Must you tell tenants about a property?s grisly past, asks Rosie Millard
Twas a dark and stormy night, and the tenants of a fabulously high-end loft apartment in Clerkenwell, central London, rather wanted to move out. And to do so before the date of the break clause, which they knew would cost them dear. At which point ? maybe before, maybe after ? the couple claim to have heard something chilling from downstairs: the sound of children wailing, to be precise, at an hour when children ought to be tucked up in bed.
Now you may or may not believe in ghosts, but the fact is that their beautiful, giant, 2,400sq ft triplex, complete with spiral staircase and reception room large enough to entertain ?100 guests for canap?s?, is part of a development carved out of a former Victorian school, which was itself constructed on top of the Clerkenwell House of Detention.
The House of Detention was once a well-used remand jail; in the mid-19th century it housed 10,000 prisoners a year, including children. And although it was demolished in 1890, the whole of the underground level, including plenty of cells, was left intact beneath what later became the school playground.
Indeed, in the early 1980s, the remains of the jail were briefly reopened as a sort of ghoulish tourist site that attracted the sort of people who go on ?haunted London? walks, sparking the usual stories of strange drops in temperature, sounds of unidentified footsteps and, most terrible of all, the cries of a little ?lost? girl. A ghostbusting team from the BBC even turned up to investigate.
All the stuff of fairy tales, but not, apparently, for the couple renting No 36. They decided they could not possibly stay in a flat with such a scary history, no matter how many people they managed to fit in it for canap?s. They kicked up such a fuss that they managed to get out of their contract. The flat is currently empty and available for rent.
Unsurprisingly, David Salvi of estate agency Hurford Salvi Carr, which is marketing the place at ?1,400 a week, is not very happy about ghostly issues haunting his company?s promotional efforts. ?I?d rather not go there,? were his first words to me on the subject. Anything more? ?I think it?s a red herring,? he continues reluctantly. ?A particular tenant tried to say they were seeing ghosts. They said they heard things and tried to wriggle out of the contract early. I think they just used it as an excuse. There are 60 flats in the development, and nobody has ever said they have heard haunted noises there before. It?s a well-established block.?
But should the tenants have been told about the block?s colourful past before they signed the rental agreement? Standard precontractual inquiry forms for buyers include the highly subjective question: ?Is there any other information that you think the buyer may have a right to know?? No such question appears in tenancy agreements, though.
Anyway, as we adults all know, one person?s horror story is another?s dinner-party anecdote. A friend of mine has a former church as her second home ? the garden is in the graveyard, and there are some children?s gravestones in the front hall. She and her family agree it is all part of the place?s wonderful medieval history, and the church does a roaring rental trade when she is not there.
?Agents don?t have to disclose if there is a weird past to a building,? says Salvi. ?It?s up to the agent and the landlord to decide whether it?s worth disclosing or not. I can?t think of any legal requirements to go into the history of where a flat is built. Otherwise, we would be disclosing the history of all our houses. And in Clerkenwell, where we are, every building we have has a history. There are even plague pits in the area! And I don?t think we would want to tell people about those.?
Up the road, Dominic Grace of Savills estate agency is dealing with the giant King?s Cross development, which has a wealth of history dating from Boudicca (whose body apparently lies under Platform 9 at King?s Cross station) onwards. ?I don?t know if the paranormal features on the list of things you have to tell people about,? he admits. ?Feng shui does, though.?
With Savills? giant list of investors from Asia, knowing about the feng shui of a building is much more important to the bottom line than knowing about the ghosts of lost Victorian children. ?There are some clear guidelines that we have to adhere to. For example, it can be bad if you build a flat that looks directly down a street.?
How about dealing with ghosts? ?Our investors might have issues in investing in something that was a former hospital, or a former graveyard. We bring in a feng-shui expert who advises us what to do, and then we promote that we have done that in our marketing. It remains a significant market, and with China coming to the fore, we expect a lot more money coming into UK property. One should never ignore the feng-shui factor.?
Maybe Hurford Salvi Carr would get their ?magnificent triplex? in Clerkenwell away quicker if they employed an exorcist and put that in the marketing information. On second thoughts, maybe that is not such a great idea.
Buy-to-let advice from Rosie Millard can be found online at www.timesonline.co.uk/investmentproperty
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