It wasn’t actually knob and tube, but it was pretty bad. Two conductor, mostly. If there were three prong outlets the ground wasn’t connected. Everything that wasn’t the fridge was on one of two 10 amp breakers. It would have needed to be re-wired. At least the house was generally in good shape.
To give you a sense of some of the houses we were looking at, I give you http://www.burbed.com/. The house was actually not far from the “Fixer upper of the year in Sunnyvale”.
I would object to living in a house that appeared to be transplanted from Silent Hill. Run of the mill ghosts? No problem. Creatures made out of random assortments of mannequin parts and rusty knives skittering around on the ceiling? That’s a problem.
When I listed my house, I had to disclose if it was “stigmatized”, which would include some notorious person or other prominent non-murder crime or tragedy taking place on the property
I wouldn’t care if a house I bought had any previous murders in it. My friend didn’t either; she was looking for houses and found a really good deal on a huge place with around 10 acres. She googled it and discovered a man had killed his wife in one room, his kid in another, and then himself in yet another. Stabbed and hung, I believe.
When they were looking at the house, and were finished with the tour, she asked the realtor, “were you going to tell me about the murders?”
The realtor replied, “only if you were going to make an offer.”
She bought it, and got that great deal.
As to “is it required?”
In 2008, I sold a single-family house (1 building on one lot) in SF: CA law at the time required that I disclose a number of unfortunate events - a death (of any means, any human) was one item required to be disclosed.
The old girl whose death had caused my seller to take deed had occurred circa 1972. Never asked if she was at home at the time. Good thing I wasn’t curious, perhaps?
I live in a house in which the man (a military veteran) was brutally murdered. His wife was accused of murdering him.
My sister sleeps in the room in which it happened.
We’re fine about it.
I would definitely live in a house that had a bad history. Like others have posted, I would hope it would bring the price down.
I would imagine in very extreme cases, where a house represents really bad memories for a crime victims family or the neighbors, I would hope it would be torn down.
Other than that, I would not have a problem. I would just worry about my kids finding out, and being creeped out about it. If they didn’t have to know, I would buy it.