Will Growing Cannabis in Your Home Affect the Resale Value?

Posted by Chris Forsyth on Tuesday, January 1st, 2019 at 10:29am.


This has been a big topic since cannabis has become legal in Canada on Oct 17th,2018. The Federal Government has made it legal to grow up to 4  cannabis plants in your home.

 I read a blog on Zoocasa.com, in their blog they stated that 52 % of home buyers said they would not purchase a home where there was the legal amount of cannabis grown. I believe this is a study they did themselves on their website and unfortunately it does not show how many people took part of the study and it does not state why people feel this way. So to have some fun with it I decided to do my own poll on Facebook. I didn’t do this on a large scale by any means but was just curious what the outcome would be.  Over 6 days I’ve had 61 Votes (32 – Yes & 29 – No) 52% percent of the votes said they would purchase a home where they knew the legal amount of cannabis was grown. Still a large percentage of people said that that they would not purchase a home if they found out that Cannabis was grown in it. 

This poll brought up some great comments and here are a few:

  1. One person felt that the house would have to be remedied because of the amount of moisture it takes to grow cannabis and they commented that thought some people would grow more in the house and that they wouldn’t stop at 4 plants.

  2. Another comment about it creating to much moisture in the home was that you wouldn’t have a problem with moisture if you grew the plant under the same conditions as any other plant.

  3.  A comment was also made that they feel people will potentially grow more than the legal amount allowed.

  4. And the rest of the comments where about other things they would be more worried about things like a house being haunted, water issues due to flooded basement, sewer lines, structural issues and being more worried about people actually smoking cannabis in the home.

 So going back to the question “Will growing cannabis in my home reduce my resale value?”

Yes, it very well could. The reason I say this is because you are taking possibly away 50% of the people buying a home out of the equation for that home.

Now this brings up another question. Does the seller have to disclose that they are growing cannabis in their home…. No, Will that change? I don’t know, I don’t think it would because its not against the law anymore. We have permission to do so now. 

If it is important for you to know if Cannabis was grown in a house I recommend that you have that conversation with your realtor and he/she will do their best to find out. They will ask the questions with the listing realtor or seller. When the question is asked the seller will not be legally obligated to answer the question. If they flat out refuse to answer the question, that should be a red flag and you may want to try to find more information out before proceeding. Probably the best source to ask is the neighbors and see if they know more information. However if they refuse to answer I believe they are basically admitting to it - just my opinion. If the seller or seller's realtor answers the question, they have to be truthful and can not mislead a buyer.

If you have any questions about this topic please reach out at anytime.



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