For those of you in Columbus
Just wanted to let you know that Lisa Mirman is here and she is fine! (For those not in the know, Lisa is a long-time Columbus-ite who relocated to New Orleans and has lived there for the past six years.)
House updates in the cut below!
We’re selling our house to two nice, young newlyweds-to-be and we were happy about that because we liked the idea of them starting their lives here where we’ve been so happy. We’ve done a lot to this house: new bathroom (tile, toilet, sinks, faucets, bath, showerhead, paint, floor), new carpet, new kitchen (floors, cabinets, countertops, paint, ‘fridge, dishwasher, oven, sink, faucet), new raised beds made of cedar in the backyard, redid the finished basement (carpet, paint), new windows. They’re getting a deal because we wanted to move sooner than later so we let them lowball us. All’s good, right?
Well, then her dad got into it. Their inspectors said our basement walls are bowed (they are but not enough to be a huge issue, just enough to bear watching) and the engineer came in and said, well, if you weren’t selling I’d tell you not to worry about it but since you are you should put in I-beams. So that’s a thousand dollars. But her dad said that we were liars who were trying to pull something over on these kids and he told her to demand that we do every little thing the engineer suggested (the I-beams, dirt at the foundation) and also he demanded the inspector come back to make sure we did it right. Oh and he wanted us to pay both for the first structural inspection and the one after the I-beam installation. (Our realtor paid for both because he thinks it’s so screwy.) With the dirt (another $200+ dollars) we were already feeling a little pinched. Now mind you these are for I-beams that the engineer doesn’t even think we need but he said, and I quote, “By the book that’s what you do with bowed walls so I’m sorry, I have to recommend it even though I think it’s not much of an issue here.”
Then the termite inspection came back with suspect carpenter ants because — get this — six years ago the people who lived here before put ant traps on this ledge in the basement, which I never even noticed and there were some dead ants by the trap. So based on that they recommended we treat the whole house. That’s another $200.
Meanwhile the seller at the house we want is refusing to fix all but the most minor things and is trying to raise the price so that we have to pay for the required improvements to get our financing. (These are things he’d have to fix anyway if we got out of the contract and the house went back on the market because he would have to then disclose them.)
We feel like we’re getting screwed in both directions and the part that really sucks about this is not the money, (which is a worry — the holidays are coming up) but that there’s so much hostility from everyone. I mean, you got this guy telling his daughter we’re dishonest and the other guy trying to squeeze every last cent that he can out of us. We just want to sell our house and buy this other one. We’re not looking to make money (in fact we knew we’d have to take a bath on the improvements just to get the house up to market) or to get a bargain on the other one (we’re thinking long-term so we just want to get into that neighborhood). But now there’s this whole ugly atmosphere and we’re wondering does this mean that we should just get out of ‘em both?
Except that we’re really done with this house — I’m so frustrated by the size of the kitchen and the location — and we’ve pretty much fallen in love with the other one.
I wish I could go directly to the buyer’s dad and say, hey, we’re real live people and we’re nice people. Let’s be kind to each other there.
I hate how this is making me feel towards the buyers. Our original plan was to leave them a box of candy in the ‘fridge with a note congratulating them on their marriage and wishing them well but now I feel so … well, so not all faith help creed. I just found out that this girl’s father is now telling her that we should have to pay rent to them for the two weeks after closing when we’ll be here. Except that they approached *us* with the closing and possession date. We didn’t ask for it. And they’ll be on their honeymoon anyway and it’s one reason we were happy with the deal — it will give us time to move.
I guess they could kick us out early (we couldn’t afford rent — they’ve pretty much annihilated the money we had set aside for the move) but then it’s not like we’d have time to get the house cleaned up for them like we planned.
Oh why does this all have to get so ugly????
things often get ugly using realtors IME. I don’t know how easy/hard it is to do a “for sale by owner” there but we had a great experience selling that way. my baby was born in that house and i am glad for the connection - we keep in touch with the new owners, send holiday/birth announcements, etc. All Very Nice. Realtor-infused selling/buying = Not So Nice. FI, we moved here after being in house limbo for *2 months with a newborn* because we became non-real “buyers” with realtors involved. we couldn’t keep asking our nice new buyers to keep letting us rent from them (which they graciously did and would have continued) but our realtor-deal-seller wasn’t budging here… anyway - no advice other a nudge that occurred to me while reading your entry - sometimes becoming too attached to an outcome necessitates “pushing the river” instead of “going with the flow”. I hope it’s all smooth waters ahead
So sorry that weiners are invading your life. This all sounds so familiar.
