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'Murder Houses': How Does Violence Impact Sale Prices?

ChrisBoardman said:
In the UK it is fairly normal for such houses to get demolished. The houses where Tia Sharp, April Jones and Holly and Jessica were murdered were all demolished.
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As had already been said, such a process appears to be relatively more common where children in particular are the victims - but I'm pretty sure it would be stretching it to state that demolition of such properties in general is 'normal', or even fairly so (in the sense of usual or expected - the norm).

It’s worth noting that the same few examples, dating over a period of several years, tend to be cited in this context - and over the period of time covered by those examples I suspect that the number of demolitions that do take place represents a small percentage of the whole. I’m sure that there will be more, less well-known, examples - but I’d still bet a big bag of toffees that the incidence is, statistically speaking, well below the norm.

In the examples quoted above, the first property was owned by the council, the second purchased from the landlord after the fact by the Welsh government, the third was, I think, owned by the school - and I don't doubt that it's more feasible for organisations to take the financial hit of demolishing a property than it is for individuals. I also suspect that continued usage, repurposing or revenue harvesting, would also represent more of a PR problem for those organisations than it would for a private individual.

The issues involved are really quite complicated. Is the property the residence of the perpetrator, or the victim? Do/did they actually own the property? After killer or victim, who stands to benefit from the financial value of the property? Do the authorities have the legal and/or moral right to effectively remove assets from, for example, the spouse or children of a killer? Do the authorities have the right to destroy property that belongs to neither them, nor the murderer? Do they even have the legal right to destroy property that does belong to a killer?

Rules of forfeiture and the Proceeds of Crime Act only apply when the murderer stands to profit directly from the killing, or the crime is carried it in relation to, or as a consequence of, the furtherance of illegal financial gain. Outwith such circumstances a convicted killer’s legally held property is still that – it belongs to them in law. That said, a victim’s family can sue for compensation, and a property can be one of the assets sold to provide funds in the event of a successful outcome (so it makes sense not to demolish - a standing property is of more immediate value than a demolition site).

The other issue is that the law is not comfortable with the idea that a criminal’s dependents – with absolutely no connection to their crime – should be punished for that crime, and this inevitably involves arguments around assets. The Forfeiture Act was supplemented by the Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession in order to address this (although the forfeiture rule applies to circumstances where the killer profits financially from the estate of the victim; different circumstances but similar thinking).

Aside from all that, as @Catseye has already suggested, practical considerations also come into play. It’s not so straightforward to demolish a terraced property (Croydon council demolished three in the process of erasing the property Tia Sharp was murdered in). Also flats? You can’t really demolish a flat unless you take out its neighbours – one of the reasons Dennis Nilsen’s two murder scenes are still extant, and occupied. (Can't help wondering what goes through the local plumbers minds when they get a call out to Cranley Gardens!)
 
Spookdaddy said:
As had already been said, such a process appears to be relatively more common where children in particular are the victims - but I'm pretty sure it would be stretching it to state that demolition of such properties in general is 'normal', or even fairly so (in the sense of usual or expected - the norm).

It’s worth noting that the same few examples, dating over a period of several years, tend to be cited in this context - and over the period of time covered by those examples I suspect that the number of demolitions that do take place represents a small percentage of the whole. I’m sure that there will be more, less well-known, examples - but I’d still bet a big bag of toffees that the incidence is, statistically speaking, well below the norm.

In the examples quoted above, the first property was owned by the council, the second purchased from the landlord after the fact by the Welsh government, the third was, I think, owned by the school - and I don't doubt that it's more feasible for organisations to take the financial hit of demolishing a property than it is for individuals. I also suspect that continued usage, repurposing or revenue harvesting, would also represent more of a PR problem for those organisations than it would for a private individual.

The issues involved are really quite complicated. Is the property the residence of the perpetrator, or the victim? Do/did they actually own the property? After killer or victim, who stands to benefit from the financial value of the property? Do the authorities have the legal and/or moral right to effectively remove assets from, for example, the spouse or children of a killer? Do the authorities have the right to destroy property that belongs to neither them, nor the murderer? Do they even have the legal right to destroy property that does belong to a killer?

