Most buyers, understandably, would want to know if a violent death occurred in the houses they are considering. And as it turns out, most states require sellers to divulge the fact that a suicide, murder or some other villainous act took place, even if it was years ago.

But what if someone died a more natural death in the residence -- say, by accident, or in his or her sleep?

Since it’s not considered a “material fact” that may impact the value of the property, only three states -- California, Alaska and South Dakota -- compel sellers to reveal such a demise. And California only requires such disclosures if the death occurred within the previous three years.

Still, it is interesting to note at Halloween time that 7 out of 10 people told a poll commissioned by Trulia a couple of years back that they would not want to live in a house where any kind of life-ending event took place. Would-be buyers are even more spooked by the idea of residing in places where the death was gory. And they’re especially fearful of houses that are supposedly haunted by a former resident. But for the most part, they don’t want anything to do with any place in which someone passed away.

Even though most sellers don’t feel the need to disclose this kind of information, most real estate agents know it is their duty to do so. Otherwise they might violate not only their code of ethics, but also the law.

While most agents do what’s right, some believe the rules have gone too far.

“What’s next?” questioned a Pennsylvania agent. “Are you going to disclose if anyone (passed gas), cut themselves or had a pet buried in the backyard? ... What if the person died on the front lawn and not in the house?” As far he’s concerned, all this amounts to too much information. “Buyers should focus on the condition of the house” rather then if someone died there, he said.

A Florida agent agreed. “I tend to think that unless there is blood on the walls, the homeowners and the home’s value shouldn’t be penalized for being the locale where the circle of life comes around and wraps up,” he said.

A discussion of this sort pops up almost annually at this time of year, when our thoughts turn to All Hallows Eve and house-hunting becomes a tad scarier. Sellers may be worried that the specter of specters will spook potential buyers, and buyers are concerned about sharing their new homes with unwanted paranormal residents.

I mean, have you seen “Beetlejuice,” the wonderful 1988 Tim Burton film starring Michael Keaton?

In its 2017 poll, Trulia found that 43 percent of respondents would be less likely to buy a home if they suspected something ghastly -- or ghostly -- had taken place on the premises. And an earlier Trulia Halloween-centric survey found that a crime of any kind would be likely to turn off would-be buyers, even in a house “that otherwise has everything” someone is looking for. (About 2,000 people were surveyed in both online studies, which were done for Trulia by Harris Poll.)

A house being located near a highway or trailer park are other big turnoffs -- more so than the death of a resident or the “demon numbers” 666 in the address. But the majority wouldn’t care if the place they loved was adjacent to a cemetery. Indeed, once such situated resident told me that, save for some high-school and college kids who occasionally found the graveyard an ideal place to party, his neighbors were extremely quiet.

Trulia also discovered that if a house was haunted, buyers would rather it be possessed by a vengeful ghost than a demon. And, apparently, they’d be willing to live with the antics of the poltergeist: Less than half would be willing to pay for an exorcism.

For what it’s worth, a rather chilling 2015 study by data analytics firm RealtyTrac found more than 22,000 vacant single-family houses nationwide that are owned by someone now deceased. That’s 1 in every 6,000 houses nationwide that very well could be haunted. And in more than 20 ZIP codes, the ratio is roughly 1 in every 175.

If you are one of the many who are concerned about this sort of thing, there’s an app for that -- or at least a website. Isn’t there always?

For $11.99, Diedinhouse.com will tell you whether there was a death in a house, whether it was because of an accident, natural causes, murder or suicide. The site also provides information about the deceased and the names of folks associated with the dearly departed. It will also report on any known drug activity or fires at the address, as well as sex-offender registry information.

On the other hand, HomeDisclosure.com, a site operated by realty analytics firm ATTOM Data Solutions, no longer provides information about in-home deaths. “The cost of maintaining that data was greater than the delivery,” a company spokesperson told me.

Long ago, comedian George Carlin made a name for himself with a bit about the seven words that could not be said on television. Nowadays, you can hear all of those words on cable, and many of them on broadcast TV.

