. I quit. How could you be such idiots? I'll never listen to you. I question everything you say from now on and everything you've ever said and stop being so liberal. I hate you. Stop talking about politics.

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Oh, man. Election. Your emails have been fun, but this is about something else. This is the scary season and this is about something that I was kind of curious of. Not that I've ever looked at a haunted house, but I just kind of wondered if your house is haunted or at least you think it is right and you believe in that kind of thing. If you have to tell a potential homebuyer, if you have to disclose that, like, you know, the basement, like some the windows are fairly drafty and there's a specter on the third floor.

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Excuse me, I didn't catch that. Did you say. Specter. Specter said what? Yeah. So your house is pretty old. Do you suspect it's on it? No. Although it's funny you mention that last week there were like. There was one night where a few weird things happened and they weren't like noises, they were just like all of a sudden something would be in a weird part of the house or. Oh, yeah, they were just a few.

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I can't remember what they were, but three very not intuitive placements of things where I was like, did you put this there? I was like, oh, why?

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And then suddenly you guys looked like Little Orphan Annie with cartoon sweat jumping off your friends and your pupils were gone.

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Maybe, but, you know, we kind of laugh. We're like this house on it. But I think after, you know, 13 or 14 years, we would have seen something by now.

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So so I agreed and started to get off track because I know this is short stuff, but have you watched The Haunting of Bly Manor yet now? Oh, my God, is it really scary? Maybe the best of the best anyone's ever put to film. It's so well done. It's so great. And I wasn't a fan of the haunting of Hill House. This is everything you wanted, the haunting of Hill House in basically every ghost movie or TV show to be.

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It's so good, man. Wow, you're going to love it.

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I put it on par with like the others and the orphanage. It's just beautifully done.

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OK, awesome. I'll check it out. OK, I didn't see the other one.

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Yeah, I watch a little of it and then just kind of stop but check this one out, OK. All right. So so the question you posed was if you think your house is haunted, do you have to disclose that in? The short answer is no. You don't have to disclose it. But the longer answer is if you don't disclose it and you actually do think your house is haunted and everybody else thinks your house is haunted, then you could actually get sued.

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If the person you sold your house to finds out that the house is haunted and decides they don't want to own a haunted house. And you might have to give their money back. And now you own two houses, the one you bought after you sold that house and the one you sold originally. And that's actually based on case law from the 1980s in New York.

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In it, yeah, there was a woman named Helen Akeley and she and her family lived in an old Victorian and upstate New York. And she claimed that they had ghosts there and she didn't keep it quiet. She was in the newspaper. She was in Reader's Digest. Yeah. She kind of talked to anyone who would listen about they were on the the ghost tour of the town. Yeah. And everybody knew this, I guess, except for the guy that bought it.

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One Jeffrey Stand Baffsky and in nineteen eighty nine, he came from New York City, bought the place for a tidy sum of six hundred and fifty grand. Yeah. Back in the 80s there was a lot.

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Yeah totally. I mean this must be quite a house. Yeah. And then the neighbors were like, oh so you bought the old haunted Akeley place and he was like, what? And he got mad and sued. And originally the judge said, now sorry, it's kind of buyer beware. Yeah. And then that was overturned in an appeal. And I think you should read the part of the decision there. It's pretty good.

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OK, this is me doing an appeals court judge from New York, reversing the decision in Stan Baffsky versus actually OK.

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Yes. Whether the source of the spectral apparition seen by defendant seller or part of psychic or psychogenic, having reported the presence in both a national publication, Reader's Digest and the local press in 1977 and 1982, respectively, wrote, the court defendant is stopped, prevented from going back on her word to deny their existence. And as a matter of law, the house is haunted. So for those of you listening, this is just a little preview of what's to come.

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Oh, yeah, for our annual Halloween episode, I'm down to one accent. Basically, I got one. He's doing accents now. Everybody, 12 years in, I'm doing accent. It's the best news that I've had in a long time. Josh is doing accent. Well, I was doing it for the Halloween episode and I just thought I'd sort it out for this. I love it. Yeah, because in real time we just read that. But this will serve as a little teaser.

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So just hold on to your hats for that one, everyone. And in fact, maybe we should take a little break and then and I can get myself together and then come back right after this. OK. Hey, everybody, it's your pals, Josh and Chuck, and we are here to tell you that the good people at Stanley, Black and Decker are celebrating the makers of the world, the men and women who build the world, who make, fix and create the world.

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Aren't they, Chuck?

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That's right, because October is maker month in Stanley. Black and Decker wants to take this time to recognize and honor the people and these skilled trades profession.

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Yeah. Did you know that right now there are 10 million global manufacturing jobs and three million trade jobs that are unfilled right here in the U.S. due to the skills gap? So there's no better time than now to consider a career in manufacturing or the trades. That's right.

