Selling a home with a sordid past

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — Burn it. Bulldoze it. Sell it to a young family that can make it happy again.

Neighbors have lots of ideas for the big, white Dutch colonial. On Christmas Eve 2002, Ernest R. Wholaver Jr. crept inside and shot his estranged wife and two daughters to death.

No one has lived in the house since. The paint is peeling; the porch, crumbling. Squirrels run in and out.

Neighbors do not know whether a piece of real estate with such a dark past can accommodate a bright future.

"I feel the devil is over there," neighbor Edna Parrell says.

The house was to be sold at a sheriff's auction.

Selling such properties can pose special challenges.

Rick Zalek, an associate broker and instructor for Re/Max Realty Professionals in Harrisburg, Pa., said he's had a few sales of his own that might be considered spooky, including the home of a man who killed himself.

The thing is, the fear over living in a home where someone is known to have died — naturally or unnaturally — seems to be a thing of the past, he said.

"What I tell my classes is that people are not as sensitive today as they were years ago," Zalek said. "In today's market, if it's the right house, the right price and the right location, people will say, 'I'll buy it.' "

No agency keeps statistics on sales of homes where notorious crimes have taken place and that's partly because no law requires sellers or real-estate agents to disclose murders or suicides in a home.

Washington's law requires sellers to disclose only one crime — whether the property has ever been the site of illegal drug manufacturing.

While most real-estate agents want to be honest with potential buyers, they don't want to jeopardize a sale.

"If you have one of these events, the neighbors will be over the day [the new owners] move in with a cake and to talk about what happened," said Jim Goldsmith, an attorney in Harrisburg, Pa., and counsel to the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors.

Real estate is a business built on reputation, and no agent wants his tarnished by angry buyers who — once the neighbors come over for a round of "guess what happened in your house" — might tell others of their perceived deception.

Most, he said, would try to work with the seller to disclose the information.

Making a home out of a former crime scene begins after the coroner and police teams have collected evidence.

Dan Ayers, who runs a ServPro franchise in the area, said he has cleaned up five scenes since he started offering the service nine months ago.

The average cost for a crime-scene cleanup is $200 an hour plus the cost of equipment, Ayers said.

All of his employees, who get hazard pay for volunteering to do the work, come dressed in biohazard suits, gloves, respirators and boots.

They make sure every speck of blood, bodily fluid and other hazardous waste is removed.

Seattle Times business reporter Elizabeth Rhodes contributed the information about Washington state law to this report.