In the aftermath of the unthinkable, the brick rowhouse on Sixth Street, Southeast, became something more than an address. Banita Jacks, a 33-year-old single mother, had killed her four young daughters inside the small, two-story home in the summer of 2007. When their bodies were discovered early t he next year, it shocked the city and made national news—all while casting a pall over the property. People walked by quietly. Some crossed the street, wanting distance from the eerie energy and the makeshift memorial of flowers and dolls that mourners had affixed to its chain-link fence. For a time, the property felt untouchable. It sat empty. But even shrines to grief and despair eventually return to the market. When the 1,260-square-foot house sold in June 2009, it went for just $40,000—roughly 80 percent less than its assessed value of $220,610, and also well below the $189,000 it had sold for in 2005. Neighbors warned prospective buyers about what happened there and watched open-house visitors hesitate on the sidewalk as they weighed its deeply discounted price against its traumatic past. In a high-demand region where bidding wars routinely engulf even modest properties, stigma is one of the few forces powerful enough to stall sales momentum. Homes tied to murders, suicides, and violent crimes—what real-estate agents call “stigmatized properties”—can leave buyers conflicted, creating a unique challenge for sellers. “In some homes, when there’s a non-natural death, many carry a stigma,” says Paul Carrillo, deputy chair and professor of economics at George Washington University. “We know from [economic research] that those perceptions get capitalized into prices, at least in the short term. People don’t want to buy that house.” What happens to properties with heinous histories? And how do they go from emergency sirens to staging to sale? While there are no hard and fast rules for rehabilitating their value, turnarounds take place across two dimensions: physical and psychological. Controlling Conditions Photograph by Sarah L. Voisin/Washington Post/Getty Images. Photograph by Bright MLS. Melanie Gamble, a real-estate broker in Upper Marlboro, remembers her first time dealing with a stigmatized property. In 2016, she was managing a client’s rental unit in Northeast DC when two tenants were shot and killed inside it. Shaken, the owner chose to sell rather than continue leasing. Gamble handled the transaction. “Properties don’t sell for three reasons,” she says. “Number one is location. Number two is price. And number three is condition. You’re not going to move the house, so you can only control price and condition. So what can you do?” Biohazard remediation is a typical first step. Once investigators clear a crime scene, professionals are called in to erase any trace of blood or other biological materials that may be on walls, floors, or ceilings. Likewise, porous surfaces including carpeting, drywall, and subflooring might be removed and replaced. Everything is disinfected using hospital-grade cleaning agents designed to eliminate pathogens that can linger long after a crime. Governed by federal and local health regulations, this unglamorous process can take several days to a few weeks, depending on a property’s size and the extent of contamination. Once it’s finished, homes are considered safe for future owners and occupants. Of course, safe isn’t always the same as sellable. In some cases, stigmatized properties are renovated into anonymity. In others, they’re razed and rebuilt. Following the 2015 “mansion murders”—three family members and their housekeeper were tortured and killed in their Kalorama house, which was then set on fire—the lot was demolished and later reintroduced to the market with a new structure and frontage address. While address changes are rare, they do happen, severing an immediate, Googleable connection between a property and its sordid history. For instance, a Silver Spring home on Columbia Boulevard that was linked to three killings in two separate crimes became so notorious—acquiring the nickname the “homicide house”—that it now has a new street number. Laws in the District, Maryland, and Virginia don’t require sellers or agents to volunteer that a violent crime occurred inside a home, which means that prospective buyers may have to do their own research via news articles or DiedInHouse.com, a website that sells reports on the history of deaths at particular properties. Price and Perception The site of an infamous—and still unsolved—murder in 2006, this Victorian rowhouse in Northwest DC sold for nearly $1.5 million in 2011—and again for $2.16 million in 2019. Photograph by Andrew Propp. Buyers can usually tolerate a cracked walkway or an aging HVAC system, or make more serious structural problems part of price negotiations. But a dark past can be much harder to ignore—or quantify. Expectations matter. If an incident occurs at a property in a neighborhood where violent crime is already common, Carrillo says, the fallout may not dramatically depress its selling price. By contrast, he says, “in a place where crime is rare, a single highly publicized event can feel seismic.” According to Gamble, however, a surrounding neighborhood’s desirability can often matter much more than a home’s history. In tougher markets like Washington Highlands—where the rowhouse on Sixth Street, Southeast, sat in limbo—traumatic histories may act as one more price anchor. But in affluent neighborhoods where demand far outpaces supply, yesterday can carry less weight. In 2011, 91-year-old author and socialite Viola Drath was murdered in an upstairs bathroom of her Georgetown townhouse. Less than two weeks after it went on sale in 2013, multiple offers pushed the $995,000 list price to $1.2 million. Over time, Carrillo says, even the most stigmatized properties become easier to sell. Headlines recede. Memories fade. “Markets tend to ‘forget,’ though sometimes slowly,” he says. Eventually, a tragic backstory becomes one more thing a buyer can live with—especially if the price is right. “If somebody had an incredible deal in a house they wanted, in a location they wanted, and then you came along and said, ‘Well, you know, they got shot in there the other night,’ I’d be like, okay,” Gamble says. Half-joking, she adds, “As long as the murderer doesn’t convey with the house.” This article appears in the April 2026 issue of Washingtonian.The post Murders, Suicides, Violent Crimes: How to Sell Stigmatized Property first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less