Haunted addresses on record in California
What California requires
California law does not require sellers to disclose a property's reputation for hauntings or paranormal activity on its own, but it does require disclosure of a death on the property within the last three years. If a buyer directly asks about a death or a property's history, the seller or agent must answer honestly and cannot lie.
California doesn't have a general 'stigmatized property' immunity statute covering hauntings the way some states do for crime or disease stigma. What it has instead is a specific death-disclosure rule: under Civil Code Section 1710.2, a seller or their agent is not required to volunteer that an occupant died on the property, or how they died, if the death happened more than three years before the buyer's offer. Inside that three-year window, a death is generally treated as a material fact that should be disclosed, typically through the standard Transfer Disclosure Statement.
There's also a specific carve-out: owners and agents never have to disclose that a former occupant was living with HIV or died from AIDS-related complications, regardless of when that occurred.
The ask rule matters most for haunted-house situations. Section 1710.2 explicitly does not protect a seller or agent who makes an intentional misrepresentation in response to a direct question from a buyer about deaths on the property. In plain terms: sellers don't have to bring up an old death or a reputation for being haunted unprompted, but if you ask directly, they can't lie to you.
Paranormal reputation itself (ghost stories, a 'haunted house' label) isn't specifically addressed by California statute the way death is — there's no dedicated case law in California comparable to New York's famous Stambovsky v. Ackley 'legally haunted house' ruling. In practice, buyers who care about a property's history are best served by asking pointed, direct questions before closing, since that's the point at which California law clearly requires an honest answer.
General information, not legal advice. Laws change and turn on details — for a real decision, talk to a licensed professional in California.