But some real estate professionals say there are still some words neither their colleagues nor their clients should use in their listings. These phrases and terms are so overused that they have become meaningless, agents complained in a recent ActiveRain discussion.

Take the phrase “motivated seller,” for example. Hey, if you aren’t motivated to sell, you shouldn’t have listed your house in the first place.

That phrase is “counterproductive,” says Morgan Evans, an agent with Douglas Elliman Real Estate in New York City, who believes it is better to “communicate in person that if the buyer likes the property, then the owner may be open-minded to an offer.”

Scott Godzyk of Godzyk Real Estate Services in Manchester, New Hampshire, doesn’t like it, either. If the owner is so motivated, he says, he should have priced the home correctly in the first place.

“I’d rather lower the price than announce we are ‘motivated,’” adds Steven Beam of RE/MAX Alliance in Parker, Colorado.

Says Myrl Jeffcoat of GreatWest Realty in Sacramento: “’Motivated’ needs to be stricken from the multiple listing service lexicon.”

That’s the thing with phrases like this: They are so shopworn that agents tend to ignore them altogether.

“Will not last” is another unworthy phrase. Nina Hollander of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Shirley Coomer of Keller Williams Realty in Phoenix both call it “the kiss of death.”

“If it’s not going to last,” asks Anna Kruchten of the Phoenix Property Shoppe, “then why has it been on the market for four months with no takers? So lame.”

Adds Jill Sackler of Charles Rutenberg Realty in Long Beach, New York: “’Will not last’ is a phrase we can all do without.”

“I have yet to see an MLS entry that states ‘owner unmotivated’ or ‘will look at offers when we feel like it,’” says Juan Juarez of Keller Williams in Fremont, California. “Some things are to obvious to state, yet we see that stuff constantly.”

By the way, if your place has been on the market for more than a few months -- or maybe even a few weeks -- ask your agent to redo your listing. “I’ve never understood why agents don’t go back and rewrite their MLS listings and change pictures around when a house lingers,” comments Debe Maxwell of RE/MAX Executive in Charlotte.

Two other hackneyed phrases that ruffle pros’ feathers include “almost new” and “will look at all offers.”

There is no degree of new; it’s either new or it isn’t. If a house was lived in for one day, it is no longer new. Better to say “like new.” And if you are not going to entertain all offers, why bother? Otherwise, agents say, you are telling everyone your place is overpriced to begin with.

Colorado agent Bean thinks he knows why many agents have become so verbose with meaningless phraseology. With so much space allowed by the latest MLS technology, he says, agents can type till their fingers fall off.

Perhaps that’s why Ralph Gorgoglione of Maui Life Homes in Hawaii hates what he calls “corny, cheesy phrases.” Such as this one he spotted recently: “As you walk through the front door, bestowed upon you will be a thing of beauty.” Or this: “As you step through the walls of glass ...”

Joe Pryor of Oklahoma (City) Investment Properties has some favorites, too. Among them are “Show your picky buyers,” “a real dollhouse” and “snooze, you lose.”

Of course, words do matter, as shown in a 20-year-old study of 20,000 Canadian houses listed and sold between 1997 and 2000. If a listing contained the word “motivated,” the house took 15% longer to sell and sold for 8% less than the original asking price, found the study by Paul Anglin, a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario. And if it was described as a rental property, it took 60% longer and resulted in an 8% drop in asking price.

Other words had a positive impact. When “landscaping” was mentioned, the house sold 20% faster and at 6% over the listing price. The words “beautiful” and “move-in condition” also resulted in faster selling times.

As for selling prices, the study found that certain words could increase the selling price by as much as 6% -- or cause it to fall by as much as 10%. Thus, the price on a $250,000 house could rise to $265,000 (a 6% increase) when described as “landscaped,” or drop 10% to $225,000 if designated a “starter home.”

The request Aaron Cole received, via email, to wire $123,000 to close on his new home certainly looked legit. It wasn’t, though, and in the click of a mouse, his money was gone.

It was a scam, and the criminals quickly whisked the money to various accounts in the United States and overseas.

