When your friends die, do their houses become yours?

[YoungLord94]

After gaining the friendship of Uthgerd from Whiterun, we set out on a giant's camp raid. Tragically, Uthgerd was impaled by a mammoth. I found the key to her house on her mangled corpse and thought it was a good idea to look through her house for valuables (She probably would have wanted me to have her stuff). But when I got inside, everything was marked "take" instead of "steal". Even her bed wasn't marked "owned" and I was able to sleep in it. I just want to know if the containers are safe to store things in.

 

[Daedra'Mc'Bitch]

Supposedly items will disappear from a chest within a week, game time. Put something really crappy in there like a head of lettuce, and skip a week. If it disappears, you have your answer!

Note: Checking the contents in the chest before the week is over will reset the timer.

 

[Saozig]

No, they remain NPC houses, and NPC houses will "respawn" after a certain amount of days (usually 10 game days for most NPC houses), thus making them not safe to store anything you want to keep. You can sleep in her bed because with some NPCs, when you befriend them, you can sleep at their house and get the Rested (but not Well Rested) bonus. They don't have to die for you to be able to take certain things from their house, but you do need to get the key from them when they are following you or you can get into trouble picking the lock.

Faendal is like that too. Just take his key from him when he's following you and you have access to his house, bed and any of things in his house that's not marked "steal".

You can always check the UESPWiki about house: here you can see under the entry for Uthgerd's house, that her house will respawn every 10 days, and this will not change even if she dies: Skyrim:Uthgerd's House - UESPWiki