Friday, May 21, 2004
Were I able to have called up the pain, anxiety, and stress of having bought a house the first two times around, I might never have launched my idea to buy a Californian house in the midst of New England last week.
Based on yesterday's inspection, we have made our offer contingent on the seller addressing some issues that would renegotiate the price down by about $11,000 (and put the onus on them to make the changes). Sellers can be so weird. I mean if you have a high-end house you want to off-load at top dollar, wouldn't you spend the couple of hundred bucks to get rid of the rancid cat urine odor in the utility room? Because if you don't, the invariably jumpy buyer might think that well maybe it isn't cat urine but something wrong with the sewer line and 'Could you kindly call in a professional plumber to ascertain whether the odor is superficial or internal to the plumbing?'
I had a pre-showing to brokers yesterday to afix an asking price on our house. All excited they were and then while down in the basement I heard my broker call up, "Anna?" (it's never good when a broker calls up your name from a basement with a question mark at the end). Needless to say that for the past twenty-four-sleepless-hours, I thought I might have an underground oil tank buried under the foundation of the house I never knew about! Not a good thing when you're trying to sell your abode and certainly not good when it looks nigh impossible to get it out without your whole house falling down. Turns out it was old plumbing piping (that just happened to be the same size as piping for oil) that led up to an abandoned utility sink that was once in the kitchen. The pipe going down through the foundation led to an old dry well.
Meanwhile the hubby is freaking out about every little crooked light switch in the new house. The inspection went actually quite well but when you are poised to spend a lot of money on something built in the early 1950's, everything seems to take on a worn, needs-replacing hue. Actually one of his concerns with the house is quite legitimate and I can completely understand where he is coming from although not quite to the hyper-sensitive extent he does. He DOES NOT LIKE AT ALL the existing heating system's location in the house. With no basement, the heating unit is located in a small crawl space behind a wall in the den. To gain access to the unit, you must pull back a removable door and crawl into the space on all fours. The inspector whose unenviable task it was to do this, not only deemed the unit to be at the end of its life expectancy but also found a few loose bolts, scorch marks, caved in fire wall, and configuration issues.
I can tell you all with absolute certainty that unless the seller agrees to pay to replace and move the heating system to a new location, there is no way in hell I will agree to buy this house no matter how much I love it. Because I know my husband too well. This is a man whose departure from our house before a vacation involves a ten-page check list. The problem is that all ten pages are duplicates i.e. he checks to make sure the stove is turned off. Ten times. That the thermostat is turned down...ten times. He checks that the faucets are tight...ten times. You get the picture. If you are within earshot of hubby en route to the airport, you must never make the mistake of wondering aloud whether you turned off the iron or not. Vacations are guaranteed to be soundly ruined that way. No way in hell this hubby could ever leave the house in peace with an aging furnace enclosed within the flammable bowels of the house. Weekend trips and extended vacations would be completely a no-go given that he would be wondering the entire time whether the house wasn't going to be burned to the ground when we got back. I'm not even sure a dinner to our favorite restaurant would be possible.
Besides the fact that there isn't an oily toxic waste site underneath my house, another good thing to come out of all this is that my house has never looked better in anticipation of its maybe going on the market next week. Too bad my garage is still stuffed full with Martha's garden furniture that needs to be returned. Today I called Martha at Customer Service and told her I am disputing the charge to my credit card unless they get this stuff they have been promising to get out of my hair for over a week.
Based on yesterday's inspection, we have made our offer contingent on the seller addressing some issues that would renegotiate the price down by about $11,000 (and put the onus on them to make the changes). Sellers can be so weird. I mean if you have a high-end house you want to off-load at top dollar, wouldn't you spend the couple of hundred bucks to get rid of the rancid cat urine odor in the utility room? Because if you don't, the invariably jumpy buyer might think that well maybe it isn't cat urine but something wrong with the sewer line and 'Could you kindly call in a professional plumber to ascertain whether the odor is superficial or internal to the plumbing?'
I had a pre-showing to brokers yesterday to afix an asking price on our house. All excited they were and then while down in the basement I heard my broker call up, "Anna?" (it's never good when a broker calls up your name from a basement with a question mark at the end). Needless to say that for the past twenty-four-sleepless-hours, I thought I might have an underground oil tank buried under the foundation of the house I never knew about! Not a good thing when you're trying to sell your abode and certainly not good when it looks nigh impossible to get it out without your whole house falling down. Turns out it was old plumbing piping (that just happened to be the same size as piping for oil) that led up to an abandoned utility sink that was once in the kitchen. The pipe going down through the foundation led to an old dry well.
Meanwhile the hubby is freaking out about every little crooked light switch in the new house. The inspection went actually quite well but when you are poised to spend a lot of money on something built in the early 1950's, everything seems to take on a worn, needs-replacing hue. Actually one of his concerns with the house is quite legitimate and I can completely understand where he is coming from although not quite to the hyper-sensitive extent he does. He DOES NOT LIKE AT ALL the existing heating system's location in the house. With no basement, the heating unit is located in a small crawl space behind a wall in the den. To gain access to the unit, you must pull back a removable door and crawl into the space on all fours. The inspector whose unenviable task it was to do this, not only deemed the unit to be at the end of its life expectancy but also found a few loose bolts, scorch marks, caved in fire wall, and configuration issues.
I can tell you all with absolute certainty that unless the seller agrees to pay to replace and move the heating system to a new location, there is no way in hell I will agree to buy this house no matter how much I love it. Because I know my husband too well. This is a man whose departure from our house before a vacation involves a ten-page check list. The problem is that all ten pages are duplicates i.e. he checks to make sure the stove is turned off. Ten times. That the thermostat is turned down...ten times. He checks that the faucets are tight...ten times. You get the picture. If you are within earshot of hubby en route to the airport, you must never make the mistake of wondering aloud whether you turned off the iron or not. Vacations are guaranteed to be soundly ruined that way. No way in hell this hubby could ever leave the house in peace with an aging furnace enclosed within the flammable bowels of the house. Weekend trips and extended vacations would be completely a no-go given that he would be wondering the entire time whether the house wasn't going to be burned to the ground when we got back. I'm not even sure a dinner to our favorite restaurant would be possible.
Besides the fact that there isn't an oily toxic waste site underneath my house, another good thing to come out of all this is that my house has never looked better in anticipation of its maybe going on the market next week. Too bad my garage is still stuffed full with Martha's garden furniture that needs to be returned. Today I called Martha at Customer Service and told her I am disputing the charge to my credit card unless they get this stuff they have been promising to get out of my hair for over a week.
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