Would you be willing to pay $200,000 over an already sky-high seven-figure asking price for the privilege of living in a house where a murder took place?
As strange as this sounds, this is what happened recently in Santa Clara, CA, where a property was recently sold for $2.1 million mere months after news surfaced that a Google engineer killed his wife there.
While a $200,000 premium for such a property might seem extreme, it’s also a prime example of how certain markets in America face such a housing shortage, that just about any house will get a deluge of offers—many well over the list price.
In addition to location, timing matters. During the turbocharged, low-interest-rate housing market of the COVID-19 pandemic, bidding wars pushed prices well past what sellers had ever hoped to get.
“The U.S. saw homes sell for the most over asking price in May 2022, when the typical home sold for 3.1% over asking,” says Realtor.com senior economic data analyst Hannah Jones.
