Our House...I must vent...

[Mrs. McPads]

IS a very very very fineeee houseeeeeeeeee...but here I have to vent.

Sorry, we just closed on our first house on Monday! I was just reading someone else's woes about the sellers, and boy were ours mean! They wouldn't budge on anything. After 4 offers, we finally realized that someone had to be the grownups, and if we wanted the house, we would have to buy it at basically their price (the list price was actually much less than we had assumed we would spend on a house). ...but I mean, really...they came down a thousand in the end, in this market! They wouldn't fix anything the inspector found wrong, including bad electrical wiring (!!!). There was a massive gas leak when we walked in with the inspector, and who knows how long that was going on, and they had three kids, including one around 18 mos. old. These people didn't take care of much, and while they claimed the hubby was "extremely handy", I beg to differ, given how shoddy all of the DIY stuff in the house was.

So, at closing, most of the time they wouldn't even make eye contact, and then when I would look up from signing another document, I would catch her glaring at me. What a tool.

We went in to the house, and it was clean for the most part, but they left the frig a mess. It really looks pretty foul. So bad that my soon to be MIL is buying us a new frig for a house-warming present because she doesn't want us putting actual food into that one.

I realize some people have really bad taste, but these people took the cake. The dining room was ELECTRIC BLUE, the downstairs bath was Flourescent green, the living room some weird washed out vomit yellow. So, first things first, we have painters in there. Dining room is now dark red, living room pumpkin butter (nice beige with a twist of something you can't put your finger on), and I will attack the bathroom, and kitchen and every other room, later. Then, the 15 yr. old carpet is grey, but you know it wasn't always that color. Its cheap, and foul looking, so we also bought new carpeting, and that's going in.

After all this ranting...is it normal to have people not only unwilling to compromise on the price of the house, but not to fix anything the inspector finds, and then to be MEAN at the close after all this?

Also, to all you homeowners..is it feasible to think that I will fix things as time goes by? How likely is it that I will just be lazy about it? I hope that it will just get more annoying and I will take care of the painting etc, but I have never owned a home, and not sure what the normal progression of fixing things is. We can't afford it all at once (carpet ain't cheap).

Also, fiance is a general surgery intern, and won't be there move-day. He has had a rough last week, and so I am giving him a breather and then making him pack nightly until the move in a week, since most of what we own is HIS CRAP. His mom and my mom will be there move day, so that's helpful.

So many changes so quickly...it can be hard to deal with it all. Anyone else feel overwhelmed that first year? We are also getting married in April of next year, so add another thing to the engagement, move, me finishing school and starting a new job and him starting intern year.

I just needed to vent. Thanks for reading, if you got to the end you are amazing!
Eileen

[SuzySunshine]

Eileen, I haven't had personal experience with bad sellers as we've only bought one house and it was sold to us by a very nice resident family but my sister has. They put a bid in on a house that had been on the market for almost a year, bid about $10K less then they were asking for and they just said no, no counter, no nothing - and they KNOW these people.

Some people just have strange opinions of how selling houses should be. Sounds like you're making great progress and yes, I think if you make a list and stick with it you will fix things as you go. When we moved in we had these hideous valances, we left them and finally after a year I recovered them - I think if you do things as you go you're more likely to find fabrics, paints, etc. that you truly like and don't feel rushed on.

Good luck!

[Urowife]

I would deal with the REALLY annoying stuff first (i.e. electric blue dining room? ick), and leave the rest for when you have time. If you try to do it all at once, it will get overwhelming.

We moved into a fairly new condo, so we didn't really have to do anything drastic like paint. The former owner left all her curtains, which I didn't really like. But, my mom helped us rework them to be more stylish. However, the downstairs curtains were dark brown velvet (not my favorite); so we currently use them as seat protectors in our cars when we take the dog somewhere.

Good luck with the wedding planning! We just got married last March. And while it was a fabulous wedding, I'm glad to be finished with the planning. If you need advice/ideas, etc., let me know.

