Mortgage lender explains how to avoid buying a home where a murder took place
In most states, owners do not need to disclose whether a death – let alone a murder – has taken place in a home they are selling. Florida-based mortgage lender Jennifer Beeston discusses how to avoid such a property when searching for a new home.
Prospective homeowners have a number of factors to consider – sometimes, the haunting history of properties with unsavory pasts is overlooked.
Moreover, in every state but Alaska, South Dakota and California, it is not required for sellers to disclose that there has been a death – or even a brutal murder – on their property.
"There's so many states where they don't have to disclose if someone was murdered or committed suicide," Florida-based mortgage lender Jennifer Beeston told Fox News Digital. "There's a few states where you do, but it's not forever. So it's like you'll see some of these houses where, you know, initially the prices when they were reselling really low, and that's because it was in a disclosure time period."
"Recently I had a client and he called me. He's like, 'I found the perfect house. It's so great.' It's the right size. It was the right price. It was the right everything. So he writes his offer. He gets in the contract. The next day, I get a text that says ‘I canceled.’ And I'm like, ‘What happened?’ Right? We had gone through payment, everything else. He goes, ‘Jen, Google the house,’… a woman was kidnaped, raped and murdered in that home – and she was pregnant.
The Menendez brothers' former home has attracted attention.
"I think that's what people need to recognize, is that, you know, if something unsavory happens in a house, it's going to affect property values," she said.
Whether or not you are superstitious, you may not want to live in a home where a violent crime has been committed. Beeston recommends speaking to your real estate agent and doing your own research.
"Google the address and murder. The address and [the word] ‘haunted, or ’murder.' One of the ones that's helpful as well is the address and [the word] ‘drug house,’" she suggested. "Anything that you don't want to have in your world, Google likely will show it to you."
Despite their infamous, sordid histories, these three homes were posted and sold on the market.
1. Beverly Hills mansion where Erik and Lyle Menendez gunned down their parents
A recent Netflix dramatization and a series of appeals in court have brought a stream of tourists back to a Beverly Hills neighborhood where a notorious double murder took place.
Since the streaming service released "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story" last month, true crime fanatics have swarmed to gawk at the Spanish-style mansion where Jose and Kitty Menendez were shot dead by their two sons on Aug. 20, 1989, Beverly Hills police told Fox News Digital.
That night, the two brothers opened fire on their parents as they snacked in front of the TV in their home's living room.
After killing their father, whom they accused of child molestation and abuse, and wounding their mother, they had to go outside for more shells. They reloaded and came back inside to kill her in a scene so bloody one forensic investigator later told Fox News Digital a detective held up an umbrella to block blood dripping from the ceiling.
Erik Menendez, left, and his brother Lyle listen during a pre-trial hearing on Dec. 29, 1992, in Los Angeles after the two were charged in the August 1989 shotgun deaths of their parents. (Vince Bucci/AFP via Getty Images)
They have been locked up for more than 30 years on life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 1989 double murder. The brothers claim they killed their father in self-defense, because they were afraid he'd kill them after they warned him they planned to expose him as a child sex abuser.
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon said last week that "resentencing is appropriate" and vowed to ask a court to make the brothers immediately eligible for parole.
Jose Menendez purchased the sprawling 9,063-square-foot mansion for $4 million in 1988, a year before he and his wife were killed inside, according to House Beautiful. The home boasts seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms, as well as a swimming pool, guest house, spa, outdoor fireplace and private tennis court on the half-acre property.
In just the past month, Beverly Hills police officials told Fox News Digital that they have responded to at least 12 calls for service related to noise complaints and trespassing on the property.
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The home previously owned by José and Kitty Menendez, who were killed by their two sons in Beverly Hills, California. (Bob Riha Jr./Getty Images)
Beeston told Fox News Digital that this sort of attention is not unheard of for properties with bloody histories.
"Sometimes these houses do attract a lot of attention," she said. "So [prospective buyers] just have to wonder, you know, [if they] want to be in the limelight."
The mansion is no longer owned by the Menendez family. It was purchased under an LLC for $17 million in March, exactly 28 years to the day that the brothers were convicted, according to Realtor.com, which reported that the house is undergoing renovations.
The home changed hands three times since Jose and Kitty were murdered – once in 1991 to an undisclosed buyer, then to "Murder, She Wrote" creator William Link, and then to telecommunications director Samuel Delug for $3.7 million, according to the real estate site.
Visitors take photos of the Menendez brothers' former mansion on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024, in Beverly Hills. (Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
2. Colorado home where Chris Watts murdered his pregnant wife and two children
Chris Watts took the lives of his pregnant wife, Shanann Watts, and two children on Aug. 13, 2018, in their five-bedroom, four-bathroom home in Frederick, Colorado.
Watts then buried Shanann, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste at Anadarko Petroleum, the oil company where he worked, prosecutors later said in court.
