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When walls talk: Housecreep.com warns about properties ‘stigmatized’ by murder and grow-ops
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Toronto homes that have housed murder-suicides, infanticides, grow-ops and police shootings are now detailed and mapped on a website—Housecreep.com—for any prospective buyer or renter to find.
Brothers Albert and Robert Armieri began creating a database of “stigmatized” homes last year when each was searching for a new place to live; Albert a house in Ottawa and Robert and apartment in Toronto. They’d perused the bedbug registry, but wanted more information about the properties they were looking at.
“Stigmatized” is the real-estate term for properties that have a history that might be unappealing to a buyer—the site of a murder, a brothel, a gravesite, a drug operation, or, rarely, an alleged haunting.
On Housecreep.com, you can search an address or browse by category—murder, double murder, remains, honour killing, gang violence, crack—most linked to news reports verifying the information. The brothers have poured time into filling in information, but the site is not comprehensive. Toronto has the most entries so far—380 stigmatized properties registered—and data on other cities is growing.
Users have begun adding information. They can add their own, unverified, “personal account” claiming information about a property, which can then be verified or disputed by other users. They can also list their past residences, with reviews.
“We spent months, months, researching properties, reading public news articles, and found properties where famous people had lived—movie stars or gangsters—or whether arson or a murder had occurred there,” said Albert.
Neither brother has experience in real estate—Albert is a statistician and Robert a multi-media production expert—but they would like the real estate world to use the site, and contribute to it.
“Our dream would be to create a society of informed buyers, renters and realtors,” said Albert.
“In my opinion, having just purchased a home, I would sincerely appreciate realtors disclosing any kind of information they may have about potential stigma attached to a home. It allows a buyer to do a cost-benefit analysis prior to making one of the biggest decisions of their lives.”
Real estate lawyer Shari Elliott said she believes the issue of stigmatized properties has recently grown in the public consciousness and has become more of a problem for agents.
“I had multiple cases this summer where (real estate) agents said there’d been suicides in the house and they wanted to know what to do,” she said. “My advice is always to disclose it.”
Sellers have a legal obligation to disclose to buyers that there has been a grow-op in a house, if they are aware of it. Real estate agents have an obligation to disclose any “material fact” that might affect the sale of a house, but the definition of “material fact” is unclear, Elliott said.
“It’s totally in flux,” she said. “We’re waiting for court decisions.”
Elliott has other concerns. She said she was “appalled” that the site would allow potentially untrue comments from users that harm someone’s ability to sell their house.
Albert Armieri said Housecreep.com is doing its best to make sure all of the information on the site is linked to news articles that are already online and verify what had occurred in the home. However, it does rely on the truthfulness of contributors for some entries.
Realtor Ali Ahmed represented the buyers of 934 Ossington Ave., who bought the home two years after a man was murdered there. They were aware of what had happened, but weren’t “superstitious,” he said.
Ahmed said he believes “superstitious” types will find all kinds of problems with houses, but other people, like his clients, won’t care.
“In Toronto where you have 100- to 150-year-old homes, people do die in their homes,” he said. “Some people commit suicide, some people die a natural death, some people just fall over and die.”
Metro
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