With the huge number of marijuana grow-ops in basements across the Lower Mainland, many families are finding out the hard way that the house or basement suite they’ve just moved into has a sordid past. It’s a past their real estate agent may never have told them about, and it’s one that can impact their health, as well as their safety.
“When a grow-op has happened in a house, the health issues to the next owners are huge,” said realtor Mike Rampf. “The water that’s used in the process of growing marijuana, the venting systems and the hazardous electrical systems – that needs to be brought to the attention of the new buyers, especially if a young family is moving in there.”
According to Rampf, the most important factor to take into account is how much damage was done to the house.
“They’re going to be running a lot of water into the house in order to water the plants,” he said. “The size of it – I don’t know if that really matters. It’s what they do to the house that will affect it – the amount of mould that will be caught in the house is really something that’s going to affect it, and what they do to the electrical, if they’re going around the power boxes.”
Besides the obvious safety concerns with living in a former drug house, there are numerous legal issues to be sorted out as well, which frequently result in the agent responsible for selling the house getting sued.
“If the realtor that sells the house is not aware that it used to be a grow-op, he hasn’t done his job,” said Rampf. “It’s all registered at the City of Vancouver. If it was a grow-op that was busted, the city will know about it.”
Real estate agents have a clear ethical and legal obligation to their potential buyers to be upfront about everything they know about the property, according to real estate lawyer Ron Usher of Bell Alliance in Vancouver. “It would be both an ethical and a legal problem if they knew about a grow-op and failed to disclose it when they were dealing with prospective purchasers,” he said.
Grow-ops have been found almost everywhere, and in order to avoid discovery growers are becoming more sophisticated. Accor---ing to a 2004 article by the Canadian Real Estate Association, some of the most telltale signs of a former grow-op are mould damage to interior walls, evidence of tampering with the electric meter and exterior wiring and improvised roof vents.
The process of buying and selling property in B.C. is tightly regulated, in particular with a document known as a Property Disclosure Statement, which is required by law to be filled out whenever real estate in B.C. changes hands. As its names suggests, the document describes any defects or issues with the property and is given to the new owner by the seller.
“The Property Disclosure Statement has a box on it asking, has the property been used for illegal purposes?” said Tyler Davis of the Real Estate Council of BC.
When it comes to questions like the precise definition of a grow-op, however, the law is less clear cut.
“It’s a difficulty of ‘What do you know?’ and I’m not aware of any specific legal definition of what constitutes cultivation for personal use versus what constitutes a grow operation,” said Usher. “As you can imagine, there’s a complete spectrum of possibility there.”
Even though recreational drug use is widely tolerated and prosecution rare in Canada, marijuana is still illegal under the Criminal Code. Even possession of less than 30 grams is technically punishable by a maximum of six months in prison. Cultivation for personal use in any amount is also illegal, the only exception being for approved medical use.
Another grey area concerns former grow-ops that have been renovated and repaired prior to selling. Even if all signs of criminal activity are removed, it still may carry a stigma in the eyes of some buyers, according to Usher. B.C. doesn’t have any “stigmatized property legislation” that covers properties that were the scene of crimes in the past.
“The question really is, forever in the future do you say, ‘Back in 1975 this used to be a grow-op?’” he said. “Some municipalities perpetually put on tax certificates something as cryptic as ‘bylaw violations,’ and then you find out when you investigate that, yes, there was a grow-op, 10, 15 years ago, but it was fully remediated. Are you ever beyond that as a problem?”