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There’s an easier way, and our FREE guide breaks down how it can work for you.
Ask the homeowner or real estate agent
News agencies and libraries often keep archives of newspapers that are free to search. Many of these entities have even taken the time to digitize their printed newspapers dating back many years. Though these states are the most transparent in regard to on-property deaths, the general rule in most other states is if someone asks about it, then the agent or seller can’t obscure the truth. Our tool analyzes the records of recently sold homes near you, your home’s last sale price, and other market trends to provide a preliminary range of value in under two minutes.
Do I have to disclose if someone died in my house?

Few states require sellers to disclose if anyone died in the home, even if it was a murder-suicide that everyone else in the neighborhood knows about. To ensure a property's history is accurately researched and documented, start by conducting thorough research using reliable sources, such as public records, historical archives, and property documents. Consider hiring a professional historian, genealogist, or a real estate agent experienced in historical properties, as their expertise can be invaluable in verifying information. Finally, cross-reference multiple sources, check for inconsistencies, and maintain detailed records of your findings to ensure the property's history is accurately documented. In California, if a person has died on the property in the three years prior to the sale of the home, this must be disclosed to potential buyers.
Why Choose DiedInHouse.com for Your Real Estate Decisions?
Unless required by their state to disclose on-property deaths, real estate agents likely won’t go out of their way to share a home’s morbid past with you. The site cross references between public records and other databases to find who used to live in a particular U.S. address, whether they're alive or not, and if they died while in the house. It can tell prospective homebuyers information the seller isn't obligated to disclose, which can sometimes lower a house's final price. If you want to find free information on a specific address, the local assessor’s office often records all the properties under its jurisdiction. Heading to the home in question’s assessor’s office can provide insight into the home you are looking at, such as the home’s ownership history and assessed value.
Use A Property Search Website
According to a 2020 study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 31.4% of U.S. residents died in their homes in 2018. To get an idea of what your home is objectively worth without any stigma attached, try HomeLight’s free Home Value Estimator. The online tool uses key information provided by you and combs through millions of transactions to provide a ballpark estimate of value. An example would be the former Massachusetts home of Lizzie Borden. Lizzie was initially believed to be the culprit but was acquitted in trial. The murder remains unsolved and the home now serves as a bed and breakfast that people specifically seek out due to its troubled past.
Search for your address on Google and social media

"Did you know that your house is haunted?" read the letters glowing on his screen. It wasn't a message from beyond, but rather came from one of the tenants in the properties he rents out to supplement his income as a software project manager. This could present a serious problem, unless you live in an insane housing market like San Francisco, where a house in which a mummified woman had been discovered fetched $1.56 million — $500,000 over asking. These spooky findings can have real implications for your house value. A death or incident of violent crime in your house can cause its value to sink up to 30%, according to Forbes. If you discover that someone did indeed die in your house, the next steps are up to you.
How Did Pop Smoke Die? Cause of Pop Smoke's Death - Vulture
How Did Pop Smoke Die? Cause of Pop Smoke's Death.
Posted: Thu, 09 Jul 2020 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Expand Your Search to Historical Newspapers
That said, it’s in the best interest of the seller to tell you the true history of the home. If you find out about an undisclosed death in the home before closing, the deal might fall through. Read over the seller disclosure form to see if anything looks suspicious or like it was purposely left blank.
What buyers should consider
Census records from 1790 to 1940 are available to the public through the U.S. The simplest way to find out if someone died in a house is to use DiedInHouse.com. Built to fulfill a very specific need, this site uses data from more than 130 million police records, news reports, and death certificates to determine whether or not someone died at an address you search.
Use the paid service diedinhouse.com
A limitation of the website is that most of the information it provides dates after the mid-1980s due to a lack of older digitized death records. Anything that happened on a property before that point likely won’t appear in a search. In Alaska and South Dakota, only suicides and murders that occurred in the home in the past 12 months must be disclosed to potential buyers. To help you find out if someone died in your house, we consulted a top real estate agent and a real estate valuation specialist with unique knowledge on the subject. The U.S. government took a census each decade beginning in 1790 and the resulting US census records through 1940 are open to the public and available online. State census records are also available for some states and time periods—generally taken about mid-way between each federal decennial census.
“It’s obviously a sad situation in the lives of the families and individuals, but as far as property value, it doesn’t really have an impact,” he explains. It’s also important to be calm and collected during the selling process. The home had been the scene of a newsworthy homicide in 1987, in which a man murdered his wife and kids before killing himself. No matter which state you own property in, it can be a good idea to simply be upfront about a home’s complete history. City directories, available for most urban areas and many towns, can be used to fill in gaps between available census enumerations.
Though the statistic often changes, there has been a notable increase in the percentage of deaths that occurred in the U.S. in recent decades. This can result in sellers having a difficult time finding the right buyer, or buyers using the information as leverage for price negotiation. For a typical death in a home, such as an elderly person passing away from natural causes, there is rarely ever an issue when buying or selling the property.
A top agent who knows your market will know the disclosure laws and how to share the information if asked about it. HomeLight’s Agent Match platform is one way you can find an agent that best suits your needs. States with the strictest death disclosure laws are Alaska, California, and South Dakota. Not all agents will necessarily know whether or not a death has occurred on a property they’re showing, but they can likely find out if you ask them to. Cake offers its users do-it-yourself online forms to complete their own wills and generalized educational content about wills. Many users would be better served consulting an attorney than using a do-it-yourself online form.
In most states, real estate agents are not required to disclose information about deaths that occurred in a home or on the property. But let’s take a closer look at when the law demands disclosure, and when it might be wise to inform potential buyers even if not legally required. A real estate agent or seller might not be required to disclose any deaths in the house. And if they’re not legally required to do so, it’s likely they won’t provide that information readily. Neighbors and locals, though, might have information about the house that’s of interest, including deaths that may have occurred there.
Search them by address (e.g. "4711 Hancock") to locate everyone who may have lived in or boarded at the residence. If you have identified any of your home's former residents, then a search might also include their surname (e.g. "123 beauregard" lightsey). Though they knew of the house's bloody past, the suit alleged, they kept it hidden from the buyer, whose children learned about it while trick-or-treating on Halloween.
We tried out three searches on the service, which starts at $11.99 (3 searches cost $19.99). None of our houses came back with dead people in its past, but Forbes had checked it against known dens of death and it passed the test. They found that it correctly identified a (former) meth lab and the Amityville Horror House. NeighborWho might be more useful if you’re concerned about the value of a home since it provides information on the home’s last purchase price and its property taxes.
Get free, objective, performance-based recommendations for top real estate agents in your area. Housecreep.com is a crowdsourced database of stigmatized properties (i.e. murder houses, reportedly haunted houses, former drug labs, etc.). Both specialize in owner and property data, such as deeds, liens, estimated property values, and names of previous owners.
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