Monday, May 14, 2012

To Tell Or Not To Tell

Open houses are always fun, especially when the neighbors drop by. They give lots of information about local quality-of-life issues and are a tremendous resource when researching where to live.
Recently I held an open house in a nice and quiet neighborhood. The property was very presentable until the neighbor came in and told me the lady who lived in the house was a heavy smoker. I did not not...ice any smells or stains myself, but the neighbor's input gave me much more background information about the property than I would have had otherwise.
In another example, a smoker noticed that the suppport beams had a different color from the rest of the walls, all because of smoke having differentiating effects on different parts of a structure.
The question is this: Does it matter? Is this something that I need to inform the buyers of? If YOU are my buyers, would you want me to disclose such a thing to you?
Does it matter to you?