OddThinking

Just over a week ago, I wrote about the ethical dilemma over the abandoned sale of a house in which three people had been murdered.

On Tuesday, I happened to be killing some time with a real estate agent, so I took the opportunity to ask her about the dilemma from a real estate agent’s perspective.

The answers I got were not exactly what I had in mind.

She started by diverting the conversation to the murder scene itself, re-telling the dramatic story of a friend of hers who was sitting on the veranda next door, just a few metres from the house at the time of the murders, and heard absolutely nothing. Actually, I guess it’s not that dramatic, really.

I steered her back to the ethical dilemma.

She explained that it wasn’t illegal, but it was morally wrong. I kept pressing for further understanding – weren’t the real-estate agents fined $21,000?

I can’t remember the exact words she used, but she explained that it was by their professional association, who fined them for bringing the industry into disrepute.

“Oh, like ‘conduct unbecoming a real estate agent’?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

That made a lot of sense to me. Putting aside the cynical observation of how hard it would be to ruin the reputation of real estate agents, it makes sense to me that this wasn’t an illegal act, but that professional associations may financially discourage such behaviour to help the entire industry. That’s a happy solution in my mind.

The only difficulty is, she was wrong. According to the press, the Real Estate Institute of Australia weighed into the debate to say no laws had been broken. According to the news reports, it was the government that fined the agency for breaching the Property, Stock and Business Agents Act, and the Fair Trading Act.

I stuck at the conversation doggedly. I tried to explore the issue further, wondering at what level you would have to report the information to the potential buyers. Based on her answers, she seemed to think that violent death was the discriminating factor.

During this discussion I said dismissively “Of course, if you are worried about ghosts…” and she interrupted, equally dismissive of the idea: “Yeah, all houses have ghosts.” This was the point I realised she and I were approaching this dilemma from completely different world-views.

She suggested that no-one would ever want to live in the house. I tentatively suggested that I wouldn’t mind. She quickly backtracked, and said “The men don’t mind. But, no woman would ever want to live in the house!”

She said you would have to be particularly naive to buy it without knowing about the murder. I tentatively suggested that I might be that naive, but she explained the picture of the house had been in all the papers. I was rather unconvinced. I wouldn’t recognise the house if I saw it, and it is only a few kilometres away from where I am sitting now.

She said it was sad, because it was a lovely house, and it would have to be demolished and rebuilt before anyone would live in it.

“It will never sell,” she said.

In the end, she was, unintentionally, a very effective salesperson. I saw a great opportunity: purchase a house and land package at the price of land only; live in it for a few years, without doing any maintenance; wait five years until the hue-and-cry had died down; then demolish and rebuild (either another house, or even better: flats! The way I figure it, if you build six flats, that’s only half of a ghost per flat, which would be a much easier sale.); profit! (Effectively it would be a saving on five years’ rent.)

I figured an $800,000 house with ghosts should sell for about $600,000. That’s equates to a 33% not-house-of-horror premium on most Sydney properties.

The only difficulty is, she was wrong. By the time she was saying it would never sell,
it had already sold… for $720,000. It seems that Sydney properties only include an 11% not-house-of-horror premium. In fact, perhaps much less, if you accept the claim that “similar properties in North Ryde are on the market for between $690,000 and $790,000.” The drop in price from $800,000 may be more due to the soft house market than suspected haunting.

In hindsight, I should have listened to a far more reputable source of information – the web-poll on the Paranormal Australia web-site that suggested only 21% of the population would refuse to live in a House of Horror.

So, I am disheartened that I lost my opportunity to make a profit.

However, I am somewhat heartened to realise that the Sydney housing market shows a healthy level of skepticism towards the idea that the spirits of dead people hang around houses.

The truth about ghosts is clear once you apply some common-sense. Ghosts have no mass. So, clearly, the gravity of the Earth, and friction of the atmosphere don’t apply to them. Thus, the moment you die, your soul, following Newtown’s laws of motion, is flung in a perfectly straight line into space at thousands of metres per second relative to your corpse.

On a more serious note, I trust that none of this is taken as disrespectful of the victims’ family. They have my sincere sympathies. I am sure that they have been through enough emotional pain, without the antics of real estate agents, the superstitious public and random bloggers making the problem worse.

[Updated: I incorrectly said that it was the Office of Fair Trading that fined the real estate agent. That’s the wrong arm of the government!]