Authorities believe that Chris Watts killed his family because of his affair with Nichol Kessinger. Shanann Watts told Chris that he wouldn't be able to see their children again after he said that their marriage was over – then he strangled her in their bed.
He then smothered the two girls in his car. The next day, he pleaded on national television for his "missing" family to return home – he would later confess to their murders.
Chris Watts was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his pregnant wife and daughters. (RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Chris Watts is now serving five life sentences behind bars. For years, the family's home that they bought for $399,954 in 2013 sat unoccupied in legal limbo.
After Watts was sentenced, the lender who owned the mortgage on the home foreclosed on the property and put it up for auction – but no one bought it within a year of when it went up for sale, so the county took it out of foreclosure. That meant that the home was still owned by the murderer.
"It’s not getting any bids because people know the sordid history of the house, and nobody wants it," Denver-based bankruptcy attorney Clark Dray told Realtor.com.
Chris and Shanann Watts with their daughters. (Facebook)
Liens were placed on the home by a mortgage lender, a water company, a local homeowners association and Shanann's parents. Sandra and Franklin Rzucek won a $6 million wrongful death lawsuit against Watts, which he was unable to pay behind bars.
The home was listed for $775,000 this year – and sold for $650,000 on Oct. 17, according to Zillow. Its listing did not disclose the murder, Domain reported.
"I literally had loan officers texting me saying ‘You will never believe this,'" Beeston told Fox News Digital. "The house looked beautiful… you would never know. The only indicator was that you couldn't take pictures if you were [a prospective buyer] in the house – that was it."
The home where Chris Watts lived with his wife and their two young girls. (Google Maps)
3. The Beverly Hills estate where Charles Manson's "family" killed Sharon Tate
On Aug. 8, 1969, infamous cult leader Charles Manson sent his followers to a property on Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills, then the home of director Roman Polanski and actress Sharon Tate, and ordered them to "totally destroy" everyone they found there – and to do it "as gruesome as [they could]."
Music producer Terry Melcher, who lived in the home with his actress girlfriend Candice Bergen, entertained several "auditions" with Manson while the cult leader was staying at the home rent-free for several months, House Beautiful reported.
Therefore, he and his followers were familiar with the home's layout, according to "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders."
"Family" members Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian killed five people that night: Tate, who was eight months' pregnant, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, Folgers Coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Folger's boyfriend Wojciech Frykowski and 18-year-old Steven Parent.
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American actress Lillian Gish and her mother, actress Mary Gish (Mary Robinson McConnell) relax by the swimming pool at their California home, which Gish rented during the filming of the western "Duel in the Sun" in 1946. The house later became infamous as the scene of the brutal Charles Manson murders of actress Sharon Tate and others in 1969. (Screen Archives/Getty Images)
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Tate was stabbed 16 times, although she pleaded for the life of her unborn child and offered herself as a hostage – but she was still alive when she was hung with a nylon rope; Folger was stabbed 28 times; Frykowski was stabbed 51 times and was struck 13 times with the butt of Watson's gun; Sebring was shot quickly after protesting against the invaders' rough treatment of pregnant Tate; Parent was shot four times.
A day after the murders, Life magazine sent a journalist and photographer to the home, where they photographed Polanski on his blood-smeared porch where the word "PIG" had been written on the white farmhouse door.
The home's owner sued Polanski and the magazine for $650,000, plus an additional $198,000 for Polanski alone, claiming that the photos were taken without his permission and damaged the resale value of the house, House Beautiful reported. Next, he filed a $480,000 lawsuit against Tate's estate – a court sided with the victim's family, awarding just $4,350.
The owner was unable to find new tenants, and lived in the mansion himself until he was able to sell for $1.6 million in November 1988. It sold again for $2.25 million, then that buyer attempted to sell it for $4.95 million. Ultimately, the attempted sale was unsuccessful and the home was bulldozed to the ground.
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Charles Manson was convicted of one count of murder and several counts of attempted murder. He was the leader of the Manson Family, a cult that carried out several murders. (AP/Ron Galella )
Even after the previous building was replaced, Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails felt the after-effects of that one August night when he rented the property to construct an in-home recording studio.
"I walked in the place at night and everything was dark, and I was like, ‘Holy Jesus that’s where it happened.' Scary. I jumped a mile at every sound – even if it was an owl," Reznor recalled, according to House Beautiful. "I woke up in the middle of the night and there was a coyote looking in the window at me. I thought ‘I'm not gonna make it.'"
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The home had become something of a tourist attraction, with Reznor describing roses and lit candles regularly left at the front gate.
In an attempt to make the property more palatable to buyers and discourage lookie-loos, the house number was changed.
Currently, the property is listed on Zillow at $225,000 per month. The current realtor, who asked not to be named, said that she had no issues finding renters for the lavish 21,000-square-foot estate despite its eerie history.
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