[planet]

I'm cringing just a bit hearing how they refused to fix anything. Hopefully you won't find things too messed up as you start fixing.

At least it is over and closed and yours though. Congratulations on that and your upcoming wedding!! Happy wedding planning.

I think the woman we bought our home from was sneaky. She had the water turned off so we wouldn't realize the toilet was broken. Seriously, it cost my husband about $10 in parts and 30 minutes of his time to fix it but it was the principle behind it.

[PrincessFiona]

:thud:

Seriously...what is wrong with people??????

I agree with Cheri..fix things slowly over time! As a homeowner I can tell you that I dont think you will get lazy about it. We have slowly made investments in our home. Every month, for example, we make it our goal to do 1 window in wood blinds. It's a small invesment (between 70-150/month) but after a year of doing this, almost every room is now almost finished.

Set goald and do it slowly.

The previous owneres were asshats...no way around it. :huh: I'm so sorry that you experienced that!


Kris

[PrincessFiona]

Lily...


Oh. My. Gawd!


Kris

[Cumberland]

I am already very worried about selling our house next year, I cant imagine I would turn down any reasonable offer or let a potential buyer walk away in this market. They must have been very very confident in their house.

[MDPhDWife]

I feel your pain. Our buyer is trashy. I keep thinking it's because she's 26 and this is her first home (Which I am guessing Dad bought for her) but they balked at EVERYTHING on our list which included immaterial things like "live frayed wires laying on insulation in attic". She refused to fix the broken panes in the windows. Things like that.

We stood firm on the live frayed wires and a few other things. That said, we have a call into the local utility to cut back the overgrown weeping cherry that has electrical lines running through it.

And the house was in shambles when we went through. We're talking dog feces in the basement, black mold in the shower stall, disgusting stuff like that. We haggled down $6k from asking and that was it. We've got easily $17 - $20k to put into the house, including overhauling both baths.

I made a spreadsheet of everything by room that I want to do, ranked it 1 to 3 in order of high to low, made a column for self or contractor, estimated price, actual price, over/under based on actual, and comments so I can put in links to stuff to buy, etc.

First thing I am doing is getting a general contractor (recommended from my realtor who has her own rental properties) to walk through the house the day we close and see what needs an electrician, what needs a plumber, what to do about the horrific shower stall upstairs, etc. We'll work from there.

Good luck.

Lily, WOW I envy your organization skills!!! Can you come over and help me get my house market ready? :>

[JaneDoe]

No doubt these seller stories are horrible, but I can't help but to add a seller's perspective.

We attempted to sell our house FSBO last summer. We found a serious buyer who submitted a low, but reasonable offer that we accepted in March. They wanted to close on our house WELL before the end of June (when Dh would be finished with residency). We couldn't do that because our son was due in April and we had no where to live. We were set to close on the sale of our home on June 30. All was good and we were friendly with our buyer.

Near the end of May, our buyer calls to say that the buyer of their home backed out. Okay. . . I understood that it was not our buyer's fault but I went into a panic. We scrambled to find an agent and get our house listed as quickly as possible. After we signed with our agent, our buyer comes back to us and tells us that they have a new buyer for their home. Our buyer is ready to make an offer on our house again and can still close as originally planned. But, because they had to come down on the sale of their home, they would have to offer $2000 less than our original agreement. Our buyer pressures us to back out on our agreement with our real estate agent. We refused.

So, our buyer eventually makes the same offer as our first agreement and agrees to close on our house as originally planned. Although we would be losing $17,000 in profit to pay a real estate commission we were okay with that because we wanted to maintain the closing date. We did cut direct communication with them and dealt with them strictly through our agent. Even though they got to keep the original price of our home and we were the ones out the $17000, they are ticked at us. :huh: :huh: The husband glared at Dh during the closing and the wife wouldn't even look at us.

