This man appraises stigmatized real estate

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The closest real-world example of this is a Good Cuts (Great Cuts?) hair cutting salon down the road. An employee’s jealous or dumped boyfriend stormed into the place and killed her and then himself.

Because the business was a storefront in a strip mall, there was not possibility of tearing it down. The salon closed for a while, then remodeled and reopened. Same name. They still had my phone number on record for tracking preferences. They still seem to do plenty of business.

There’s an Italian restaurant near me where two employees were killed in a horrific robbery attempt. Following the tragedy it closed, then re-opened with a lot of fanfare, but the event was so terrible it seemed to cast a pall over the place. It closed for good a short time after that.

It was then re-opened as a much more high-end pizza place, the first in the state to serve “authentic” Neapolitan pizza, using imported Italian flour and a specific brand of tomato sauce. It even has the stamp of approval of Italian experts. And it’s doing a booming business. It’s amazing what a little rebranding can overcome.

I live right down the road from the former building featured in The Hot Zone. The building was torn down and replaced with a Taco Bell (or was it a Pizza Hut? I can’t remember exactly where it was.) and nobody seems to care much anymore. Sure it wasn’t a ghost or the site of a massacre (except for those monkeys), but Ebola seems scarier to me than either of those.

Not being superstitious, I see these as good opportunities.

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I hear you can negotiate a pretty good discount on real estate if you have inside knowledge about any meth labs which may have been on the premises.

Would MERS count as a “bad thing” happening? Because this guy will never want for work, ever again - in fact, he could hire a bunch of employees. Job creation!

Insert lazy Chuck Palahniuk Lullaby reference here.

… in 1984 a gunman murdered 21 people at a McDonald’s … in San Diego. The company bulldozed the fast-food restaurant, then donated the land to the city. San Diego tried to sell it but got little interest. Nearly four years [later] … the city sold the land at a deep discount

Only 4 years? People in the Chicago burbs still shudder at the Brown’s Chicken Massacre site 20 years later.

It’s a shame San Diego didn’t just turn the place into a public park with a tasteful memorial to the victims, but for the appeal of free money I suppose.

From Wikipedia ( San Ysidro McDonald's massacre - Wikipedia ):

After razing the building at the site of the massacre, McDonald’s built another restaurant nearby and gave the former property to the city, which established the Education Center on the site as part of Southwestern Community College. This location was built in 1988 as an expansion of its off-campus locations. In front of the school is a memorial to the massacre victims, designed by Roberto Valdes, consisting of 21 hexagonal white marble pillars ranging in height from one to six feet and each bearing the name of one of the victims.

Also, from the LA Times ( http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-28/local/me-38886_1_san-ysidro ):

Under terms of the pact, the $40,000 would be used for improvements to parks in San Ysidro.

(The property was apparently worth $300,000 at the time.)

Yeah. When I was house hunting I fantasized getting a good price on a “murder house.” I thought through what I might do to endear myself to neighbors so I wouldn’t come across as a opportunistic ghoul.

As it happened, the house I actually bought turned out to have been most recently occupied by a squatter who had a hydroponic marijuana grow operation in the basement. The guy heavily modified the place, made a real mess. The buy-and-flip firm that bought it did a great job cleaning up the place; you really have to know where to look to see how it was patched up.

I suppose the neighbors are greatful just not to have a drug dealer in the place.

I know a guy who appraises astigmatized real estate: sometimes it’s the vertical features of building that are blurry, sometimes it’s the horizontal lines.

I also know another guy who appraises stigmatasized buildings. Y’know, buildings with a few holes in them. Sometimes what appears to be blood seeps out of the holes.

I also now another, different guy who appraises astigmatasized building. THOSE are the ones you want, 'cuz you can get real good deals on 'em. That is, unless you want to be able to actually enter them.

Sociopathic money-making scheme plan. Sell your home, leave, commit a gruesome murder there with whoever moves in next, buy it back for a song!

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