This looks like a nice house, doesn’t it? It’s in Winston-Salem, and it just went on the market. Real-estate listings sometimes fail to mention the most interesting aspects of houses, and this is one of them. Usually, it’s because the agents don’t know the history of a particular house, although in this case the agent grew up in Winston-Salem and knows the whole story. It’s just that some homes’ histories have details that don’t fit well with descriptions of living rooms, kitchens and updated bathrooms. Murder is a good example.

Consider the house above, 3239 Valley Road in Winston-Salem, or 303 W. Main Street in Yanceyville. Both are now for sale, both with odious murders in their background. One was the actual site of a particularly infamous triple murder. Understandably, you wouldn’t know that from looking at their listings. There are at least a couple other houses in the Triad that have been sold in past few years with killings or killers in their histories, all becoming more obscure as time passes.

Higher interest rates are inflicting pain on home buyers and sellers alike. Sellers are having to lower their prices, but any benefit to buyers is largely, perhaps totally, cancelled out by higher mortgage payments. This week’s closing on the George Grimsley House in Greensboro is a striking example of the impact.

The Grimsley house is a big Queen Anne/Colonial Revival in the Fisher Park Historic District, built in 1907. It’s named after a historic figure almost synonymous with the city through Grimsley High School. I wrote about it after it was listed — it’s an outstanding house. The initial price in February was $1.295 million ($363/square foot). That was definitely at the high end, but it didn’t seem unlikely for a top-of-the-line home in a high-demand historic district. It was for sale for 10 months, longer than you might expect. The closing price was $805,000, a stunning $490,000 below the initial price (38 percent).