house news, sad Matt
Jul. 2nd, 2003 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mattlistenerYesterday was the inspection of 11 Pearson, our offer for which had been accepted the week before. Our inspector was Harold "Hack" Popp, a long-time friend of my dad's, who referred Hack to us as "the best building inspector on the planet". Hoo boy, was he thorough. 3.5 hours. I can't imagine how a building inspector could do a better job than Hack did.
There were a lot of things needing repairing. The roof needed a complete replacement, with extensive visible deterioration of the tiles, and early signs of water damage in two places inside. Much of the (pretty) wood siding needed replacing. Metal-work holding up the front porch was rusted through in a couple places. Too few outlets, many ungrounded, wrongly grounded, reversed polarity, no outlet whatsoever in the bathrooms. One of the boilers was *original* (house age: 98 years). *Some* asbestos had been non-professionally removed from that boiler and its pipes. One tub/shower surround was shot, and likely the substrate behind it, with water damage visible on the ceiling in the bathroom below.
That sums up the big stuff. In spite of the long list, I wouldn't say it's a dump -- it's structurally sound, the foundation is good, most of the inside is in good repair. It has oldness issues that the owners never caught up with.
So, we sent them a list of what we felt were the 'non-deferrable' repairs, namely the above-mentioned things, with dollar amounts attached, asking them to escrow that total amount of money ($40K) from the sale price for us to do the repairs. Our 20% down-payment would leave us without the liquid cash to fix most of that stuff, which we would want to before moving in. There's a bunch more too, but lower cost and deferrable, so we could get around to them as income allowed.
Escrowing is a good trick. It's effectively the same for the sellers as knocking that amount off the sale price, but it makes a big difference for us as buyers since we're left with a big chunk of liquid cash with which to make repairs. If instead we borrowed $40K less as a result of talking the price down, we'd pay a mere $8K less on the down payment and $180 less per month on the mortgage -- together not even enough to do the roof.
We felt it was reasonable to cite the needed repairs and ask for reductions, since there'd been no disclosures, nothing in the description saying 'needs work', 'as-is', or any other cautionary phrases I've seen in several other listings. The bathrooms were even mentioned as 'semi-modern'. (?!?)
The sellers got back to us today saying a similar house just down the street from them had recently sold for $30K more than they were asking, and they felt they had priced it fairly considering the work it needed. So they were just going to put it back on the market. Fair enough I guess, but I'm annoyed that they wasted our time by not sharing that attitude with us up front.
We know the sellers have already found a new house and want to move at the end of August. So they may well come crawling back to us. Chip had cleverly asked the seller's agent's assistant off-handedly if there had been any other offers, and she'd said there hadn't. On the other hand, Chip and Anne have sold their condo and need to move in August, so sometime in July they'll have to bail from this season's group-house-buying plans and do something else.
We haven't seen any good-match places come on the market since 11 Pearson two weeks ago. House-buying still could happen this summer, but it's looking a lot less likely now. Maybe next spring! (And hopefully still with Chip and Anne!)
There were a lot of things needing repairing. The roof needed a complete replacement, with extensive visible deterioration of the tiles, and early signs of water damage in two places inside. Much of the (pretty) wood siding needed replacing. Metal-work holding up the front porch was rusted through in a couple places. Too few outlets, many ungrounded, wrongly grounded, reversed polarity, no outlet whatsoever in the bathrooms. One of the boilers was *original* (house age: 98 years). *Some* asbestos had been non-professionally removed from that boiler and its pipes. One tub/shower surround was shot, and likely the substrate behind it, with water damage visible on the ceiling in the bathroom below.
That sums up the big stuff. In spite of the long list, I wouldn't say it's a dump -- it's structurally sound, the foundation is good, most of the inside is in good repair. It has oldness issues that the owners never caught up with.
So, we sent them a list of what we felt were the 'non-deferrable' repairs, namely the above-mentioned things, with dollar amounts attached, asking them to escrow that total amount of money ($40K) from the sale price for us to do the repairs. Our 20% down-payment would leave us without the liquid cash to fix most of that stuff, which we would want to before moving in. There's a bunch more too, but lower cost and deferrable, so we could get around to them as income allowed.
Escrowing is a good trick. It's effectively the same for the sellers as knocking that amount off the sale price, but it makes a big difference for us as buyers since we're left with a big chunk of liquid cash with which to make repairs. If instead we borrowed $40K less as a result of talking the price down, we'd pay a mere $8K less on the down payment and $180 less per month on the mortgage -- together not even enough to do the roof.
We felt it was reasonable to cite the needed repairs and ask for reductions, since there'd been no disclosures, nothing in the description saying 'needs work', 'as-is', or any other cautionary phrases I've seen in several other listings. The bathrooms were even mentioned as 'semi-modern'. (?!?)
The sellers got back to us today saying a similar house just down the street from them had recently sold for $30K more than they were asking, and they felt they had priced it fairly considering the work it needed. So they were just going to put it back on the market. Fair enough I guess, but I'm annoyed that they wasted our time by not sharing that attitude with us up front.
We know the sellers have already found a new house and want to move at the end of August. So they may well come crawling back to us. Chip had cleverly asked the seller's agent's assistant off-handedly if there had been any other offers, and she'd said there hadn't. On the other hand, Chip and Anne have sold their condo and need to move in August, so sometime in July they'll have to bail from this season's group-house-buying plans and do something else.
We haven't seen any good-match places come on the market since 11 Pearson two weeks ago. House-buying still could happen this summer, but it's looking a lot less likely now. Maybe next spring! (And hopefully still with Chip and Anne!)
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-02 07:24 pm (UTC)Best of luck on the continuing hunt.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-02 07:29 pm (UTC)*grumble*
Date: 2003-07-02 07:46 pm (UTC)but i'm not bitter or anything :)
Re: *grumble*
Date: 2003-07-02 07:46 pm (UTC)Re: *grumble*
Date: 2003-07-03 07:02 am (UTC)sorry, i just have this image now of you running around doing that, and i know this isn't a laughing matter, but it's a great image...
no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 10:11 am (UTC)Sorry the house didn't work out.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-02 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-02 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 05:04 am (UTC)And in a few years, I may want the name and contact info for the inspector you used....
no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 07:04 am (UTC)*crosses fingers*
Here's to their desperation.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 07:53 am (UTC)Keep the contact info for that home inspector, btw. I'll want to give him a call if/when I ever have money for real estate.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 08:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 09:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-03 06:06 pm (UTC)what specifically are you looking for, and in what price range?
Date: 2003-07-03 08:16 pm (UTC)For the last year or two, falling-apart houses in this neighborhood have been selling for pretty much the same as ones in good shape, because the money was in turning houses into condos, and people don't like to buy condos unless they have just been completely redone. So that may be why your sellers were being inflexible. But what they may not realize is that the condo market bubble is bursting and a lot of the fix-up-a-house-sell-it-as-condos-and-buy-another-one are stuck on step 2 of that process and unable to move on to step 3.