Rules of forfeiture and the Proceeds of Crime Act only apply when the murderer stands to profit directly from the killing, or the crime is carried it in relation to, or as a consequence of, the furtherance of illegal financial gain. Outwith such circumstances a convicted killer’s legally held property is still that – it belongs to them in law. That said, a victim’s family can sue for compensation, and a property can be one of the assets sold to provide funds in the event of a successful outcome (so it makes sense not to demolish - a standing property is of more immediate value than a demolition site).

The other issue is that the law is not comfortable with the idea that a criminal’s dependents – with absolutely no connection to their crime – should be punished for that crime, and this inevitably involves arguments around assets. The Forfeiture Act was supplemented by the Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession in order to address this (although the forfeiture rule applies to circumstances where the killer profits financially from the estate of the victim; different circumstances but similar thinking).

Aside from all that, as @Catseye has already suggested, practical considerations also come into play. It’s not so straightforward to demolish a terraced property (Croydon council demolished three in the process of erasing the property Tia Sharp was murdered in). Also flats? You can’t really demolish a flat unless you take out its neighbours – one of the reasons Dennis Nilsen’s two murder scenes are still extant, and occupied. (Can't help wondering what goes through the local plumbers minds when they get a call out to Cranley Gardens!)
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For the year ending March 2020, 339 homicides took place "in or around" dwellings in England and Wales.

I can only think of a handful of cases in the last few decades where the locus has been demolished.

maximus otter
 
Als
ChrisBoardman said:
I think it is just the most notorious cases that make the news that the house gets demolished.
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Also, I think the community involved have some say. The Bernardo/Holmolka murders were horrific for the community and the girls', Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, families. The house was demolished fairly quickly.

Even the video recordings that Bernardo and Holmolka made of the imprisonments and murders of the girls were never released beyond the courtroom. Afaik, the tapes were destroyed years later at the request of the girls' families so that nothing would ever reach public viewing.
 
brownmane said:
Als

Also, I think the community involved have some say. The Bernardo/Holmolka murders were horrific for the community and the girls', Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, families. The house was demolished fairly quickly.

Even the video recordings that Bernardo and Holmolka made of the imprisonments and murders of the girls were never released beyond the courtroom. Afaik, the tapes were destroyed years later at the request of the girls' families so that nothing would ever reach public viewing.
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Not being sure what the relevant regulations would be in Canada, a quick dig around found one source which states that:

...The Bernardo house, constantly vandalized since the blond, aspiring rap artist was arrested in February, 1993, is owned by the province, while the land is owned by private citizens...
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This might indicate that - as in the UK - the authorities can, in these instances, only destroy what they own, and that if they don't own it, they have to purchase it (albeit a property purchase may be in the nature of a compulsory order - sometimes way below market value). I suppose there's the possibility that the province owned the property prior to the murders, maybe as social housing or some sort of local authority tied accommodation. However, I'd make a small wager that the home was rented, and that the authorities made a deal with the actual owners by which the latter got rid of an unsellable property, but kept absolute rights to the building plot.* (And there is, apparently, a new property on the land in question.)

One of the ironies of the infamous Fred/Rose West case in the UK is that in order to demolish the house on Cromwell Road, the local council had to purchase it...from its owner...Fred West.

Well, technically speaking, the estate of Fred West - with the avowed intent of benefiting the West's younger children, which matches up with something I said in my earlier post. (It's also generally stated that the house had been so thoroughly stripped back and excavated that it was actually in an irreparable condition.)

*Edit: Seems so - at least according to this source:

...Bernardo rented the home from its owners during the time he used it as a sex prison. After his arrest in 1993, the home was bought by the Ontario government, and the land was left with the owners...
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ChrisBoardman said:
I think it is just the most notorious cases that make the news that the house gets demolished.
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Or possibly the most horrific. I don't think any of the Harold Shipman murder houses have been demolished, for example, where at first the cases weren't even believed to be murder.

But maybe 'notorious' and 'violent and bloody' are synonymous?
 
Nor here; And I can name some lurid cases.

But maybe not lurid enough.
 
Spookdaddy said:
*Edit: Seems so - at least according to this source:
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Your second source is a little clearer to me. Yes the government bought the house in order to demolish it as per the public opinion towards the crimes. That is kind of what I meant in my post, that the community decided, though I thought the municipal government would have been the one involved.

