Who Died in Your Home? Website Gives the Gory Details

(The home of Brian Betts, a D.C.-area principal who was murdered in 2010. Two others were murdered in the same home in 2002. The address was later changed to avoid connection to the deaths. Photo: The Washington Post)

You’ve heard the story: Family moves into new house, maybe some weird things happen, then they find out a bunch of people were killed there. It’s a horror movie standard.

If only these poor, unsuspecting families had known the horrible histories lurking in their home.

Now they really have no excuse. DiedInHouse.com allows users to look up the morbid history of any home instantly. The website, sort of a Carfax for home deaths, churns out a report that lists all past owners and notes if any died in the house. It also provides meth lab and fire records.

Software developer Roy Condrey established the site two years ago after one of his tenants texted him in the middle of the night to say that the apartment was haunted. The text led Condrey to wonder if maybe someone had died there. So he began digging for answers.

“It’s really tough to do,” he tells Yahoo Real Estate. “Let’s say you research the history of your home. You can easily find the past owners and probably figure out if any died while owning the house, but where they died and how they died, that’s hard. Not to mention if someone else died there.”

So he invented a better way. Condrey wouldn’t give away specifics about how the algorithm behind the report works, but it relies on connecting the dots between government files, like the Social Security Death Master File, news reports and other research plugged into his database. Most of the information only goes back to the 1980s, when files were first digitized, but for information earlier than that, Condrey and his small team in South Carolina go hunting by hand and supplement the report (though that takes a little longer).

The data he uses includes 4.5 million listed deaths, and he says the team has added 300,000 additional files dating back to the 1800s since launching, he says. Each report costs $12 and includes an additional search done by Condrey’s team after the automated report.

For the record, nobody had died in his tenant’s apartment.

Most people who use Condrey’s service are just looking for a little reassurance before purchasing or renting a home.

Real estate disclosure laws are notoriously lax about death in a property. Few states in the U.S. have any real regulation surrounding the issue, Condrey says, and even then, they’re limited.

In California, which may have the strictest laws on the book, sellers must disclose if someone died on the property if selling within three years of the death; after that it doesn’t have to be mentioned.

But it’s not just silence that keeps death history hidden. Addresses also change, burying a home’s past even deeper, Condrey says. Homes associated with some of the most notorious deaths of the past half-century have different addresses: JonBenet Ramsey’s home in Boulder, Colorado; Nicole Brown Simpson’s condo in Brentwood, California; the San Diego mansion of the Heaven’s Gate cult where 39 members committed suicide: All changed addresses since their days in the spotlight (the Heaven’s Gate house has since been demolished).

(The Ramsey home in Boulder, Colorado, site of JonBenet’s notorious murder, was resold years after the Ramseys moved out. Photo: Getty)

This is to avoid the inevitable drain that death has on property value. According to real estate agent and nationally recognized “stigmatized property expert” Randall Bell, a stigmatized home – one where someone famously died – can lose 15 to 25 percent of its value for a few years afterward. And it can take decades for a property to fully recover, if it can at all.

“These things really impact the value of a home,” Condrey says, “which is why a death doesn’t get revealed. A lot of these houses just sell because they’re not advertising it.”

The unaware buyers are then sometimes in for a shock. A woman who was moving from California to Pennsylvania bought a $610,000 home, only to find out it was the site of a locally famous, though nationally unknown, murder-suicide years earlier. She sued the sellers and the agent for fraud, saying that they deliberately withheld the information her, but a judge sided with the defendants. They did withhold the information – it just wasn’t illegal to do so.

A house near him in South Carolina was the site of a locally famous murder where a bookie killed his wife and another man in an act of alleged “self-defense.” That house sold, finally, for about $150,000 less than comparable homes in the neighborhood.

It doesn’t even have to be murder. In Illinois in 2008, an old woman, described as alert, aware and well-liked by neighbors, was found living in her home alongside her three siblings, all dead, tucked in their beds and rotting for years, decades even.

Condrey is full of stories like this; he shares them constantly on his Facebook page. These are the more outlandish cases, of course, but sometimes the simple fact that someone died in the home can make certain buyers turn down a home, he says.

“Everyone has their own opinion on how this affects them,” Condrey says. “Our thing is, I know it impacts someone’s decision. Some people think it’s not a big deal, and some people turn around and run. Why not let them make their own decisions rather than find out afterwards?

“Then there’s this ethical battle that happens later,” he says. “If you bought a house, then found out there was a murder-suicide, you wonder, ‘Now what do I do? Do I tell the next person?’ It’s the right thing to do, but there’s so much money on the line.”

That’s why Condrey says understand why some people would never run a report on their own homes, especially ones they’re already living in.

Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

More horror stories on Yahoo Real Estate:

• American Horror Story: The Creeptastic Hotel and Its Real-Life Inspirations (28 photos)
• HOA Horror Stories: Homeowners Who Fought & Came Out On Top
• Wife Lists ‘Utterly Crap’ Camper Suitable for ‘Sordid Affairs’ and 'Murdering’ on eBay