Adventures in House Hunting - Part 2

So are you all hanging on the edge of your seats? Waiting to find out what happened to the "perfect" house? Wondering why I haven't invited you all over for a beach party and a visit to my house in Aptos?

Because y'all knew there was a catch right?

So. It goes like this. The house had been on the market for 6 months. That's the equivalent of real estate grid lock. Seriously. By the time we get to it the listing price is $350,000. For an about to fall over shack on a .25 acre in Rio Del Mar. With issues. So we did what any crazy home purchaser would do... We offered them $280,000. And asked for a counter offer.

Now, I'm going to insert a side note here to explain that the Realtor who sent this listing to us is a complete moron and the most ineffective, inadequate and useless Realtor I have ever had the displeasure of working with. And that's saying something given I've worked with hundreds of Realtors over the years! It took eons for him to return my calls. I never did get all the reports on the property and the ones I did get I pulled from the county myself! Absolutely ridiculous. But I could go on for days about that idiot... So I'll leave it at that.

So the IdiotRealtor presents our offer on a Monday morning. It's set to expire on Wednesday at 5:00 pm. Thursday morning I finally get in touch with the IdiotRealtor, after probably close to a dozen, increasingly irritated messages from me and he says, "Well I just haven't heard anything." Really moron? That's shocking! (Okay I apparently still am annoyed by this guy months later!) So after one mildly nasty phone exchange, in which one usually patient Tiffy might have lost her temper just a little, I finally called the listing agent directly.

The listing agent, who had coincidentally ALSO left several messages for IdiotRealtor, explained that the client was in Europe and she was planning on speaking with them later that day but would get back to me (and IdiotRealtor) shortly. Well "shortly" turns into another several days in which time we find out the following facts about the "perfect" property.

1) The septic tank is leaking. Say it with me... Ew! But that's not the bad part. Septic tanks do leak. It happens. But this one apparently had been leaking FOR YEARS. The whole leach field around it was saturated (I wonder now why we couldn't smell it if it was so bad) and to make matters worse, the area to access the tank was down a very steep part of a hill. So no one had actually DONE a complete inspection. You know, because it's not that important. Right.

2) They sellers are stuck in the UK. Apparently they were here on work Visas and bought the place but then had to go home. And now they can't come back. I don't know why. But needless to say they didn't really WANT to sell. Theoretically they want to come back to the US and fix up their shack. But they can't.

3) In order to get around the red tape with the county we thought all we had to do was leave 1 original wall standing and we could call it a remodel. WRONG! We had to leave 50% of the original structure and we could only increase the footprint (read: foundation area) by 50% of the original.

Still we were interested. I mean if we could buy it at a good price - it would still be worth it. All of a sudden IdiotRealtor comes out of nowhere saying he thinks we should increase our offer to $300,000. Given all of the issues above, the least of which being the $20,000 +/- for the new septic tank, we were thinking NO WAY! But we talked it over... And decided to wait for a counter offer.

It turns out we were going to be waiting a long time for that counter. A few days later IdiotRealtor calls me to tell me that they have another full price and all cash offer on the house. Fine. At this point good riddance, right? We were bummed but... No use crying over spilled septic solution.

Except...

The property never changed status on the multiple listing service. Ah the joys of being "in the business". So a few weeks later I called up the listing agent. I mean I figured what have I got to lose right?

Apparently the sellers decided not to accept the full price all cash offer. Right. I'm thinking there never was a full price all cash offer. I'm thinking that the sellers decided that they either wanted to hold out for a higher offer or that they still harbored dreams of making it back to the US. But that's just me.

And the house? Just went off of the market a couple weeks ago. After 9 MONTHS. And as far as I can tell, it hasn't sold.

Curious. Very curious...

On to house offer #2.