Change of plans...
As I've mentioned here before, Greg and I were buying a piece of land to build a house on. We had found the perfect spot - a wooded lot right in the middle of town. We had a house plan all picked out, and our offer on the land had been accepted.
I've also mentioned how nutty our realtor is.
It started off with just us being amused at how random she appeared - sending us nonsensical emails about ghosts and showing off her long underwear. It didn't really start to affect us until our deal with the land was under way. She gave us bad advice, and set impossible deadlines. She sent emails containing nothing but undecipherable sentence fragments, and would never answer when asked what she meant. She started posting in Greg's Live Journal. She looked up Greg's mother's name. She told our builder that she was going to be involved with the construction of our house (was calling herself our "building consultant" when we had never agreed to any such thing and as a realtor, her job begins and ends with arranging for the sale of the land... and THAT'S IT.) The list of crazy goes on and on. The last straw was when we needed to have our money returned so we could nix the sour agreement with the seller and try to start over, since we had found out we had been given horrible advice and was going about the whole thing in the wrong way - our realtor said she would mail our money back to us. When we didn't receive it after a week, Greg called, and she told him she had never mailed the money. By then, the seller lost patience and sold the land to someone else.
The realtor's boss has been spoken to, and copies of her nonsensical, confusing emails full of bad advice were sent. We don't know what has become of crazy realtor, but I do know she should not be in this line of work, or any that involves handling clients.
So Greg and I were left back at square one again. By now, we've saved up so much money for building, we started entertaining the idea of revisiting some of the houses we had looked at earlier, and then just use all of our extra money to fix them up to how we like them.
One of the first houses we saw was this beautiful log home in Tony Harvest. It's surrounded by 4 acres of woods, and then to each side of the property is cow and horse pasture. The inside is all rustic, with a gorgeous stone fireplace and all the lighting looks like oil lamps. Plus, it has a basement! It is, quite honestly, the closest thing to my dream home I have ever seen. The problem with it is water damage - it needs a new roof, and because it does not have gutters, it has wood rot on some of the logs. The basement also has water damage signs, and I would not be surprised if it needs to be resealed. The people living there used to rent it, and apparently the tenant who resided there never did any upkeep. And the people who own it apparently aren't interested in fixing it up. We drove up there a week ago, and there were still downed trees in the front yard from April's storms (the sellers are currently living there, so it's not like it's empty).
We put in an offer for 50k less than what they were asking. They accepted. Part of our deal is we are having the house inspected thoroughly before we close, and we can back out of the contract if repairs would exceed what we want to spend. Inspection is Thursday. We have a large budget for repairs, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. I love this house, but we are definitely proceeding with caution.
So that's what's happening.
I've also mentioned how nutty our realtor is.
It started off with just us being amused at how random she appeared - sending us nonsensical emails about ghosts and showing off her long underwear. It didn't really start to affect us until our deal with the land was under way. She gave us bad advice, and set impossible deadlines. She sent emails containing nothing but undecipherable sentence fragments, and would never answer when asked what she meant. She started posting in Greg's Live Journal. She looked up Greg's mother's name. She told our builder that she was going to be involved with the construction of our house (was calling herself our "building consultant" when we had never agreed to any such thing and as a realtor, her job begins and ends with arranging for the sale of the land... and THAT'S IT.) The list of crazy goes on and on. The last straw was when we needed to have our money returned so we could nix the sour agreement with the seller and try to start over, since we had found out we had been given horrible advice and was going about the whole thing in the wrong way - our realtor said she would mail our money back to us. When we didn't receive it after a week, Greg called, and she told him she had never mailed the money. By then, the seller lost patience and sold the land to someone else.
The realtor's boss has been spoken to, and copies of her nonsensical, confusing emails full of bad advice were sent. We don't know what has become of crazy realtor, but I do know she should not be in this line of work, or any that involves handling clients.
So Greg and I were left back at square one again. By now, we've saved up so much money for building, we started entertaining the idea of revisiting some of the houses we had looked at earlier, and then just use all of our extra money to fix them up to how we like them.
One of the first houses we saw was this beautiful log home in Tony Harvest. It's surrounded by 4 acres of woods, and then to each side of the property is cow and horse pasture. The inside is all rustic, with a gorgeous stone fireplace and all the lighting looks like oil lamps. Plus, it has a basement! It is, quite honestly, the closest thing to my dream home I have ever seen. The problem with it is water damage - it needs a new roof, and because it does not have gutters, it has wood rot on some of the logs. The basement also has water damage signs, and I would not be surprised if it needs to be resealed. The people living there used to rent it, and apparently the tenant who resided there never did any upkeep. And the people who own it apparently aren't interested in fixing it up. We drove up there a week ago, and there were still downed trees in the front yard from April's storms (the sellers are currently living there, so it's not like it's empty).
We put in an offer for 50k less than what they were asking. They accepted. Part of our deal is we are having the house inspected thoroughly before we close, and we can back out of the contract if repairs would exceed what we want to spend. Inspection is Thursday. We have a large budget for repairs, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. I love this house, but we are definitely proceeding with caution.
So that's what's happening.