Want to pay less for real estate? Look for a place where someone died.
Myles Ma of Policy Genius has written an engaging piece called “How death can haunt (or help) your house hunt.” According to one of his sources, you can expect a 10 to 25 percent discount a house where someone died.
Morbid? Yeah, a little. That is, if you can actually find out what happened there. In 32 states you don’t have to disclose such information; in 15, you have to disclose if the buyer asks. The toughest laws are in California (death within past three years) and South Dakota and Alaska (one year prior).
It doesn’t have to be murder, incidentally. Some people just want to know if a person breathed his last in a place they’re thinking of buying.
One of the most geekily fascinating parts of the article has to do with the so-called “Murder House” – a Los Angeles manse where a season of the television program “American Horror Story” was filmed. The folks who bought the place are suing the realtors for allegedly not telling them that some creepy fans of that very creepy TV show known to, um, haunt the place. Some of them sleep just outside the property line and others have frequently trespassed to the point of actually trying to get into the house. Yikes.