Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Civil Code section 1710.2 provides that deaths on the property over three years ago do not need to be disclosed unless the buyer asks. If there was something particularly gruesome or otherwise notorious about the death, however, you may still be at risk if you do not disclose, because California law is not well established on whether the buyer can claim the entire course of events that lead to the death, and not the death itself, had a material impact on the value or desirability of the property. You wouldn't want to sell the Sharon Tate murder house without disclosing it, for example.

California has two types of disclosure, statutory and common law. Statutory duties of disclosure for residential sales are governed by Civil Code section 2079, and the sections following that section. Those sections set out the forms.

Civil Code section 1710.2 specifically addressed your question, however. "No cause of action arises against an owner of real property or his or her agent, or any agent of a transferee of real property, for the failure to disclose to the transferee the occurrence of an occupant's death upon the real property or the manner of death where the death has occurred more than three years prior to the date the transferee offers to purchase, lease, or rent the real property, or that an occupant of that property was afflicted with, or died from, Human T-Lymphotropic Virus Type III/Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus."

You can read that entire section here: http://law.onecle.com/california/civil/1710.2.html

Under Civil Code section 1710.2, you don't have to volunteer any information about deaths more than three years prior to an offer to buy, but you can't fail to answer questions honestly, if asked.