How to handle a suicide in a foreclosed home when reselling

[Amanda Bartkoski]

We recently purchased a foreclosed home at an auction. The original homeowner was still living there with her boyfriend. We approached her when we obtained the deed to the house and had utilities in our name and tried to do cash for keys and offered assistance in hiring a company to aide in moving her things out etc she wanted a few days to look over the contract which we granted.

She ended up taking her own life in the house the very next day. Needless to say, this is a terrible situation for her family and our investment and we gave the family additional time and help with dealing with her belongings and such after the funeral to clear the house and grieve.

My question is, how do we best approach this when selling the house? We are located in Ohio and after talking with our legal team- there isn’t a law stating that we have to disclose what happened in the house but there also isn’t a law stating that we don’t. It’s basically a gray area of omission of a law so we feel it is an ethical dilemma.

Has anyone dealt with this before? Obviously, when dealing with foreclosed properties the homeowners have come upon hard times to be in that situation of losing their house. We are flipping this particular house.

Any input or advice would be appreciated!