I’m paying careful attention to the Puente house to see if there is any sort of recognizable stigma. Most people I have talked with have had a negative reaction to the idea of buying this property. Puente was convicted in the early 90s too, so the crimes were not that long ago. However, one thing that sets this property apart is that it is a duplex, so will an investor care? That’s the real question.

The second also occurred in the Chestnut Hill section of hiladelphia. I was appraising a resident with a carrige house apartment above the garage. When inspecting the carriage house I notice that there was a roofer making some repairs and a painter and a floor guy also working at the property. It seemed odd that they were all there at the same time. So I asked the painter what was going on. Well, apparently, the tenant living in the carriage house wasn’t having a great year. He decided to end things with a 12 gauge shotgun…thus the hole in the roof, the need to paint the room and refinish the floors.

Years ago when my wife and I were house hunting, we looked at a house where there had been a suicide. We felt so bad for the family and their situation, but ultimately we felt that we wouldn’t purchase the house because we didn’t want to have to explain to our kids what happened in the house and where it happened too (or to have neighbors inform our kids). For us, we would not have paid market value for that property because of the stigma in our mind. That poor family.

I had to appraise a property several years ago where the owner had committed suicide. We are always told that the stigma will affect the sales price but try as I might, I could not find market evidence of this, so no adjustment was made. I guess it would probably depend on where it was at as well as other factor too. Good post.