Cole’s story has a happy ending, but many others lose big-time in what is becoming a booming niche: online real estate fraud.

Cole, a vice president of a gear and machine company in Oregon City, Oregon, had sold his old home and was ready to move with his wife and two children into a new place. But that happy occasion turned into a nightmare when he had to tell his wife their closing money had vanished.

“I never felt like that before in my life, and I hope I never feel like that again,” he says.

“The scammer got between my correspondence with the title company and me,” he says. The thief sent Cole false wiring instructions, which, “to my untrained eye, looked to be from the same people I’d been working with all along.”

By the time the legit title company called a week later with the actual wiring instructions, he recalls, “I knew my money was gone and there was very little chance of ever recovering any of it.”

Luckily, his title company, WFG National Title in New York City, made Cole whole, allowing him to close on his home and move in just in time for Christmas. In return, he has been telling his story to media outlets to warn consumers about the dangers of real estate “phishing” scams.

According to Bruce Phillips, senior vice president and chief information security officer at WFG, this kind of electronic wire fraud is all too prevalent. “We see a lot of attempted wire fraud,” he says. “We see one almost every day.”

These con artists scammers are clever, too, honing their techniques constantly. “When we change something, they change something back,” Phillips reports. “It’s almost like an arms race.”

In all, wire fraud has registered a year-over-year increase in losses of about 85-90 percent, he says.

A “spoofed” email is what fooled Cole. That’s when the return email address doesn’t match the real company’s URL. In Cole’s case, the email was from a “mail.com” address, rather than one from WFG Title. It was also a PDF document, which the title company never sends, nor does it send wiring instructions by email.

A 2018 FBI report on internet crime includes real estate as one of the hot areas for fraudsters, and the numbers are eye-opening. Though the FBI makes a substantial amount of recoveries, more than 11,000 victims of real estate/rental fraud lost $150 million in 2018, making real estate the fourth-largest loss category.

At a recent meeting of mortgage professionals, FBI Special Agent Kyle Armstrong updated those stats, reporting that mortgage scammers fleeced people out of $12 billion last year for an average of $162,000 per incident. And it’s pretty easy money with little or no consequences.

“If you rob a convenience store, you get $700 and 25 years in prison,” Armstrong said. But if you con someone in a real estate transaction, “you end up with $162,000 in Nigeria ... and it’s virtually impossible to prosecute them once the money’s been transferred.”

Fraudsters target a wide array of players in the real estate industry. Besides title firms, they hunt law firms, real estate agents, buyers and sellers. Armstrong said phishing scams directed at real estate pros use sophisticated schemes that are difficult to stop. Email scams -- referred to by the FBI as Business Email Compromise (BEC) or Email Account Compromise (EAC) -- are definitely booming in the real estate sector, according to the bureau.

“From 2015 to 2017,” it reports, “there was a rise of over 1,100% in the number of BEC-EAC victims reporting the real estate transaction angle, and an almost 2,200% rise in the reported monetary loss.”

How can you protect yourself from falling prey to these clever criminals? There are a couple of obvious steps. If someone you think you know is asking you to wire money, no matter how little, call them and ask if the request is legit. Also, take a close look at the URL the message comes from.

The FBI also advises you to:

-- Verify all requests for a change in payment type and/or location. A sudden request for a change in payment method -- from check to wire, for example -- should make you suspicious.

-- Be wary of any communication that is exclusively email-based. Establish a secondary means of communication for verification purposes.

-- Be mindful of phone conversations. One way to counteract fraudulent phone activity is to establish code phrases that would only be known to the two legitimate parties.

-- If you discover a fraudulent transfer, time is of the essence. First, contact your financial institution and request a recall of the funds. Second, contact your local FBI office and report the fraudulent transfer. Finally, regardless of dollar loss, file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (a.k.a. the IC3 unit) at ic3.gov or, for email victims, at bec.ic3.gov.

Personal stories like Cole’s make for potent educational tools. WFG’s Phillips now uses Cole’s story to start industry presentations on the topic.

“Nobody thinks it’s going to happen to them, right up to the time it happens to them,” Phillips warns.

-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.