A few weeks ago there was a news story on Yahoo about a woman who found out, after she bought a house, that there had been a murder/suicide in the house. She is suing the real estate agent saying that this information should have been disclosed.
The man who owned the house across the street from me committed suicide in the house. I think it was 5 years ago. The house has been completely renovated and has been on and off the market but has never sold. It is currently rented. I’m wondering if that has anything to do with it.
I can’t imagine why that would make a difference. To me it would be just an interesting fact but not off-putting in any way. My husband and several of my friends differ. They say that they might not want to live in a house with that kind of history. At least one friend expressed a fear that it would be haunted. I don’t believe in that sort of thing but I know people do.
My husband went a step farther and said that I was not the norm and that “most people” would not want to live in a house with that kind of history.
What say you dopers? Would it put you off living in or purchasing a property if it had a history of tragedy?
The only thing that would stop me would be if the tragedies were directly associated with its location - flood plane or a place where vehicles regularly went out of control and crashed into the property or something similarly uncontrollable. Deaths happen, tragic and otherwise. For all we know, the land under our homes could have been sites of prehistoric battles or ritual sacrifice or drunken orgiastic murders. If places of death were subject to hauntings, the world would truly be a frightening place.
My mother’s house has been the site of 3 deaths since 1995. She was caring for her parents and her mentally handicapped sister. All three died in their respective beds over the last 18 years. And then there was her cat that was accidentally crushed by the garage door. And the various frogs that died when they thought her swimming pool would make a good home. I have no problem spending the night there, except that her guest bed is just a double and I’m accustomed to a king.
Now, if someone came into my house and murdered my husband and daughter and the dog, I’d probably move, but not because of alleged hauntings. So, no, except for unusual circumstances, I wouldn’t rule out a house because of a tragedy or series of tragedies.
It wouldn’t put me off, especially if it was reflected in a lower than usual price. The only thing that would worry me is that I might have difficulty getting a fair price should I decide to later sell up.
I was under the impression the seller had to declare such things as they are aware of. It’s not all deaths, I thought just murders and suicides. Wonder where I got that idea from? Maybe movies?
After we made an offer on our current home, the realtor called me and said she just found out something that may cause us to change our minds. I was thinking termites or something like that. I was actually relieved when she told me the previous owner had committed suicide in the garage. Apparently he had Alzheimers and decided it was time to go. That didn’t bother either of us in the least so we still bought the house.
There is a house near us where the dad killed his four children and his wife, then left the house and killed himself somewhere else. He beat the kids with a baseball bat after failing to kill them with carbon monoxide in the garage. That might be a deal breaker for me. Much more creepy. Someone is living there now.
My parent’s house is very old, a few hundred years at least. Our holiday cottage is probably about 500 years old. In both houses many will have died over the years. Women will have died in child birth. Babies will have died. People will have died of old age, and people will have died of accidents. Children will have drowned in the river. People might have gone through the ice. There will have been times of famine and disease.
If you were to exclude houses that have seen tragedies you lose rather a lot of very nice houses.
This is magical thinking. Which I don’t engage in. If it resulted in a lower price, I might be even more inclined. I don’t think it is something that has to be stated in the sale offer since it has no material relevance.
I’m always going to live in an old house, so the chances of a tragedy having happened at some point in its history are pretty good. Wouldn’t bother me a bit.
On the flip side it might mean you get a lower price when you try to sell. This is the only reason I’d likely be concerned about purchasing a house where someone died in a horrendous manner. Sorry, dying of cancer in your sleep or of a heart attack while sitting on the john doesn’t rise to the level of horrific.
Straight Dope Question: Do realtors/home sellers have to inform potential buyers of every death? I realize this answer might vary from state to state.
To answer the original question, no I would not. Why? Because I probably wouldn’t move into an old house anyways. I’d get my own house built from scratch.
I have some actual experience with this one! We found out a few years after buying our house that someone had committed suicide in the smallest bedroom, which we use as a guest room/office. I’d have never known except that one day I noticed a woman slowly driving by repeatedly, staring at the house, and I finally just went out and asked if I could help her. She was a former tenant of the house, and she told me her brother had died there. She was obviously (and understandably) very emotional, so I invited her in and let her spend a few minutes in the room. She kept asking me if we’d noticed anything strange or felt any “negative aura” around the room, and I told her no, that in fact it’s the cats’ favorite place to hang out in the summer. I’m not sure if she was comforted or disappointed.
This was my take, too. And I like to loll around the house in my pajamas on weekends, so a store would seriously cramp my style.
The woman coming by answered a lingering question I’d had about the house. It had been a rental for many years before we moved in, and when I came to look at it, the tenant had some kind of ceremonial table with candles on it set up in the room and she didn’t want me to go inside. (She also wanted me to stand in a specific place at the bottom of the stairs because she said it was “the emotional center of the house”. This is one of the many reasons why your Realtor wants you out of the house when prospective buyers are touring.) The neighbors who’d been here for a while had been oddly evasive about the people who’d lived in it. I’d worried that it had been used as a meth lab or something. Now I know what all that was about.
This is similar to my answer in similar threads in the past, just phrased better. The fact of a tragedy wouldn’t keep me from buying a house. Widespread notoriety might. I wouldn’t buy the former home of the (JonBenet) Ramseys for a nickel.
I’m so far from home ownership that reselling considerations would never have occurred to me.
Now I’m entertaining myself imagining the meeting where the Realty Association hammers out what tragedies must be disclosed and how much you can take off the price for which ones. “Now the x axis is the age of the victim at the time of the tragedy and the y axis is the gruesomeness. Anything that falls in the lower left quadrant …deduct $30k”
I agree about the notoriety. I wonder if the various people who have owned the house in Amityville over the years have had problems with tourists and curiosity seekers.
The previous owner of my house shot himself here, but he was outside by the pool. We found out about it 6 months after we moved in, but neither my wife nor I could care any less. His wife continued to live here for a few years afterward.
ETA: She had 3 offers at her asking price the day after it hit the market in 2011. I doubt the tragedy would have prevented her from selling this place in a hurry.
As weird and illogical as it is, I think I’d feel the same way. The more violent and angry the deaths, the less I’d want to live there. Also, if it was a bloody crime scene, I’d always feel like there was blood in the walls and it would freak me out a little.
