Your dream home could have been a crime scene

You've worked hard and put away money for a deposit.

You've spent your evenings and weekends touring potential new homes with your real estate agent.

Then you sign the contract, move into your dream home and find out someone has been murdered there.

"A violent murder is not a defect in the property," said Shami Sandhu, a real estate agentandformer member of the Edmonton Police Commission.

Disclosure rules vary across Canada.

In Manitoba, real estate agents are required to disclose when the property has been a grow op. In Quebec, full disclosure of anything that might affect the buyer is the rule, including criminal activities and even reports of hauntings.

Here in Alberta, it's buyer beware when it comes to properties where violent crimes or other illegal activitieshave taken place.

Sellers are required to be honest about any defects to the property, but deaths and crime aren't considered defects.

The Real Estate Council of Alberta says it's up to buyers to ask their real estate agent if the property they want to buy has been the scene of a death or major crime.

But unless you ask, you may not learn that the dream home where you want to raise your kids used to be a grow op or a meth lab if no modifications were made to the home.

Tell your agent you don't want a murder home

In real estate, thesehomes are known as "stigmatized" properties.

"Any kind of stigmatization in a property can be disclosed if a purchaser asks," said James Mabey, chair of the Realtors Association of Edmonton.

"So it's really important for the buyer's agent to have a conversation with their purchaser as to what may or may not affect their purchase decision."

Sandhu agrees on the need to let your agent know your concerns.

That can include things like a suicide on the property or reports that a house is haunted.

"With the population that's growing older, we're going to find more and more people that have passed away in their homes," he said.

"So if that's a concern whether that's your personal beliefs, your religious beliefs you should always let your agent know that's a concern, because that's really not a defect in the property and required to be disclosed."

Moving into a former grow op

Even if your house was a former marijuana grow op, it can be difficult to find that out.

"If the grow op itself or the meth lab was never issued an order under Alberta Health Services, there'd be no record anywhere that the house had originally been a grow op," said Gary Barnes, president of Western Site Technologies Inc., which does inspections on grow ops and methamphetamine labs.

Barnes said buyers unwittingly moving into a former grow-op house happens more often than people realize.

"If there's no order against it, people are giving it what I call the five-gallon overhaul," he said. "Basically these houses are going out to market."

Even going through the list of grow ops on the Alberta Health Services website doesn't help much. For 2016, only one Edmonton house is listed with an active order to vacate because it's a grow op.

Const. Brad Lacher with theAlberta Law Enforcement Response Teams said the number of grow ops in Edmonton is "a pretty big problem" even though ALERT only dismantled five of them last year.

He's even seen licensed marijuana growoperationswith as many as 1,200 plants on one property.

Owners of illegal grow ops usually don't care what happens to the place, Lacher said.

"You'll have running water on the ground going through electrical wires. You'll have black mould.There's a total disregard for the property itself."

'Living in a mould factory'

That could lead to some serious health concerns for the people who are now going to be sleeping, eating and living in that house.

"Because of the high levels of humidity and heat in the house, there will be a lot of mould and fungal activity behind the walls'" said Barnes."You could well be living in a mould factory."

Bad as it is, it's not just mould in the walls that could be a problem.

"Frequently the chemicals that are used in the hydroponics can back-siphon into the water system," he said.

Barnes said the best way for buyers to protect themselves is to know the signs of a grow op house and to hire a professional home inspector.

"Some of the telltale stuff they want to look for is if there has been evidence of disturbance around the [electricity]meter.

"They cut through the concrete wall right by where the meter is, where the power comes into the home, and they'll try and reroute the power so they can obtain power without paying for it."

Barnes said people who run grow ops also try to route the exhaust from the heat away from the home because a high heat signature is often a telltale sign of illegal activity.

"Have there been modifications made inside the house to channel exhaust into the attic or garage?" he asked.

"Typically they'll cut holes in floors and stuff like that. The only way you tell is you look from the basement up to see if the joists have been disturbed or cut."

If you've already moved into a former grow op, it's an expensive and time consuming fix to get the house back into shape.

"A contractor has to go in and typically strip out all of the drywall in the house...just to make sure there isn't any fungal activity," said Barnes.

"You can imagine that someone buying one of these places is going to look at somewhere north of $40,000 to put these things back in order. That's if there's no structural damage."

Getting out of your sales contract

If you find out the house was a former grow op before you remove your conditions of sale on the contract, you can walk away and get your deposit back, said Sandhu.

"If you've removed conditions, my recommendation is you talk to your lawyer," he said.

"If the problem's been fixed then you may not have an option."

And if you don't find out until after you've already moved into the house, Sandhu said you'll be looking at a court battle.

"The only solution at that point is to take them to court," he said.

As for homes with a history of violence or sudden death, Mabey said the best thing to do is make sure you tell your real estate agent up front what you can and can't live with.

"They need to have a conversation with them about what is and isn't a deal-breaker and what questions their agent should be having on their behalf," he said.

"I would say to my clients 'It's the four corners of the property, and anything you want to know, you let me know and I'll ask.'"