There are dozens of reasons new construction homes are better than resale – modern fixtures, warranties, fresh paint, carpet that hasn’t been walked all over by someone else’s bare feet.

Added bonus? It’s next to impossible to buy a newly built haunted house. It takes years of effort to properly build a haunted reputation, you can’t buy ghosts in a sales centre.

Now, I know you’re going to bring up Poltergeist. But technically it wasn’t the housing development that was haunted, it was the burial grounds beneath the new homes that caused the haunted complications. With today’s zoning laws, there’s no way anyone is making that mistake again.

Resale though – that’s a whole other story.

The geniuses at Homeadvisor cross-referenced public MLS listings with a site called Housecreep. Housecreep is a crowdsourced database of allegedly haunted houses (it also serves as a database for houses where other creepy things have happened, such as murders).

“After a much-heated debate, our team determined the difference between a ‘haunted’ house and a ‘creepy’ house,” the researchers said. “Haunted houses would be based on the number of homes with previous deaths, homicides, and paranormal reports. Creepy houses would be based on the number of homes with crime, damage, drug, and sketchy reports.”

From the report:

“Some states are certainly spookier than others, but if you’re superstitious and afraid of ghouls and goblins, you’ll want to avoid a few places. We found that, although only the Mayflower state made it into the top five most-haunted shortlist, New England as a whole is filled to the brim with hauntings and ghost stories galore. Aside from Vermont and Maine, all of the states in the region have a haunted house probability of 15% or higher, making them some of the most haunted states in America.

In the northernmost part of the country, New York and New Jersey duke it out for the title of eeriest state on the East Coast. No matter which side of the fence you’re on in the great bagel debate, you have over a 25% chance of winding up in a haunted house in either state. However, with more condo developments and fewer natural attractions like the Pinelands or Long Beach Island, New York’s real estate developers may in fact be driving the ancient ghosts out of their original homes.

Ghosts tend to steer clear of warmer weather, as our friends in the South remain relatively untouched by the supernatural. In general, the South has the lowest number of haunted houses in America. Both Texas and West Virginia ranked the highest at just under 20% on the haunt-o-meter, while Florida surprisingly only scored 6%. Our guess is that ghosts hate sunshine.

Some states are certainly spookier than others, but if you’re superstitious and afraid of ghouls and goblins, you’ll want to avoid a few places. We found that, although only the Mayflower state made it into the top five most-haunted shortlist, New England as a whole is filled to the brim with hauntings and ghost stories galore. Aside from Vermont and Maine, all of the states in the region have a haunted house probability of 15% or higher, making them some of the most haunted states in America.

In the northernmost part of the country, New York and New Jersey duke it out for the title of eeriest state on the East Coast. No matter which side of the fence you’re on in the great bagel debate, you have over a 25% chance of winding up in a haunted house in either state. However, with more condo developments and fewer natural attractions like the Pinelands or Long Beach Island, New York’s real estate developers may in fact be driving the ancient ghosts out of their original homes.

Ghosts tend to steer clear of warmer weather, as our friends in the South remain relatively untouched by the supernatural. In general, the South has the lowest number of haunted houses in America. Both Texas and West Virginia ranked the highest at just under 20% on the haunt-o-meter, while Florida surprisingly only scored 6%. Our guess is that ghosts hate sunshine.”

Or, you could just buy new.

 

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