It’s listed as “one of the best locations in Mississauga” with a great walk score and public transit access, but one thing the real estate listing fails to mention is that it was the site of a deadly house explosion earlier this summer.
About 700 homes were evacuated after a house located at 4201 Hickory Dr. was levelled by an explosion around 4:20 p.m. on June 28, leaving two dead, dozens of neighbouring residences damaged and nine people injured.
The vacant lot is now listed on the Multiple Listing Service with a price tag of $675,000.
READ MORE: Mississauga house explosion: Investigators identify second body pulled from rubble
But the listing makes no mention of the explosion, the two people who died in the blast or whether or not the land is safe to build upon, which is something that has Toronto real estate lawyer Bob Aaron concerned.
“I don’t see any disclosure whatsoever,” he told Global News. “The only way someone could discover it is to do a Google search and that information should have been imparted by the real estate agent in the listing.”
The agent representing the listing, Raman Dua, could not be reached for comment and the property is currently owned by mortgage company National Holdings Ltd.
Two bodies were recovered from the rubble, 55-year-old Dianne Page on June 28 and 55-year-old Robert Nadler on June 30.
WATCH: A walkthrough of the site of the Mississauga house explosion
Paul Camilleri, Page’s nephew, told Global News the pair lived in the home together and Nadler had served 10 years in prison in connection with the killing of a friend after a dispute over money in 1982.
“We had a happy family until this all happened,” Camilleri said in June. “We can’t get back our aunt, none of us personally said our goodbyes … I’m basically going to live my entire life in regret that this happened.”
Colley also said he could not confirm Nadler’s criminal background because it is something police will be focusing on as part of their investigation.
The cause of the explosion has still not been released and autopsies on both bodies have been completed, but no information on how they died has been made public.
READ MORE: Mysterious notes found at Mississauga house explosion scene may lead to cause: police
Aaron said the lot is what’s known as a “stigmatized property” — a place where a murder, suicide or other incident occurred — and there is an obligation on the part of the real estate agent to disclose information that would be material to a buyer in their decision to purchase it.
“There’s nothing. It just says that the purchaser will satisfy himself or herself and that the vendor, which is a mortgage company, will make no representations or warranties as to the property,” he said.
“So it’s a kind of buyer beware, figure it out yourself … you take the property as you find it.”
Aaron said real estate agents who don’t abide by a code of ethics can be disciplined by the Real Estate Council of Ontario, which governs agents in the province and can bring a complaint against individual licensees.
WATCH: 37 homes still evacuated 2 months after massive Mississauga house explosion
“There would be a hearing to determine whether there was a breach of the code of ethics, and if there was a breach of the code of ethics … the regulators can decide whether the penalty will be a fine, a suspension, or even an expulsion from the profession,” he said, adding that there’s still time to correct this, by making that disclosure before any sale is made.
“As long as it hasn’t been sold nobody’s been harmed, and I think the disclosure should be made and it should be made like yesterday.”
Mississauga Fire Chief Tim Beckett said Friday that more than two months after the explosion, investigators are still in the “recovery phase” with 37 nearby homes uninhabitable due to varying degrees of damage.
“It was a big explosion, there was a lot of damage,” he said. “I’ve seen houses explode before, never to this damage that I saw there.”
Neighbour Frank Mo said Friday that he and his wife have been forced to stay in a nearby condo unit due to severe damage to their townhome, but they consider themselves lucky.
“Really what we’re concerned with right now is the timing. Because people are very anxious to go back and we know it’s not going to happen overnight,” he said.
“We’re not concerned with the cause of the explosion. Right now we’re more focused on when we’ll be able to move back to our home.”
Mo said he was surprised to learn the explosion was not mentioned in the listing, but hoped potential buyers would do their research.
WATCH: Displaced residents speak out after Mississauga house explosion
The current state of the property also remains unclear, as an engineering firm meticulously sorts through the rubble to determine the extent of the damage.
But Aaron is concerned there could be contamination to the property from the blast, but the listing states it is for sale as is.
“You take it the way you find it subject to whatever is there and we’re not promising that it’s fit for the use, that you can build on it and we’re not telling you whether there was any bad events that occurred on site,” he said of the listing.
“So you make up your own mind and take it the way you find it.”
Mark Carcasole contributed to this report
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