I had a listing that was known by a lot of realtors as the “murder house”. A murder had occurred in this home, which was being rented, about 20 years before. The husband came home in the middle of the day and shot his wife. He then turned the gun on himself. Their two little daughters got off the school bus and walked into a horrible scene; both of their parents were gone. Nobody could sell the house because of the stigma of the murder/suicide. But as time passed, more and more people forgot about the horrific incident.

I got a call one day from the original owners who said they heard I could sell “anything”. Would I give their house a try? They knew that I knew the story. Enough time had gone by and a lot of realtors were now not aware of what happened there. And the owner, being a German- born engineer, had magnificently updated and renovated the house. They had rented out the house at the time of the murder because he worked as a contract engineer for several years in South America.

But now they were back, had renovated the house and wanted to sell. I was worried if enough time had passed to make enough money to cover the cost of their renovations. Luckily, the answer was enough time had passed. I sold the home for a nice price, enough for renovation costs and a good profit for the sellers. It was the first home in that subdivision to sell for over $300K. They moved on to Florida where they had built their dream house and all was well, for a while.

I opened up the local newspaper one day and headlines blared “Local Man Caught in Embezzling Scheme”. The man who had bought the house had stolen close to $1M from a local restaurant chain. The FBI had been on the case for several years and finally figured out how he and his partner had committed the crime. He had paid cash for the house, an interesting side fact. He went to jail for a few years but his wife was able to stay in the house with the children. Unfortunately, the house and yard started looking very bad. I even had neighbors complain, as if I had a landscaping business on the side! I called the wife, Maria, to tell her about it and she said “Karen, that house is cursed”!