Catalpa-dream house or nightmare?

The seller's agent for the house on Catalpa (read below) called our agent last week and countered their own counter offer(?) from $230,000 to $225,000. We asked an electrician to do a rough estimate on redoing the electrical. He quoted us $12,000. Which is about what we expected. We asked our agent to pass this along to the seller's agent to see if there were some middle ground to meet.

He replied that he would not discuss this as we did not have an offer put on the table so to speak! I will remind you that he contacted us!

The electrician also said that we don't have to rewire the entire house as long as we only plug certain things into certain parts of the house. A lamp here, a vacuum there, maybe not at the same time. It is safe to say, we will not be using this electrician!

I understand that we are looking at older houses that have more charm, in my opinion, but also inherent costs to maintain. Is it too much to ask for functional electrical for close to a quarter of a million dollars?

I suppose everyone in real estate (agents, electricians, etc.) have made enough money...

Some news...

And it's not good news. Our landlord is kicking us out. (That's the downside of not having a lease). He wants to remodel our place and rent it out for a lot more money than what we are paying. This means that we now have 2-4 months to find a new place to live. While this is a decent amount of time, you must remember that we've been looking at houses for about a year now. How we can settle on something so soon, especially considering the amount of crap that's on the market right now, is beyond me.

We are deeply upset by this development for a variety of reasons:

1. We have to accelerate our house search. If we don't find anything to buy, we'll have to find another place to rent, which means we'll be locked into a lease somewhere, which we don't want to do.

2. We wanted to be the ones to break the news to the landlord that we would be leaving. I think we would have found it quite satisfying. It's like your boyfriend/girlfriend breaking up with you before you can break up with him/her.

3. On a personal level, I will be very sad to leave our apartment. As much as I've complained about it over the years, the place contains so many of our memories and "firsts." It was our first apartment, the place where we adjusted to living as a couple, the place where we spent our wedding night, the place that kept us safe through the hurricanes, the place where we've come home to each other for the past 7 years. I'll miss the gay bar on the corner, the barbershop quartet, the various wacky neighbors who have caused me grief, and many other things about it.

4. We seriously need to find a place to live. And SOON!!!

Here's where we stand. We've put our offer back in on Finch, though we are not very hopeful of a positive outcome. The agent for Catalpa contacted us to let us know the sellers are re-countering with $225,000. (Their last counter was $230,000). Now that we know the state of the electrical system in that house, we still think that's too high. We're going to try to get an electrician to give us an estimate on how much it would cost to update the house and use that as a bargaining tool. So far, we haven't seen any other homes that are interesting or in our price range.

-- Yana

The last house was owned by a Master Sargent and his lovely war bride. I know this, because there was a plaque stating as much by the front door. In the walkway was Sarge's souvenir from his time in Germany, a cuckcoo clock.

The dungeon, I mean bathroom featured nifty hanging lamps and plastic shower doors from "the future" circa 1983...

The kitchen was to the left of the front door. I don't get these houses with kitchens in the front windows. The pantry as you'll see below is great for stocking canned goods, and only canned goods as it was 6 inches deep!

The house was maintained well enough, but it was outdated, expensive, and on a busy street. And it was a 2/2. It was listed for $219,000...

Next up on the list was a house listed for $243,000. It was a 3/2. It did not have central air conditioning! It had window units! In Orlando! Florida! In 2008! For $243,000!

When you walk into the house, you are immediately hit with "icy cold" air from your first window unit perched about 7 feet up. Kind of like those convenience stores with sliding doors. The crawlspace was taken out so that you had high ceilings, which is great, unless you plan on adding central air.

The kitchen featured cabinets that went 12 feet up with zero counter space. When I say zero, I mean the stove was free standing and there was an easy chair where the fridge would go (no fridge).

The bedroom/bathroom had a very unusual feature. The bedrooms were side by side with one very long closet between them. You could not close the closet door as that was where the window unit was located. I have included pictures from the screen located in the "master" to the closet. I can only think that this was used as a hidey-hole during police raids.










We could barely contain ourselves, considering the seller's agent showed this house with a straight face. This was just unbelievable. This house is the reason the housing market is tanking. I doubt we will have any more contact with the agent, but if anybody needs a grow house....

The Search Continues

Well, we did a speed tour of some newer listings today. The first place was well done. It had a great layout, most everything was renovated. Nice backyard, great kitchen. But it only had 1 bathroom. It has been said that one of the keys to a successful marriage is 2 bathrooms. I am sure this seems nit-picky, but the house is listed for $260,000. Considering what they paid for the house 4 years ago, I doubt they will come down enough to put it within our range.

So, on to the next house. We recently to a trip to Charleston, and we have found a historical replica here in Orlando! Join us for a trip to "colonial Orlando"...

This is what is known in the olden days as a kitchen
> >>>>>>>>



On the left is where Ye Olde TV went. On the right is housing for colonial re-enactors?



Now hold on to something; this house is listed for $264,000!

Back to Finch?

Our real estate agent called us over the weekend and told us that the house on Finch is "available". It seems that 3 months (of non payment) is just the right amount of time for a bank to reconsider your offer! I do not blame the sellers; they offered a short sale to the bank. Which to me should signal that the owners are in over their heads and want out.

The bank has decided that perhaps their one solid offer, us, might be worth looking into. We re-looked at the house last night. It's funny, you make one of the biggest purchases in your life based on 20-60 minutes worth of inspection. We looked a bit more critically at the house, windows, AC, electrical, etc.

You also have to curb your inner HG channel tendencies (we could knock down this wall and put in a waterfall/koi pond in the living room). Mostly because the house is not ours yet...

One thing we noticed on the second visit was that the AC duct work only goes to the middle of the house. This house was built in the fifties, tar and gravel roof, so no AC. The AC was added later to the bedrooms, bathrooms and the living room. The kitchen and and "bonus room" have no AC vents. This can be rectified by running a soffit across the living room. It will look like a beam. There are also 3 different fences in the backyard, neighbors on each side and directly in back. So that will cost us. Electrical seemed ok, not new but at least not antique.

So we decided to "re-put" in our offer with the stipulation that the bank makes a decision in less than 90 days! Our agent gritted his teeth, smiled and submitted the offer. We will see...

Back on the wagon, I think

We took last week off to recover from almost buying a money pit. It was a close one, but in the end, I'm glad we chose not to pursue the Catalpa house. We withdrew our offer and are waiting to get our escrow checks back from the realtor. It certainly takes a lot longer to get them returned that it did for him to deposit them. I'm beginning to think it's intentional.

Over the weekend, we looked at 3 houses. The first two were foreclosures. Let me tell you, they were both awful. That's the thing about foreclosures; I have yet to see one that isn't absolutely horrible. If they were at least priced right and could be repaired... The first house had an interesting feature: a fake 2-car garage. Just inside the garage door, there was a cinder block wall. I guess these crazy people had expanded the master, but that left nowhere to park. The second house was basically a tear-down. It was full of mold and incredibly disgusting!

The third house was in Audubon Park, one of our target neighborhoods. It was very cute, though a bit small. Its major drawback was that it was located on the corner of a busy street. Not only would you have to deal with the noise, but I imagine it would also be difficult to sell down the road. And it had no dishwasher! Now, that's just unheard of in 2008.

We'll keep looking.

-- Yana