But on May 1, the day the family began moving in, they learned a more
unsettling feature of the house in the Royal Trails subdivision. It had been the
scene of one of Lake County's most notorious crimes: a triple murder and suicide
that rocked the Eustis Police Department.
By Stephen Hudak found May. 24, 2007 at The Orlando Sentinel
"There was no way we could ever stay here," said Johnson, standing
in the master bedroom where three of the four died. "It would be like
living in a morgue."
Though the slayings by Eustis police Cpl. Michael Mount received substantial
media coverage in central Florida, the Palm Coast family hadn't heard about the
Feb. 5, 2006, tragedy until a new neighbor casually mentioned it.
They think the realty company that received an $11,350 commission should have
told them.
Johnson, 24, and her parents, John and Kathy Johnson, are stuck with the
$227,000 ranch house where the jealous police officer shot his estranged wife,
Kim; fellow officer Joe Gomez; and Gomez' wife, Serena, before turning the gun
on himself.
Brokers at Beard Pippin Properties Inc., were silent because Florida law
allows them to be.
The 2003 law, introduced by state Sen. Bill Posey, a Rockledge Republican and
Realtor, says: "(t)he fact that a property was, or was at any time
suspected to have been, the site of a homicide, suicide, or death is not a
material fact that must be disclosed in a real estate transaction."
Most states require home sellers and real-estate agents to disclose known
defects that could diminish the value of a house, but not past tragedies that
may stigmatize the property.
The National Association of Realtors' code of ethics requires its members to
reveal all material factors that may affect the desirability of a property,
"but psychological factors are a gray area," said Walt Molony, a
spokesman.
"Personally, if it was me, if I was a person of faith, I would have
somebody come and bless the place," he said. "I'm serious."
Homes rumored to be haunted or tainted by murder, suicide and other scandals
take longer to sell and fetch prices slightly under market value, according to a
study of 102 stigmatized homes by James Larsen, a finance professor at Wright
State University in Ohio.
"Some stuff creeps people out," Larsen said in a telephone
interview.
Deltona home builders real estate secrets
The three-bedroom house on Telford Lane in Deltona, Fla., where six friends
were bludgeoned to death Aug. 6, 2004, sold nine months later for $112,000,
about $70,000 under market value, due to the home builders real estate secrets.
Real-estate broker Kimberly Haney said she couldn't keep its history a
secret. The massacre made international news.
Though most customers had heard of the killings, some were unaware of the
crime's precise venue until she told them. Some immediately lost interest in the
bargain-priced property.
"I didn't get any heebie-jeebie feeling when I went into the Telford
house. There was no evidence of any crime there," said Haney, who now works
for Prudential Properties in Orange City, Fla. "But ethically, anything
that would affect the person moving in, I kind of want to tell them about it. I
kind of go to extremes. I ... (point out) pedophiles in a neighborhood. ... I
want my customers to come back because they're very happy."
The buyer of the Deltona home, Dayna Gardner, fixed it up and leases it. She
said she has had two tenants, both of whom knew what happened there and who pay
market-value rent.
While Florida's law allows brokers to be mum, South Dakota requires sellers
to disclose if a homicide has been committed recently on the property and
Georgia requires sellers to answer a prospective buyer's query truthfully.
Posey said Florida's law was drafted to protect brokers who are unaware of a
home's dark secrets.
"Is it good sense and common decency, if you know something like that
happened recently, that you tell the people about it?" he asked. "Yes.
But should you be held liable if a woman cooked her baby in a house three
generations ago and you had no way of knowing about that?"
Though the house the Johnsons purchased on Greenbrier Street carries no
visible scars - a pair of bullet holes in the ceiling were repaired - the family
can't push the tragedy from their minds.
Where they had once envisioned a new horse roaming, they now imagine Mount
lurking.
The lease on their condominium in Flagler County expires May 31, but the
family vows they will not sleep in Joe and Serena Gomez's former house, where
many of their new neighbors are law-enforcement officers. Rather than move in,
they buried a statue of St. Joseph in the yard, a Catholic tradition that
purports to speed the sale of real estate.
John Johnson, worried that his family can't afford a mortgage for a house
they aren't living in, said he has tried to convince his wife and daughter that
the house wasn't responsible for the murders. He asked them to consider that
four others who were sleeping in the home that night survived the shooting,
including three children.
His wife is a retired nurse; his daughter, a third-year college student,
works at a restaurant.
"There's no changing their minds," said Johnson, a truck driver.
Larry Beard, whose real-estate firm listed the home, said the seller, Debra
James, who is Serena Gomez's mother, had instructed his agents not to volunteer
information about the tragedy.
James, who escaped the shooting by fleeing the home with her 6-year-old
grandson Justin, refuted that claim in a phone interview from her home in West
Palm Beach.
She said Tavares lawyer William Cauthen, who handled her daughter and
son-in-law's estates, recommended full disclosure but she deferred to the
real-estate agents, suggesting they use their discretion.
"I'm trying to raise a little boy who lost both his parents," she
said. "I just wanted the house gone."
James said the Johnsons got a bargain - she originally listed the
1,552-square-foot home for $275,000 - and said their fears are unreasonable.
"The house had nothing to do with Michael Mount and what he did,"
she said.
Beard, who has offered to waive his firm's commission fees and resell the
home for the Johnsons, insisted his sales associates did not have permission to
discuss the tragedy with prospective buyers.
If a customer had asked, he said, his employees were to read a lawyer-drafted
statement that was "very specific and to the point. It tells you
everything." The Johnsons did not inquire.
Kathy Johnson said she never thought to ask, "Has there ever been a
triple murder-suicide here?"
"But," she added, "You can bet, the next time, we will."
Antwerpen Real Estate
“There’s so much inventory out there that the buyer can pick and choose,” said Susan Sirles Fidler, a Realtor at Re/Max 10, Oak Lawn. But she cautioned, “The stuff that’s almost free is almost free because it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg to put it back together. It’s not buyer beware as much as buyer be smart.”
