Do your homework — all of it — before buying a house

Question: The listing agent who represented the seller of my home did not disclose information that there are plans to widen an adjacent highway that would require my home to be demolished.

My contract says that all disputes will be settled through arbitration. Does fraud provide a circumstance for being able to have a trial by jury? If a lawsuit would have to be settled through arbitration, what are my chances of receiving fair consideration of my circumstances?

Answer: The real estate agent representing the seller may not have a duty to tell you that there are plans on the books to widen a highway and demolish your home.

Plans like those may be considered part of the public record. Part of your job as a homebuyer is to make sure you know what’s going on in the neighborhood, or that you hire your own real estate agent to help you in this regard.

You should have spoken to someone at the village or town hall in which the property is located and asked them if there were any major improvements planned that might affect this particular property. Municipal officials would have certainly told you about the widening of the highway, showed you a map that included homes that had been slated to be demolished, and might even have been able to give you a start date, if the plans have been approved. Even if the plans for the highway aren’t officially a done deal, it’s likely that your local paper has published stories about it. You may not have done your homework.

While the seller’s agent doesn’t have a duty to disclose public information to you, if you ask a specific question, the agent and sellers have to answer it honestly. If you had said, “Are there any plans to widen the highway that would have an impact on this property?” the seller and agent would have had to give you an honest answer. As far as lawsuits go, I'm not sure you have a case.

Q: I’ve been trying to sell my home and I’ve encountered a problem. I looked everywhere and can’t find information on this.

I own a four-family house in New York City. The problem is that I only own 50 percent of the property and my neighbor owns the other 50 percent. Since I wanted to move on with my life, I asked my neighbor if she wanted to sell the house. Unfortunately, she doesn’t want to sell. Is there any way I can sell only my share of the house?

A: You say that you own a four-family house. Since you really own only half of a four-family property, the question is, how did you come to acquire your share?

Did your neighbor and your parents purchase the property and you inherited your parents’ share? Or, if you purchased this property, did you know that you were only purchasing a 50 percent share?

If you knew you only owned half of a property, you shouldn’t be surprised now that you can’t sell the entire property. If you and your neighbor both bought the home at the same time and bought it together, did you get financing for the purchase? If you did, did you both sign for the loan?

You need to get the papers from the purchase of the property together to see what it is that you bought. Is your building a cooperative building or do you have some sort of partnership agreement for co-ownership?

Once you have an understanding of your ownership in the property, you can know how to proceed. If you own a part of a cooperative building, you should be able to sell your interest in the cooperative. If you own a 50 percent interest in the property with your neighbor and you both have signed for the debt on the property, you will have a more complicated time.