Renters - would you rent a property where the previous occupant had committed suicide?

[MN2025]

We have a portfolio of properties (LL investor) and a property has just come up for sale in our local area. It was a family home and the daughter committed suicide in the house.

The family understandably cannot face going back to live there - and have posted all over social media desperate to find a buyer. They’ve moved out already and renting somewhere else…

I’m thinking about making an offer on the house as I know there is ‘demand’ in the area in the rental market and I think it could rent out quick - but would you live in a place that had such a haunting past? Property was recently renovated so apart from a deep clean nothing will need to be done.
people die in properties of natural causes I get that - but not really that often in these tragic circumstances?

If it was not too intrusive I would want some idea as to why they took their own life. An inquest might provide that answer.

For example, if there is bullying at their school and the response was limited or inappropriate, that is something that would affect my decision if a child was to attend the school were I to move there.

It's unfortunate that the grieving family put this on social media, because it may have reduced their chances of finding a buyer, and potential renters might be put off too. Otherwise few people would have known the address where the death happened .

No but only because I love horror movies and id convince myself it was haunted

It is completely ok to use the term 'committed suicide'. I wish that the people who have talked themselves into believing that it is somehow perjorative would just be content with not using it themselves, rather than unnecessarily and harmfully policing other people's speech.

There are plenty of people who don't want speaking about suicide to become even MORE taboo and uncomfortable just because someone has decided to virtue-signal about the long-dormant historical criminal connotations of the term 'commit'. And there are people (like me) who don't want their numbness and confusion around the suicide of a family member to be suddenly reinforced by a gratuitous insistence that we should euphemise and soften the way we speak of it.

Any stigma that exists around suicide has absolutely ZERO to do with the fact that it used to be a criminal act. If anything, the term 'commit' in this context is positively respectful, because it emphasises the agency of the person who died.

Really, on WHAT basis does some randomer decide that we all have to contort our speech in this area, where speech is already so hard. Leave us alone. You speak your way, I'll speak mine. I'm not going to airbrush and virtue signal around this most graphic and brutal of actions. Have you even begun to think how offesnsive it is to dip into such enormous and traumatic tragedy just to perform your own self-rightousness?

However, it's a phrase that society is fast moving away from.

Evidence? Other than a couple of people browbeating others on a forum and a few people in NHS management meetings trying to trick themselves into thinking that the meeting has achieved something. I think the police may be trying to avoid it, but that makes sense, because their job is the one area in which the term 'commit' may coceivably trigger thoughts about illegality. For the rest of society, there isn't a move away from the term so much as a move towards a preening and performative insistence on self-censorship - in a whole range of situations, of which suicide is perhaps the one where it is cabable of doing most harm.

There isn't a 'correct terminology'. What's needed is simply to be appropriately cautious in the presence of bereaved people, and attentive to the way they speak. In other words, just normal human empathy rather than social-media style right-think

How would anybody know? How much do any of us know about the history of our homes?

No it wouldn’t put me off. My brother owns a farm where the previous owner died by suicide at 94? Or other advanced age sadly after receiving a driving violation for driving on an expired license and having this information made public via a local newsapaper. It was in an outbuilding not the main house. Nothing unusual in his many years of raising his family there and keeping chickens in the outbuildings.

are you religious OP? You can have your house blessed by a priest or I have also heard something about sage leaves to help souls seek rest. Google will have more information on that.

I don’t prefer the term committed suicide either. I was instructed in my medical work environment not to use it as we don’t say committed cancer or committed heart attack.

Yes of course

It was 'committed' as it was a crime until the 1960s, and you commit crimes or offences. So the term has been outdated for over 60yrs, it's not a new thing.

The evidence is that the Suicide Act was decriminalised in 1961, since then its not a crime, and committed is incorrect terminology to use to describe it.

But it's not incorrect, is it? It is a widely accepted and accurate term. You might as well say that 'taken aback' (meaning suddenly surprised and taken unawares) is incorrect because the original meaning is something to do with sailing ships. Language moves on, and for fully sixty yuears we have been using the term 'committed suicide' without its criminal connotations, just as we use 'taken aback' without confusing thoughts of sailing.
People have decided to posture around the term, that is all. Because we live in an era of performative disapproval aimed at signalling our own virtue. Don't subject bereaved families to that. Just listen, and adapt your speech to them as individuals, rather than to some notional orthodoxy

Language evolves. It always has. You can and will obviously use what terminology you like but in my experience families bereaved by suicide generally prefer the more current terminology and I work with a lot of them and am one of them-it's not about social media or right think or whatever it's just about using more accurate language that is preferable to a lot of the people that it matters to.

I won't tolerate a comment like that. Reporting.

Died by suicide.

Its not right think. Bereavement and MH organisations that I work with and have trained alongside have advocated for years that committed is the wrong terminology.

As a relative of someone who died by suicide no, I do not consider myself self righteous.

Do some more research into why it has become a term that is not acceptable to many.

Just to add, to the poster who decided its "just some randomer" against the term- it's advocated by the NSPCC, Samaritans and SOBS to give just a few examples, that it is an outdated and stigmatising phrase.

The 'evidence' is on the news whenever there is a suicide story.

If you ever watch it, you'll see 👍

Sorry but not sorry about the derail on how to talk about suicide. I might well have used commited suicide because up until recently I've been very fortunate with friend, family and colleagues.
That's changed since my sibling ' attempted' suicide. He wasn't successful but how should I address that in future.

Anyway back to the post. My parents bought a house in 1968, round the corner my school friends parents bought an identical house but with a different built in cupboard because the previous owner had died by sticking her head in the gas oven. My parents never ever made it over the doorstep but quizzed me on the internal layout.
Everytime I mention my lovely school friend, her amazing achievements , her parents health, my parents always bring up the horrific gas explosion to a very sad but completely unknown previous owner. Luckily they are never likely to be renting or buying again because it would be like ' who do you think you are' but for a semi detached '60s chalet bungalow.

I have only ever heard the phrase "commited suicide" in my whole life. When did this change and why? Not being deliberately obtuse, I am really interested and also want to avoid looking like an idiot if there is a general consensus about it.

@MN2025 Most people wouldn't care unless the suicide had anything related to the neighbours still living there.

I do live in a flat where a woman took her own life. It's the living you should be scared of not the dead. How my own life (such as it is) is panning out, there may be another suicide 😔..sorry if that's triggering to anybody.

I rented a property that the previous tenant was murdered in, never bothered me, was a lovely place, only moved out because it ended up having awful mold issues

It wouldn't worry me.

As it happens, I am sitting in the exact spot where the previous owner of my own home died.

I also lost a nephew to suicide last year. I am not the least bit offended by anyone saying "committed suicide" and I'm now gently musing on how long the euphemism treadmill will take to make " died by suicide" unacceptable.