I know of one fairly local farm house, and I also knew the owner at the time. His sister and her partner were murdered (never solved, but police said it was a drug deal gone wrong) in the house. It took years for the owner to get permission to demolish the building due to the police not wanting it demolished in case there was new evidence found. It took at least a decade for him to get permission to take the house down.
 
I read recently online of a murder house very close to my mum and dads house. I just took this photo of the house from the bedroom window as we are staying here for Christmas.it’s the one with all the Christmas lights on it. It’s a poor photo as I only took it on an iPad and it’s obviously dark outside. It’s a sad story.

799EBA95-A10A-459A-B42F-A951B79A1A9B.jpeg
http://www.unsolved-murders.co.uk/murder-content.php?key=5819&termRef=Girl
 
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The House Was Charming, but Came With a Catch: A Murder Took Place There​


In Yorktown, Va., a charming, gambrel-roofed house drew James Fiorito’s attention this summer. He had just sold his home and sought a fixer-upper—this one, listed at $250,000, seemed like a steal in a neighborhood where such a home would typically draw $450,000. He toured the dingy interior with a flashlight, since it no longer had electricity. In the backyard, a backhoe sat by the recently filled-in pool.

Fiorito [was] puzzled over the home’s decrepit status and why the seller was the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity. He asked one of the listing agents about the home’s circumstances and was told the previous owner had been a hoarder. Fiorito made an all-cash offer of $225,000.

Later, he couldn’t resist googling the address. He learned that a man had killed his mother and sister in the home and stored their bodies in the empty backyard pool.

He decided to withdraw his offer. “I think it’s the proximity to evil and the reminder that there are terrible things in the world,” he says of the decision.

The home eventually sold for $285,100

In three states, rules guide disclosures about deaths that have taken place in a home for sale. In California, any death that took place in the home within the last three years must be disclosed to a potential buyer, and if a buyer specifically asks, any known death, no matter how old, must be disclosed. In South Dakota, real-estate licensees who are aware of a murder or suicide on the property must disclose if it occurred within one year of the first showing to the buyer. And in Alaska, sellers of residential real property must disclose a murder or suicide that occurred on the property within the last three years.

Kyle Lancour, the agent who represented the eventual buyer of the property, said he didn’t know about the murders at the time of the sale, and neither did his client, an investor.

“I don’t think it makes that much of a difference for this particular buyer,” says Lancour. “We buy drug houses, fire houses and places where bad things happened, and we turn them into something beautiful and livable. We bring them back to life again.” And in fact, since this interview, the home sold again in September for $491,000, according to Lancour. He says the buyer was made aware of the murders before going into contract, although an official disclosure wasn’t made.

https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/selling-a-murder-house-3efa4db4

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:

The House Was Charming, but Came With a Catch: A Murder Took Place There​


In Yorktown, Va., a charming, gambrel-roofed house drew James Fiorito’s attention this summer. He had just sold his home and sought a fixer-upper—this one, listed at $250,000, seemed like a steal in a neighborhood where such a home would typically draw $450,000. He toured the dingy interior with a flashlight, since it no longer had electricity. In the backyard, a backhoe sat by the recently filled-in pool.

Fiorito [was] puzzled over the home’s decrepit status and why the seller was the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity. He asked one of the listing agents about the home’s circumstances and was told the previous owner had been a hoarder. Fiorito made an all-cash offer of $225,000.

Later, he couldn’t resist googling the address. He learned that a man had killed his mother and sister in the home and stored their bodies in the empty backyard pool.

He decided to withdraw his offer. “I think it’s the proximity to evil and the reminder that there are terrible things in the world,” he says of the decision.

The home eventually sold for $285,100

In three states, rules guide disclosures about deaths that have taken place in a home for sale. In California, any death that took place in the home within the last three years must be disclosed to a potential buyer, and if a buyer specifically asks, any known death, no matter how old, must be disclosed. In South Dakota, real-estate licensees who are aware of a murder or suicide on the property must disclose if it occurred within one year of the first showing to the buyer. And in Alaska, sellers of residential real property must disclose a murder or suicide that occurred on the property within the last three years.

Kyle Lancour, the agent who represented the eventual buyer of the property, said he didn’t know about the murders at the time of the sale, and neither did his client, an investor.

