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Horror house deemed a good buy

17/ 7/2008

AN ESTATE agent who sold Harold Shipman’s victims’ homes has been drafted in to try and flog Cheadle Hulme’s house of horror.

The large family home where brutal killer Rahan Arshad murdered his wife and three young children is on the market for a knock down price.

But the home’s bloody past appears to have been detracting buyers, and as the Shipman agent takes it on, some neighbours have now called for it to be bulldozed.

The infamous four-bed semi at 209 Turves Road, where the family were bludgeoned to death in 2006, is on the market for £169,950. It is in the hands of Cheadle estate agents Chesters, whose manager Paul Henderson has had experience with macabre property matters after selling several homes of serial killer Harold Shipman’s victims. And he has already cut the asking price by £10,000 and had two offers for the four-bed house accepted - although both fell through.

Paul said: "I have been an estate agent manager for 16 years and have worked in Hyde selling some of the homes of Harold Shipman’s victims. The story is harrowing but it is the people in the house that did things not the house. It knocks off a lot of the saleabilit. Because of what happened, the house needs to be a good buy.  There’s been a lot of interest and a couple of people have made offers that have been accepted and not gone through, but not because of the history."

When the family moved in they bought it for £200,000, Paul added. And he confirmed all would-be buyers are made aware of the home’s past.

Arshad was sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2007 after he was convicted of murdering his wife Uzma, 32, sons Adam and Abbas, 11 and eight, and daughter Henna, six.  He killed each victim in a different room then fled to Thailand leaving their bodies decomposing, undiscovered for four weeks.

News of the horror house’s potential sale has left nearby neighbours wondering how anyone could live there.

Arleene Poole said: "The best thing to do would be to knock it down, it has become infamous - who would want to live there? I imagine people have been going to look round it through morbid fascination. I wish they would take the black covering off the window, it looks eerie."

Anthony Bowlas added: "To me it would be a no-go area. It has been pointed out where things happened. If you were in the room where one of the children was killed, you’d feel you wouldn’t want to be there."

A BBC documentary looking at so-called honour killings was screened last year and followed the police investigation that led to Arshad’s arrest. It provoked anger from some residents amid claims it added to the house’s notoriety - putting it in the same league as Fred and Rose West’s house in Gloucester.

Walter Blase, of Turves Road, said: "If there was any chance of selling it, that programme put the kybosh on it. It would put me off."

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