As part of our new agreement, we had a clause that permitted us to show the home until our buyer either removed their home sale contingency clause or our house closed with them. They were ticked about that because they feared that we would find a new buyer. I'm not sure what they expected from us when they had already backed out of a sales agreement. We were not going to risk that again. We later learned from one of our old neighbors that our buyer thought we were too difficult. I don't get it. They backed out on us, not vice versa.

I swear selling a home is sooo much more difficult than buying one!

[peggyfromwastate]

Makes me glad that we weren't in town for the closing, and our realtor did it for us. From what I have heard, the previous owner was a PSYCHO!

Anyway, home improvements will get done. We have worked on every room of our house so far, and still have dreams and desires to improve some further, but as a Gen Surg intern.... You may want to cut yourself a break and just do it little by little, then on the vacation weeks try to buy the stuff ahead of time, so that you guys can work without going to the Home Depot 3 times a day! It's all about time management...

[DCJenn]

I have only been at closings with buyers/sellers for the condo in DC- and the guy I was buying from lent me 3k to buy the place (which was all of 19k- which tells you how poor I really was) so I was extra nice to him anyway.

The guy who bought that place (for 125k...hehehehe) actually was not the buyer- it was grandma and grandpa who found it amazing that they were paying the same amount for a 515 sq. foot condo in DC as they did for their other grandchild's 4 bedroom house in Omaha. But they were an awesome pair who were retired military so we bonded.

Other than that, we've always done it separately.

as for fixing stuff- we were able to convince them to fixx some of the more glaring problems but they refused to fix the HVAC (um, no wonder) and I told them not to bother repairing the cracked walls because I knew I was going to paint.

they had a maid come and give it a thorough cleaning and I have done the same for all of the homes I've left. and I always leave toilet paper on the rollers and all of the light bulbs because I know what it's like to move in a place late at night and discover that there are no lights and no TP.

Jenn

I think everyone has their fun times buying or selling a house. When we bought our first house, our loan guy messed up the loan and didn't tell us until a week before closing. It was a great mess, which, rightfully so, freaked out our sellers. But our dumb agent seemed to be representing the buyer more than us. That really ticked us off. Then when we were selling that same house, the offer we got was about $5,000 below asking price, with all appliances included, a home warranty and to pay the closing costs. I think after fees and everything that would have cost us about $5,000 out of pocket. We ended up getting it to our asking price, but we paid for the closing costs and left the fridge (which we were going to do anyway). Not the greatest, but we needed to move on to residency, so it wasn't awful either. We signed the papers mere minutes before we hit the road. But the experiences helped us have virtually no problems buying the house we have. So fix what you can and live and learn.

[Mrs. McPads]

Wow, well I am glad I am not alone. I don't understand why kindness and decency goes out the door for a couple thousand bucks. How ridiculous. And not to fix things that are dangerous <frayed live wires!!!> seems just wrong.

Lily, Thank you for the suggestions, and I commend you on the organizational skills. As a grad student, I have to be organized, but you've got me beat easily! <I'm stealing your spreadsheet idea, by the way>

We had the new frig delivered today. What was behind the old one I can't even talk about. I am getting my Masters in Public Health...I was mortified. Foul, truly truly foul. The new frig is pretty! The new carpet is pretty! But there is SO much to do, I can't imagine ever being satisfied with everything.

I do appreciate the advice from everyone, especially about buying the materials before fiance has the day off, so we can do the work and not have to run out together to get stuff.

We are moving on Tuesday, and my mom and his mom are going to help. Has anyone else done the move without the resident spouse? Any recommendations? I doubt he would pitch a fit if I put something in a different room than he would have, but since he won't be there there really isn't much of a choice for him. What did you guys do on move days if you were doing it on your own? Did you leave the major stuff and just unpack the necessities that day (sheets for the bed and a bowl and spoon to eat your spaghettios with), or do you unpack on your own too? I want him to be included in this process, really more to share the hell than out of concern for him feeling left out...

Thanks again for all the help!

Eileen