That wasn’t the current owner it was a few owners back, in I think the 90’s. They might actually be back already. The last owner apparently did a full restoration not too long before he died. It’s a historic house, so it’s apparently full 1920’s glory at the moment. Haven’t been down that way in a while, so dunno if they did the windows.
But just generally we need to leave those poor people alone. People break into the boat house, there’s frequent damage to neighbors houses, people have found nut jobs peeping at their kids. Last time I drove through that neighborhood (used to sell beer in Amityville) the block was strewn with beer cans and trash from looky loos.
And TV shows like this don’t have much budget to work with, I worked for a production company that made shows like this (Also Monster Quest). Your typical reality TV show is made for less than $100k an episode, and they’ll shoot many episodes concurrently. Anything involving buying and selling real estate things are usually bought and sold well before they actually shoot and everything you watch is staged. Renovation or decorator shows work is done so cheap people in legit construction will yell at the TV. And the house flipping shows, if it’s not entirely staged, most of the money comes from the developer or real estate people featured. Reality TV is a cheap way to generate a ton of content for the sake of bulking out a TV schedule.
It also pays like shit, and the employees who make the show are treated like trash. It’s all non-union grind work, mostly freelancers.
They’re just not going to buy a million dollar, historic house for the sake of an episode.
I like (and by “like” I mean am low key judgemental of) how they specify illegal killings. I guess a house where a burglar was shot, or someone exercised their rights under some US state’s right to die laws just isn’t spooooooky enough?
I can picture the casting calls now…
Your grandmother died… in her sleep? GET OUT OF MY OFFICE
My brain was still somehow in Amityville Horror mode, assuming this was a $90k-in-modern-money house in basically terrible shape. But of course, things have changed on Long Island since 1978…
It’s called “my parent’s living room whenever my brother visits.”
And its why i know what MDF is.
Even then it was a ritzy expensive area. That’s how we ended up with the ghost stories. The Lutzes over extended them selves on the mortgage, and got underwater on it fast. The haunting thing was cooked up through a lawyer and the book people for a quick pay day and to get out of the loan. Since they were well ware of Defeo murders, they couldn’t use disclosure laws to get out of the debt. So they basically filed a law suit claiming the haunting wasn’t disclosed. And tried to use the book itself as proof.
And honestly the area hasn’t changed all that much. Even back then you were talking about the wealthiest neighborhood in the nice section of a town that buts up on some of the worst, most industrial areas of Long Island. So the “sleepy seaside village” of the popular telling kinda obscures a lot.
The whole subject is kinda a local eye roller.
As to the value of the house. The Lutz paid around 80k for it, which was a “bargain” thanks to the murders. In 2020 dollars that’s about $340k. It was most recently listed at a little over $800k ($100k less than it was purchased for). And would apparently be valued at more than $2.5m if not for The Amityville Horror. With most of the houses in the area being valued over a million. So it’s still comparatively a bargain if you can deal with the bullshit.
On the subject of legal death and renovation: our neighbour went with assisted suicide at home when he had declined to far and was in too much pain. His sister renovated his place and sold it. It took longer to sell than another local property that was similar. No camera crews or tv shows were involved.
Not a really interesting story but completely relevant to this thread.
There was a show where people wanting a full body renovation makeover stood in a booth next to a busy city street. Passersby would guess the person’s age, and the goal was to make the person look younger. After watching Logan’s Run, my worry would be people chanting “Renew, Renew!” I can’t even look at carousels for kids anymore.
