Controversial Home Finally Finds New Owner
Many are familiar with the gruesome story of Chris Watts and his pregnant wife and two young daughters that he "un-alived."
What happens in such a situation, though, when a man like Watts ends up being locked up for life?
Normally, a bank would just forclose on such a home if they can't collect mortgage payments. This time, though, things weren't that simple.
So, why didn't the bank just forclose on the home and sell it traditionally? As it turns out, they tried. The home went up for auction in 2019 but drew no interest at the asking price.
Typically, the home would be listed for sale at this point but apparently the bank actually believed that they would be able to get more money for the house if they let things cool down a little bit.
At the end of the day, there are a variety of reasons why somebody might not want to sell a home where something like this happened, chief among them being that a buyer isn't necessarily going to want to live at the scene that Chris said the gruesome incident actually happened.
Well, it's 2022 now and things are just heating up again, so did they really wait four years to sell the house? Not exactly.
As it turned out while the bank was waiting for things to cool off, the family of Chris’s now deceased wife decided to sue him. When they won the lawsuit, Watts didn't exactly have money to give them.
Therefore, in lieu of payment, the family would put a lien against the Watts family home. In other words, if it was ever sold, this debt from Watts to his wife's family would have to be cleared first.
There hasn’t been a public release stating that the lien was paid off but as we fast forward to June of 2022, something must’ve happened because the house has hit the market.
The home was listed through Rocket Homes by Coldwell Banker. Rocket Homes has confirmed the legitimacy of the listing.
Inside, we find a home that appears very much the same as the one that the entire world saw in the shocking footage from when the situation went viral.
Some of the rooms have been freshened up a bit but many of the features like the dark cabinets remain in tact.
As one might imagine, selling such a house can be a pretty complicated venture. After the story dominated headlines and even got to the Netflix documentary, lots of true crime fans have been interested in the property.
It has gotten to the point where neighbors have even left the neighborhood entirely because of the traffic and morbidity of it all. I mean, who wants to wake up to know what happened next door and see a line of people taking photos?
Therefore, the house was secretly listed under an entirely different address. The asking price for the 4,177 square foot 5 bed 4 bath home was a mere $660,000. It is believed to be worth about $800,000 if you believe Zillow’s estimates.
In other words, either the bank behind at all probably just wants to get out of this situation after having it on the books for four long years or they expect a bidding battle to commence which is also a very real possibility in today’s hot market.
The home was listed in mid May 2022 and was taken off of the market shortly after. At this point, it's not 100% clear if an offer was accepted but we would be inclined to think that that is probably the case unless the listing simply got too much attention and overwhelmed the listing company.
(Update: sources say the home has sold for $813,000 which has yet to be officially confirmed).
So if we were to guess, we would have to say that it does look as if this controversial home will probably end up in the hands of someone else very soon.