San Clemente Home With Ocean View, 4 Bedrooms and Suicide-Pact Past Gets Offers

The previous owner of the ocean-view home in a gated neighborhood was 58-year-old Manas Ucar, whose body was found May 25, 2008, in a downstairs bedroom along with those of his wife, Margrit Ucar, 49, his twin daughters, Grace and Margaux Ucar, 21, and his mother-in-law, Fransuhi Kesisoglu, 72.

At the time, sheriff's investigators believed the decomposed bodies had been in the home at least three weeks before deputies found them after responding to a request to check on the family's welfare.

Manas, the twins and their grandmother poisoned themselves with medication, although the man of the house was also shot, probably by Margrit, who then turned the gun on herself, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

"To this day, it's still a mystery," sheriff's Investigator Dan Salcedo tells Zimmerle about the motive for the mass suicides. "I wish I could be able to close it out for the Ucar family themselves, to maybe give them an explanation why five members of their family died at one time."

The 3,150-square-foot home on a .26-acre lot was listed at $995,000 on Nov. 9, 2009. It went off the market for awhile before re-emerging on the market this past July 22 at $825,000. Its last listing price before it received backup offers was $810,000, Zimmerle reports.

The ghosts of residents past aren't the only potential problems with the home, John Burnett has mentioned repeatedly on his John's House Hunting Blog.

"Just got back from visiting the house on 31 Campanilla," he blogged in September. "It could be summed up as 'awesome view, scary everything else."

He wasn't referring to specters but interior and exterior decor in shambles. Then, after having inspectors over to the home, Burnett earlier this month blogged that he had discovered termite infestation and "[m]old. Place has mold. All over."

"The good news is that it will only cost $15k to fix it all :)," he wrote. "So all told, we're looking at about another $120k of foundational issues with the house, in addition to the interior rework costs (about $150k). Is suicide house worth it? Will see what the sellers have to say on covering the foundational stuff . . . ugh."