Defamer Real Estate: Double-Murder Earns Lucky Buyers Great Per-Square-Foot Value
The LAT's Hot Property column reveals a very handy home-buying tip: a willingness to ignore a languishing listing's blood-drenched history—and a daily visitation by a bus full of noisy Crime Scene Tour gawkers—can result in some significant savings:
The Brentwood condo where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death in 1994 is in escrow after being on the market for 38 days. The asking price was slightly under $1.7 million.
"It was an incredible buy based on square footage and selling prices of comparable units in the area," said Cecelia Waeschle of Sotheby's International Realty, Malibu. She tracks home sales on the Westside.
The 3,700-square-foot unit was for sale for two years after Simpson and Goldman were slain outside, near the front door. Then the condo sold for $590,000, $200,000 less than the asking price. The address was changed, and the property, built in 1991, was remodeled.
The contemporary town home was described in the Multiple Listing Service as "stylish and elegant" with four bedrooms, 3 1/2 bathrooms, high ceilings and open spaces.
A nearby condo with only two bedrooms is listed at the same price, Waeschle said.
Leave it to a real estate agent to set aside the small problem of a gruesome double-homicide and put the transaction in terms of its impressive per-square-foot value. (A pair of bodies seems to knock about two bedrooms off an asking price, at least in Brentwood; in Hollywood, you're probably not going to save much for murder.) And we couldn't dig up the actual MLS listing, but we imagine that the "stylish and elegant" description was supplemented by a chipper reference to the property's "colorful history that's a real conversation starter!"
