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A house seller, who has sued the former owner himself due to defects and deficiencies in the house and has received compensation, can not remain silent about it when selling the house.
This is the lesson of a judgment of the Gulating Court of Appeal which is now legally enforceable.
The landlord deliberately failed to inform about the flaws and deficiencies of the housing and thus sold the housing which was in a state significantly worse than the one that the buyer could hope for. This allowed the buyer to increase his purchase.
In addition to indicating the previous litigation, the saleswoman also wrote to the real estate tax office in which she maintained low standards due to house defects and saved the property tax.
When she decided to declare in court that she had headed the property tax office of the municipality of Sund, convinced that would strengthen her case, this became an alternative for buyers.
She is a tax attorney at Skatt West and works to "expose" others to tax evasion.
See the answer below in the article
Crushing judgment
She was the subject of a unanimous and severe verdict at the Gulating Court of Appeal last August, where she lost due to an intentional breach of the sale of the house. The buyer has therefore managed to increase the purchase.
For the family of young children who bought his home, three years of nightmare are over. They spent more than 2 million NOK and a few thousand hours in the fight for the purchase of the single house in Tyssøy, municipality of Sund. They bought the house with boathouse for 6.6 million NOK in 2015.
An appraiser hired by the buyer estimated that all repairs would cost more than 5 million NOK. The couple could not stay at home either. Among other things, the house was frozen and under-insulated. There were problems with water quality and capacity, and the electrical installation was so flammable that it posed a danger to life and health. The house was from 2002.
Complaint about the property tax
It also turned out that the tax attorney himself had already gone to court against the first owner.
In a decision handed down in January 2008, she and her husband of the time benefited from a price reduction and compensation of just over 400 000 NOK. A few months later, she wrote a letter of complaint to the property tax office of the Sund municipality and claimed that the state of the house was to be reduced from "good level" to "very low level" after having listed many of the defects of the house.
In the letter dated August 20, 2008, where she presents herself as a sender and signed by herself, she writes: "We consider it necessary for the Municipality of Sund to undertake a pre-assessment of the preliminary assessment that is clearly not reflective of the state of the house ".
So she led the municipality
This letter eventually became a subject of the District Court in 2017, when the buyer and her lawyer stated that the house contained errors that she might have known.
In District Court, the buyer 's lawyer presented her with a number of errors that she had described in the letter to the realty tax office. Then she repeated many times that the letter had been written for the purpose of reducing the property tax.
The record of the trial show that she said:
– Everything that had already been documented could be false, even if it had been refuted, was used for the purpose of reducing the property tax. It should have been canceled. I'm not good at what is there – neither in 2008 and 2015 – not all that, she said in court.
When she was repeatedly confronted with the irregularities that she had described in the letter, she repeatedly reiterated that the letter had been written for the purpose of reducing the property tax.
"I repeat, this was only written for the purpose of reducing the property tax," she said.
At one point, counsel for the other party asked him:
– You should get the municipality to downgrade the standard?
"Yes, they were seduced by these points," she said.
The judge reminded her that she had nothing to say about it as this could expose her to criminal liability. She also confirmed that she had lowered the standard.
Later, in the Court of Appeal, she gave another reason why she had written the complaint to the property tax office. She then declared to the court, in the Gulating Court of Appeal's judgment, that the letter addressed to the property tax office should not be taken into account because the statements had been given as frustration over the complaint she had filed with the previous owner and plans / monitoring of the municipality in the area.
Serious judgment
Glenn Ulrik Halvorsen of the Oslo law firm has been the advocate of the buyer of the house and believes that the judgment of the Court of Appeal is very powerful.
– This is the first case where the Court of Appeal assumes that the seller deliberately concealed information about any irregularities in the sale of the house. It is rare for a court of appeal to reach such a conclusion, and the opinion of my client was that he felt cheated by the seller, says Halvorsen.
Halvorsen has been occupying domestic affairs since 2001, first for a change of ownership company, and then for home buyers. According to the judgment rendered on August 30 by the Gulating Court of Appeal, which granted to the buyer of the house, it is stated in particular that "the Court of Appeal emphasized in its general assessment that all the issues in dispute (…) on intentional cases of failure of the information on the part of the seller ".
In addition, it is stated that "it is here, as has been said, the actual knowledge of the central conditions of the property and blatant disregard of the fundamental obligations in the law on the sale that stems from the general requirement of loyalty in contractual relations ".
Not credible
Halvorsen indicates that his client believes that the case is particularly serious because the seller deliberately conceals information and has provided false information about the house, especially when the seller is himself a lawyer.
– My client perceived the credibility of the seller as very weak, which is confirmed by the Court of Appeal when it concludes that all the irregularities are due to the fact that the seller deliberately provided defective or incorrect information, declares Halvorsen.
While the tax attorney's insurance company accepted the judgment, the tax attorney appealed privately to the Supreme Court. This appeal having been dismissed before Christmas, the decision of the Court of Appeal is now executory.