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Just check out Stanley Black and Decker Dotcom Slash Maker Month to see how they're inspiring makers through upskilling scholarship programs, steam education and more, and meet 31 amazing makers across the globe. And, you know, I mean, if our podcasting thing ever just dries up and blows away, I could see us doing jobs where we use our skills to build and fix and create things. Can't you, Chuck? Maybe.

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But seriously, everyone, thank you to all the makers, doers and the bold thinkers out there. Your hard work does not go unnoticed. Stanley Black and Decker, proud to empower makers everywhere.

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So, Chuck, that judge reversed the decision and said, no, I think you mean magistrate this exactly.

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You have to give that six hundred and fifty thousand dollars back to Mr. Stron Bodansky and his Tambov Saeki. I'm sorry. And she she did. She said she was stuck with two houses. Now, the reason why is, you know, traditionally with law, it's buyer beware, caveat emptor, which is basically saying, like, if you didn't take the time to examine a house, you you are it's your own fault, basically. But this this circuit, the appeals court judge said, well, this is a material defect.

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Everyone knows it's haunted. So if you tried to sell it, whoever you sell it to is going to find out it's haunted. So it's a problem unless somebody wants to buy a haunted house. So it's affected. The real estate is affected. But then secondly, you couldn't possibly find this out just by examining the house.

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Right. And so except that it's an old Victorian and upstate New York, you could make Presente chance, right? Right.

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But he was saying like. So buyer beware doesn't doesn't doesn't apply in this situation and actually overturned it. So when he did that, there's no state laws on the book. There's no state I think Zillow did a survey. There's no state that says you have to disclose whether people think a house is haunted or not. But because that decision was made, there's now precedence for it. And people can point to it when they try to sue other people and say, look, see, other people have said this is correct.

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So find in our favor.

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Yeah, I think Minnesota has and its disclosure law something that says you it free sellers up from having to disclose nonmaterial facts, including if the home has any perceived paranormal activity. So it is actually listed, but it's listed in reverse. Right. Like saying if your house is on it, you don't have to say so. And I think it depends on what state you're in as. I mean, I guess this is precedent in New York, but would that be true for everywhere?

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Yeah, I think that that would apply in the country and possibly even in other Western countries, too, because it's such a rare, unique ruling that I think you could cite elsewhere. I don't know if it would hold up depending on where you were, but it is legal precedents in the United States.

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Well, there's a woman named Cindy Hagley, Cindy with an eye, and she is a real estate broker in California who I think she was forced to change the way to.

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And I when she became a real estate broker. Yeah. So she could with a balloon hanging above the sign. Right. That says Open House. She's with the Hagley Group and also president of something called Past Life Homes, which is a business where she consults to sell houses that may be haunted. Pretty in her deal is she's like, listen, you've got to disclose it in a couple of cases if it will affect the value of a home, kind of like what the court case said, like, hey, like this, you can't sell it for as much in the future.

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So you have to say something. That's one reason. And the other reason, she says, is if it's open and notorious. Right. Like if everybody in the town knows about this, like if just the person that lived there said, hey, there's a ghost, trust me, all this weird stuff happened.

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Yeah, it's been in Reader's Digest. Yeah, it's been in Reader's Digest and it's on a ghost tour. She thinks she feels like she has to disclose it. And the other sort of sticking point here is if someone asked directly, hey, is this old spooky farmhouse haunted, then you have to answer if you know something.

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Yeah. Which I think is pretty cool. But that's really, really that's a useful thing for everybody to know.

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When you're buying a house, just always ask. I think you're right.

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I mean, the worst they could do is be like, you're cuckoo. But yeah, I know this. Just send them, send them our way and tell them to listen to this episode. They'll be like, oh, OK. Now that makes sense.

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But what about if it's not necessarily haunted? What about if there was you know, if a father killed all of his family in their sleep one night twenty years ago? Creepy Chuck.

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So that would be something that's called psychologically affected real estate or stigmatized real estate, something that was like the site of a murder, a meth lab, the something that's openly and notoriously haunted. Those are called stigmatized properties. And when it comes to an actual physical death, not a haunting or anything like that, but somebody has died in the house, especially if they've died violently, whether by suicide or by homicide. There are actually some states that say you have to disclose this.

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Almost all states don't say you have to disclose it again, though you would be probably better off in the long run just to cover your your bases legally afterward, to disclose it after you're basically signing papers you like. By the way, you know, my grandmother died in your bedroom and then just run out the door with their. But in Alaska, California and South Dakota, you actually are required to disclose it ahead of time, right? And so if someone said is blindman or haunted.

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You would have to say, oh, yes, this is pretty cool stuff. It is. I love stuff like this. So yeah, I guess the the thing here is it's to be truthful is to be honest and open about everything from homicides to hauntings to if you've been making meth, you know, let the people know I've been making meth here. No big deal. This house is probably just infected forever, right?

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Well, that's it. That's it. About distressed real estate. And if you want to know more about it, go home shopping and see what you find and let us know what you find, too. And in the meantime, your stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio, is it the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows?