<i>Caveat Emptor</i> in the Purchase of New York Real Estate

According to doctrine of caveat emptor, as applied by New York courts, the purchaser of real property has a duty to inspect the property and satisfy himself as to his bargain. Glazer v. LoPreste, 278 AD2d 198, 198-99. Where a purchaser has the means available to him for discovering, by the exercise of ordinary intelligence and diligence, the true nature of the transaction into which he is about to enter, he must make use of those means, absent which he will be precluded from arguing that he was fraudulently induced to enter into the transaction. Ittleson v. Lombardi, 193 AD2 374, 376. Indeed, New York courts have dismissed fraud claims asserted by purchasers where preexisting conditions were reasonably discoverable by inspection. These circumstances included underground contamination (Venezia v. Coldwell Banker Sammis Realty, 270 AD2d 480; Vandevort v. Higginbotham, 222 AD2d 831), prior use of a vacant lot as a landfill (London v. Courduff, supra), and a vintage cooperative apartment in a “dreadful state of disrepair.” (Ittleson v. Lombardi, supra). The common thread in these cases is the court's finding that the seller had no duty to disclose the pre-existing condition and, in fact, had not taken any action to prevent the purchaser from discovering the condition through the exercise of due diligence.

Even where purchasers have claimed that sellers made false statements upon which they relied, the courts have dismissed fraud claims where they found that the true information was easily available to the purchasers. Thus, the courts have dismissed claims based upon alleged misrepresentations concerning the adequacy of the water supply upon the property (Cohen v. Colistra, 233 AD2d 542), the legality of multiple kitchens in a home (Platzman v. Morris, 283 AD2d 561), and the location of the property's boundaries (Eisenthal v. Wittlock, 198 AD2d 395) where the courts found that the purchasers could readily have verified the truth of the representations, particularly by inspection of the premises or review of available documents such as the certificate of occupancy, survey and public records concerning the property.