“I don’t think it makes that much of a difference for this particular buyer,” says Lancour. “We buy drug houses, fire houses and places where bad things happened, and we turn them into something beautiful and livable. We bring them back to life again.” And in fact, since this interview, the home sold again in September for $491,000, according to Lancour. He says the buyer was made aware of the murders before going into contract, although an official disclosure wasn’t made.

https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/selling-a-murder-house-3efa4db4

maximus otter
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If the proximity to evil and reminder about bad things in the world are going to get house sales cancelled,then surely that rules out any house where domestic violence has taken place, or child cruelty, animal torture - I mean where would he draw the line? Refusing to buy a house where a toddler once got shouted at, or a cat died a bad death? Murder - not great, but there's plenty of other evil in the world!
 
The most recent murder house in the next village, we noticed never had a For Sale sign go up on it and appeared to be lived in continuously. So we're thinking the victim's kids continued to live in it after their mum was stabbed to death by her lunatic ex. Reading this thread, I've realised that maybe it was rented out and no sign went up? Interesting thing there is, if that was the case, the new renters might have no idea that a fairly high profile murder happened there (high profile as in, reported in national press not just local)..? I mean, if you sell a house you'd probably be legally obliged to disclose (not sure?) but if you rent it out, not so much?

Other thing is, that village has a small FB group. And they actively banned any discussion or even mention in passing of the murder, before during and after it came to court. Mods would swoop and delete instantly. Same road had a paedo exposed on it by one of those online hunter groups, more recently, and the posts about that were left on the group. So there's a possibility that whoever rented the house if it was rented out, might have no way of knowing it was a murder of house only a couple years back.

The victim happened to be a fairly high end estate agent and so it is a very desirable house. She was around my age and her kids around my kids' age (young adults) so they could have lived there after she was killed, but I'd imagine that would be very difficult to do.

A 1960s' murder happened at the other end of the same lane - and in the early 2000s my ex rented a house on that lane. I once got chatting with people opposite about remembering the 1960s' murder and asked if the people who moved in after knew about it as they had lived there since the 60s - and they said nobody ever told them. So it's feasible, you could rent a murder house and have no idea - even in the age of social media. I only knew the mods on the village FB page had deleted as I happened along minutes after someone had posted asking about it, then the post disappeared really quickly and no other post ever appeared that I saw - so put two and two together and assumed mods were instantly deleting any mention of the murder. First thing people do these days when they move into these villages where they have no history, connections and know nobody, is they seem to join the village's FB group...
 
They razed 25 Cromwell St to the ground - but what about the house the Wests had lived in earlier, where Rose murdered Fred's daughter whilst he was banged up? Houses aren't routinely erased from the face of the earth when a murder or even multiple murders might have happened there - so at what point do say, councils, decide when the house has to go? (Thinking also of Huntley's house in Soham).
 
Analogue Boy said:
I think we’re more in Fred West’s ordinary house territory rather than hamster strangling here.
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Well no, but it was claiming of the 'wannabe purchaser' that he wouldn't buy the house because of the 'proximity to evil'. I could understand if the murderer had been released and was living next door, but what exact proximity was there? Proximity to extremely sad events, I would have said, rather than evil. Evil can't hang around a site (IMO, obviously, because I know a lot of people say they can 'sense evil' in places. Me, I have the psychic sensitivity of a housebrick, and I would wager the same would apply to most of the human population. Even the prospective purchaser didn't know what had happened there until he was told).
 
Ian Brady and Myra Hindleys house in Manchester is the only other house in the UK I can think of that was raised to the ground.

Bloody spell check. Myra Hind leg!
 
Stormkhan said:
I've always been led to believe that, in the UK, only the most infamous 'murder houses' are obliterated to discourage ghoulish sightseers. These, after all, would upset any new resident to begin with.
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Also...could it be that supposedly hard-headed business people implicitly believe that such places might be haunted (at least, by the 'memory' of the events within them)? If not themselves, perhaps they think that new tenants or owners might be attuned to the atmospheres? Maybe it's not always a simple case of the housing people believing that they won't be able to sell or rent the houses...
 
catseye said:
Also wasn't 10 Rillington Place renamed and has since been demolished? But then, most of that area of slums has been redeveloped, so probably more coincidental than intentional.
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I think at the time Rillington Place was simply renamed.
 
They've got Strictly ... and other anodyne entertainment to fall back on. I'm sure Channel 4 or even Netflix would 'run with it'.
 
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