Would You Buy and Live in Lizzie Borden’s House?
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Bill Primavera
Just as many people think that O. J. Simpson got away with murder in 1995, there was a similar case just over a hundred years prior to that bloody event where Lizzie Borden of Fall River, Mass. was found not guilty in the murder of her parents.
They were hacked to death with an ax in the most gruesome manner, although the number of whacks has proven not to align with the nursery rhyme. (Oops, that’s not a likely nursery rhyme, is it?)
It’s been years since I’ve been asked the question and I thought I’d never hear it again. But sure enough, just a couple of months ago, I was asked, “Do you know if anyone has died in this house?” And it was not too long ago that another buyer client refused to enter a house because it was diagonally across the street from an old cemetery, even though she had liked the listing tremendously online.
In real estate, such concerns fall under the category of stigmatized properties that, by loose definition, can be the site of a murder, suicide, criminal activity or even a rumored ghost.
I don’t know why I was initially surprised by these situations, considering my own case history. My wife and I purchased our first home from a friend in Brooklyn Heights. It featured a rental duplex, and our upstairs tenants were a wonderful, cultivated couple, he a designer for The New York Times and she, a filmmaker.
Her official introduction to me the day we moved in was to ask whether the former owner told us that the house was haunted. I simply laughed. I don’t believe in such superstitions, but when The Times came calling to report on the young couple who bought an antique house thought to be haunted, I milked the opportunity to promote an antiques shop that we operated on the main floor.
Disclosing information about a stigmatized house depends on many factors, mostly on state laws and circumstances surrounding the perceived stigmatization. Connecticut’s “ghostbusters law” requires agents to inform buyers in writing of homicides, suicides and other felonies if requested to do so by the buyer.
However, about 30 states across the country, including New York, have specific laws stating that sellers and their real estate agents cannot be held liable for failing to disclose such nonmaterial or nonphysical defects about a house. Some years ago, in a notorious case, a Poughkeepsie homeowner had committed a series of murders and buried the bodies in his basement. The subsequent buyer of the house attempted to sue the realtor for not being informed of this.
Effects of so-called stigmatization have varied among subsequent homeowners. The house in which the murders by Charles Manson’s followers took place in 1969 had a successful sales history after the fact. The house had been rented from a landlord who moved back in just three weeks after the murders and lived there happily for the next 20 years. When the house was offered for sale after that period, it sold in two weeks.
But most of the time, highly stigmatizing events can cut as much as 15 to 25 percent from the price a home would otherwise fetch. The largest markdowns, according to appraisers, are associated with explosive cases that receive broad media attention, such as “The Amityville Horror” house.
Another case is the property at which Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered. In that case, the house was on the market for two years after the murders and sold for $200,000 less than what Nicole had paid for it.
As far as actual physical defects are concerned, in 2002, New York State enacted the Property Condition Disclosure Act that requires sellers to inform buyers of known conditions of the property before the contract is signed. However, there is an option, which most lawyers recommend, that the seller decline submitting the form, but instead transfer $500 to the buyer at the time of closing.
While disclosure laws cover a lot of territory, from legal considerations, agents in most states notify buyers that they must do their own research about such matters as the quality of the local school system or if there are registered sex offenders in the neighborhood.
Ghostly stories can come from the most grounded of people. I remember some years ago when then-governor Mario Cuomo revealed in an Associated Press interview that when he spent evenings in the Governor’s Mansion in Albany, reputed to be haunted, he was sometimes unsettled by unexplained activity.
“I’m a big, tough Italian guy,” he said, “But I’ll tell you, it gets creepy in that house and there are a lot of noises that go on, and you are very alone.”
As for me, planning a trip to Lizzie Borden’s house in Fall River is on my bucket list. I even want to stay overnight in the bedroom where her stepmother got 40 whacks. So call me weird.
Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc. (www.PrimaveraPR.com). His real estate site is www.PrimaveraRealEstate.com, and his blog is www.TheHomeGuru.com. To engage the services of The Home Guru to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
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