When we sold our house we bent over backwards for the couple who bought it.
They wanted the floors refinished and they wanted us to pay for it. We offered to drop our price. Nope, not good enough. We let them in over two weeks early to do some painting. When we went back to pick up some of our stuff (bear in mind it was still our house) - we had to put up with her father following us around and telling us what crappy shape the house was in!
The climber/play structure that we had installed in the yard and the wife had exclaimed over nearly undid us on the last day. She claimed that we needed to provide a permit to prove that it was in accordance with bylaws. It was - but it was going to cost us hundreds of dollars to prove it. I responded by saying that we were coming over to rip it out of the ground - she backed off. Still not the end. Months later, literally months. We got an panic inflaming phone call from their lawyer threatening us with some dire sounding thing if we didn’t give them the remote garage door opener a.s.a.p. Yes, we had forgotten, but they never reminded us (they had our number). They did this instead of buying a $20 replacement themselves (we had forgotten about it) - So my husband went out bought the $20 remote and batteries and took it over, spent a minute setting it up and handing it to them.
Ick.
However we do have a lovely house in a lovely neighborhood with great neighbors and we have never regretted the move.
So sorry it is going this way. When we bought this house we had similar experiences with the sellers not wanting to spend a cent to fix things. Selling our old place was easier because it was relatively new and therefore in good shape, and besides we sold it to the local public housing authority so there was no personal angst on their part.
I guess dealing with such large amounts of money can really bring out the worst in people sometimes. I know for us buying it was hard because we didn’t know what we *should* expect them to pay for, and what we should just accept.
Hope it all goes smoothly from here on in.
Wow. What a crapstorm, Dawn. I’m a total “fixer” personality, forever wanting to smooth things over, so take this fwiw. I’d approach the buyers and the dad, like you’re thinking. But I’d also expect the dad to continue being the utter tool he’s shown himself to be. Sigh.
And I could just drive out there to slap the nickel-and-diming seller. Argh. If there’s anything we (Dan and I) can do here from Illinois, please let us know.
When we bought this house, the seller was our doctor. He told us how happy he was to sell the house to us. Then they wanted a 14 day closing, so they could go on vacation. He wanted to see my in laws financial statements because he didn’t believe anyone could loan us that kind of money so we could do the 14 day closing. We rented to them for 6 weeks after we closed so they would have time to find another place. They wouldn’t move two days early so that we could accomodate our new buyers. Our stuff sat in rental trucks over night. It was nuts. The reason we didn’t back out was because they had 4 back up offers behind us. We had to play their way for the house. But it all paid off in the end. The decided to leave their new, nice fridge and they replaced the motor in our pool the week before they moved out. Still I found a new doctor.
Hi Dawn,
Like so many others it seems, we too went through a horrible buying/selling process with our house. Like you, I went into the process so happy and wanting to be helpful and nice to everyone but by the end I felt so bitter that I never wanted to see the old house again and even now when I drive past it, I feel angry. I agree with laurabz that having realtors involved really inflames this “depersonalization” and I know that I will not be using them again…although that doesn’t really help you now. But if there’s anything you can do now (demand to talk directly with both parties, etc.) you might want to do it because it really sucks to be left with a bad taste in your mouth when you want to be happily moving into your new home. At least for us, we were so angry when we moved in that we eventually decided to move elsewhere and just rent the house to others because all the bad feelings were really polluting our environment. There were other mitigating factors (like the fact that our car was broken into and then stolen shortly after we moved in), but the bad transaction certainly did not start things off well. Good luck, and I hope things work out more smoothly than they have so far!
Oh no! That does sound awful, especially because you were trying to be nice and helpful to them since they were just starting out!
It is unfortunate that people can get nasty and uncompromising for no apparent reason sometimes.
I hope this all works itself out too. As an indignant aside, I don’t think they can charge you rent at this stage of the game. Hrumph.