Finansavisen asked the tax lawyer to specifically answer the following questions:
– Do you think that the house was as low as the letter sent to the property tax office in August 2008, or do you think the house was of as high a quality as the one you exposed in court? ?
– I still maintain that my family and I have never lived home insufficiently, as stated by Samuelsen, and that I was not aware of any serious faults in the power station for the entire time that I lived myself with smaller children. These are shortcomings that, in my opinion, were also not addressed in my letter to the Property Tax Office in 2008, which now indicates that the "very low standard" valuation factor would obviously have had to be deepened over the municipality at that time, she said.
ANSWERS: denies that she acknowledged tax evasion
The tax lawyer also contests the fact that she stated that she ran the municipality.
– I have never acknowledged tax evasion nor claimed that the fiscal decision of the municipality in 2008 had been poorly established. My representative for both bodies also informed Finansavisen that in my explanations, I did not state that the decision was incorrect or resulted in undue benefits, she wrote to Finansavisen.
She further writes that she is well aware that the letter concerning the new introduction of the property tax in 2008 aimed at reducing a property value that was temporarily too high and unduly stipulated.
– The content of the letter did not state an affirmation of what I then considered to be a legal deficiency under the Destruction Act. The fact that an unsecured ridge in previous claims is not considered a legal defect due to the words "visible on the display" would therefore not indicate that it would not constitute a reduction in value when determining the value of the property. She writes two very different goals.
In addition, she writes that "it appears directly from the letter that the preliminary calculation indicates" In comparison, we are taxed twice as high as dwellings with gross floor area and corresponding valuation factors in the region ".
– In addition to examining the error measures of the parcel and the area, the letter contains a small section with the list of remaining tasks in order to give the municipality an overview of why the l & # 39; one of the many evaluation factors of the proposal had to be reduced from "0.8 (good level)" to "very low level (0.5-0"), she writes.
"All the list items in the section are extracted directly from expert reports and statements regarding possible errors and deficiencies in housing that we could find, framed indiscriminately, but supposed to be specified and corrected by the fact that they could "submit (s) all documents before a possible board of appeal such as the case has been declared".
– Neither a sub-insulated dwelling nor serious deficiencies in the electrical installations were included in a letter of 2008, nor was it considered missing in a complaint against the former owner who had listed housing in 2002, she says.
Small savings
She also writes that prior to the handling of the complaint, the municipality had sent a single decision involving significant downward adjustments to the outer and inner areas in accordance with the debt replacement documents and drawings of referenced construction, as well as a minimal change in the internal evaluation factor due to the maintenance requirements assumed to "minimum standard" (0.6 in the single factor).
– If I remember correctly, the property tax has been reduced by about NOK 500 and it is now accepted that this decision is invoked. I should have admitted that I had incited the municipality to demote as a student 11 years ago.
In addition, she writes that "the minimal change in the single decision for one of the assessment factors was clearly justified by the remaining documented work on the house in 2008, which was also carried out in the following years For hundreds of thousands of dollars, for all the property tax bases to be properly determined, for boathouse and lodging, I also contacted the municipality's property tax office about a change of ownership in 2015 ".
– During the conversation, previous letters were raised with questions about the need to upgrade something, as many repairs and improvements were then made to the property. It was said that I had nothing to do.
– Neither the remaining work done on housing in accordance with the letter of 2008, nor my subsequent contacts and clarifications with the municipality have at no time been disputed. This was also clear in both the District Court and the Court of Appeal, she wrote.
Disagree with the judgment
She is desperate about the premises of the Court of Appeal in the judgment.
– The premises of the Court of Appeal with respect to "intentional cases" refer to the fact that, in the opinion of my broker, I did not deliberately disclose the judgment in the documentation. of sale, considering that it was not mandatory to provide information on claims that did not occur and on deficiencies that had already been corrected. I submit that it was my oral disclosure proceedings and my judgment in Samuelsen that led him to sue the contact with my previous counterpart before submitting offers.
– I am deeply sorry that the Court of Appeal does not trust and that the terms are thus shaped by what I consider to be false explanations as well as misconceptions about a particularly complete fact in "Species," she writes.
– I would never have taken over the condominium property the same year to give it a higher value than the one I sold thereafter, if I had the statement that there was had serious defects in the house. I also suffered a clear financial loss when, in the judgment of the former owner in 2008, we did not succeed and that we only had about 100,000 left. people after covering our own legal costs, he added.
She also thinks that the newspaper article Finance contains a number of false statements and citations.
About the use of the source in this case: Finansavisen wishes to point out that we quote the tax attorney based on audio recordings of the court, as well as the judge's subsequent comment that her statements could delay her criminal liability. Judgments of the Court of Appeal and the Court of Appeal, as well as written documents related to the prosecution, constitute another central source of data.
The article is first published on Hegnar.no
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