Don’t Take Home-Buying Tips From ‘No Good Deed’

When we first meet Lydia and Paul Morgan (Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano), the grieving couple selling their Los Angeles home in the Netflix series No Good Deed, they’re spying on open-house visitors via webcam.

It’s our first giant, waving-red lawn flag that no matter who ends up purchasing the home, we’re not seeing best real estate practices in action. Creator Liz Feldman (Dead to Me, the series, not the sentiment) has said that the show is not so much about real estate as it is about grief, parenting, and the cost of keeping secrets.

But it’s kinda about real estate, especially as it takes place in the boiling pot that is the Los Angeles housing market where the median home price is over $1 million. If you’ve ever sold a house, you know that the goal is the make your home as attractive as possible both inside and out, and that even the most minor blemish or defect can knock hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars off the selling price.

Three years after losing their son, grief still so consumes the Morgans that they’re not exactly focusing on the details a buyer might pick up on or even entirely sure that they want to sell the house.  A key rule for home sellers: be sure you even want to sell your house!

The Netflix series is so-so; it’s a short binge watch at eight half-hour+ episodes and does what it sets out to do fine, but is certainly not the hottest property on streaming TV. So instead of reviewing the show, let’s do something much more instructive: learn what the Morgans did wrong in their home sale (with some spoilers).

Netflix TV Property Sale Rule #1: When selling a house, don’t be in the house. Instead of vacating the premises when buyers are visiting, or even during their open house, the Morgans camp out in their dead son’s room and creepily use a video feed to watch and listen to their visitors. This leads to multiple awkward encounters and questions about why that room is locked. Who’s going to buy a million-dollar house without seeing all the rooms (and secret rooms) in a house? Even after their real-estate agent (Matt Rogers), admonishes them, the Morgans stick around, arguing and engaging in attempted homicide. That’s not good for your sale price!

Rule #2: Don’t hire Matt Rogers as your real-estate agent. Matt Rogers is a very entertaining podcaster and apparently puts on a great Christmas show but he is not who you want selling your home! For one thing, he (fine, his character) is snippy and dismissive of the Morgans and at one point does cocaine with Paul. Real-estate deals are hard enough without cocaine and TV-dialogue-style quips from someone who’s ostensibly working for you.

Rule #3: If possible, do not sell a house where murders have occurred and if one has, don’t murder more people in that house. The Morgans can’t be blamed for their son dying inside their home (or can they?), but in the event that such a thing has happened to a seller, hiding it from buyers is considered a bad idea, if not illegal. And if you’re unlucky enough to have to tell buyers that a death has happened in the house that’s for sale, sellers shouldn’t make things worse by murdering a second person to hide evidence of the first death. That’s just complicates matters and making it even harder to get a good asking price. If you must murder someone to cover up an earlier crime, do it outside the property.

Rule #4: Don’t burn down a neighbor’s house, it could backfire! In No Good Deed, a character gets revenge by burning down a rival’s home, but in the end, the land ends up in the hands of prospective buyer who wanted to build their own architect’s dream home anyway. By opening up alternate housing options in your neighborhood, whether through fire, murder, or other means, you are limiting the number of buyers who might want to buy your property. Using arson to sell your home is really an amateur move.

Rule #5: Even if someone is blackmailing, stick to your asking price. At one point, the Morgans have multiple offers far above asking price, one that would have priced their home at about $1.2 million. Later, because they have hesitated and allowed blackmailers to enter the picture, that sale price dips to about $800,000. Even if someone has information that could land you in jail, it shouldn’t deter you from sticking to the fair market value (plus more if there are multiple bidders). Stay firm, even if you think you might do time. You can always put that money in a trust and earn interest while you’re in jail.

These are far from the Morgan’s only missteps but the ones that will apply to most property owners. Obviously, if you have a secret dungeon room, don’t wall it off and lose square footage on your listing or try to hide Denis Leary’s dead(?) body in that walled-off space.

This is assuming that Denis Leary is part of your specific home-selling situation and that your home has a secret dungeon.