Changing the balance of quality of life and financial independence

Cute Fuzzy Bunny said:
The sellers agent cracks me up. Calls me and tells me he has a buyer coming in from the bay area to look at it and make an offer on saturday.
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Quick! Hurry! A deal this great can't last long! You've gotta sign before Saturday or you'll lose the deal! Classic marketing... of course you know this.

Are you ready to walk?
 
I am ready to walk, but I'd be stupid to. And yeah, i'm a little familiar with marketing...my agent told him later that I used to negotiate 9 figure contracts...so his grade school antics werent particulary effective. :LOL: I told her to tell him that if he pays me back my inspection fees, that I'd deliberately lapse the contract to let him sell it to his new buyers!

Then when they dont show up, I come back in 2 weeks from now with a lower offer, free inspections, and get it anyhow.

But...it'd be smart to be only half as stupid as the seller, who may very well try to scotch the deal over a few thousand bucks, then sit and wait 3 months for another buyer who will by law have disclosed to him all of my reports prior to making an offer. Who will then offer him less.

He's paying 6% on a loan right now, 1/2% a month. He's also losing out on investment $ opp if he was planning on investing, also quite reasonably 1/2% a month. He's also selling into a dropping market. Flipping me off and waiting could easily cost him 10k-20k.

Costs me $450 for my inspection. And I might find a better house I like better at a better price. I have 3 years before my son goes to school... :)

I've seen people try to do dumber things. Its all about testosterone and defeating the other guy at this point.

I knew he was a flake when I made him his first and only offer in 7 months, it was reasonable, and he countered me for 5k higher...risking a walk over a fairly trivial amount of $.

But I'd still like him to give me something to compensate me for catching him in a few lies and sins of omission.

If he wants to be stupid and hold out, I'll give him the price. Its a pretty dang good deal.
 
Oh, and I almost forgot. Looks like my wife has nailed a job with a place down there, and they pay better and have better benefits than where she is now. Shorter commute than she has now, and very little traffic on the way.
 
Cute Fuzzy Bunny said:
If he wants to be stupid and hold out, I'll give him the price. Its a pretty dang good deal.
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Hope he doesn't read these boards. :LOL:
 
:LOL:

I was thinking the same thing last night.

Odds arent too good though.

Even if he does, good for him. The little lying liar that lies can have a huge undermarket price for the house that he maintained in a manner that would qualify him for a photo next to the word "inept" in the dictionary.

He can put the money to good use taking some home improvement classes.

The caulking he put in the shower reminds me of someone trying to frost a cake. With a broken pastry bag.
 
How is DW handling the emotionality of this purchase?
 
Neutral. She likes the house but we're in no hurry and it looks like some builders have made plenty in the area ;)

Now I see per zillow that the local comps are rising, while of course knowing that zillow is just a rough data point and not always a great one. The house was minus $2000 price change a few weeks ago and now its plus $4500. So technically I already made $6500 on it, if you go with the area comps calcs that zillow uses.
 
The nagging feeling I have is that theres other halfassed stuff and hidden goodies that i'll discover and have to fix
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If you find a yard full of bodies, please post here first before you call the law.
 
That'd be very helpful. During the excavation I can fix some of the grading/drainage problems.
 
"I'm planning on asking for more money off...$5k in total...but I have a feeling i'm going to get smacked with an emotional seller who just had his pants pulled down. And the price is already pretty good."

I" knew he was a flake when I made him his first and only offer in 7 months, it was reasonable, and he countered me for 5k higher...risking a walk over a fairly trivial amount of $."

Flake? Or presciently giving himself an extra $5k wiggle room against a buyer who knows he's getting a good deal but still is trying to nickel and dime the seller down over minor b-s type repairs...
 
Gee, thanks for your input. I dont consider 50k worth of undisclosed health, safety and major defects to be "minor BS"

Point is, the guy wasnt getting any buyers, he was lucky to find one with cash thats willing to do all the work the place needs, and he's making 300k profit on the home after doing absolutely nothing to it for 8 years except try to hide a few things.

But 5k was somehow holding him from cashing that big check.


We're done. The buyer finally agreed to the original offer I made him 10 days ago.

Now that we're over the goofy emotional portion of the program...I get to fix it, move into it, fix the old place up and sell that.

Yay. ;)
 
I just solved half of my problems. Told the wife to buy whatever furniture she wants. All I want is a soft chair in a room outside of the main 'runs' of the house where I can sit quietly now and then between bouts of home improvements... ;)
 
Cute Fuzzy Bunny said:
I just solved half of my problems. Told the wife to buy whatever furniture she wants. All I want is a soft chair in a room outside of the main 'runs' of the house where I can sit quietly now and then between bouts of home improvements... ;)
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Obviously you know how to make a woman happy! :LOL:
 
Well, with my luck I'll come home to find a bunch of new furniture and a nice comfortable chair sitting outside near the tool shed.
 
Cute Fuzzy Bunny said:
All I want is a soft chair in a room outside of the main 'runs' of the house where I can sit quietly now and then between bouts of home improvements... ;)
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With a laptop stand. And a nice frosted-beverage fridge. And a high-bandwidth wireless connection. And, what the heck, a media room around the chair. With soundproof walls.

Am I forgetting anything?
 
Shhhh...thats in the back page of my "things to do list" ;)

Which is seven frickin pages and runs out to 3 years timeline.

Its amazing what you can get done when you snap awake at 3am and decide to do something more productive with the wee hours... :p
 
Make sure you rent the movie "The Money Pit" to get you in the mood for those three pages of identified problems. :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

Congrats. and enjoy your new digs
 
Oh, I already know where the fun parts are.

Guy decided that grouting the master shower was optional, and you just sell the house when the tiles are close to coming off. Cant wait to pop those off and see what loveliness awaits me.

But hey, regrouting a shower costs a whopping couple of hundred bucks! Cant go blowing the bank account on stuff like that.

And theres a trim leak into the back of the siding on the exterior chimney. I can already tell what happened...the guy who did the gutters and downspouts should have "kicked out" the downspout around the horizontal trim thats halfway up the chimney, but he ran it straight down and just cut into the trim to accommodate it. And probably through the z-flash while he was at it.

The good news is that the rain water falling two stories straight down will be noisy too! So that makes up for it! ;)

But given that I planned on tearing the exterior off of the whole house and putting stucco or hardiplank on it in 3 years...the frickin thing can fall off the side of the house for all I care :LOL:
 
Congrats. Can't wait to hear your tales over the next months and years on all these projects. I'm sure (1) I'll learn a lot and (2) you will probably scare off many youngin's from ever buying a house.
 
It certainly is a learning process and I'm afraid I have some lernin' to do...

Like many things, I think if you have no idea how it works and just do whats obviously needed and have it done by professionals, you're better off.

Go on Haha...theres a joke in there for ya... ;)
 
All things seem to be a go, we'll take ownership this week.

In a serendipitous moment, my wife spotted a small hospital as I was driving her around the area pointing out some landmarks and decided to apply for a job there. Turns out they had just the day before opened a day shift that they'd have a tough time filling as they needed someone with a lot of experience. One interview and she's in. So much for the 'commuting problem', her new commute will be about seven minutes. Much better benefits than her old job, a signing bonus and a nice raise to boot.

Spent the last 3 days lining up contractors to get a bunch of work done before we move in, and i'll be pretty busy doing other stuff.

Then we move. Dang, I kinda miss driving around looking at peoples houses already.
 
Cute Fuzzy Bunny said:
Then we move. Dang, I kinda miss driving around looking at peoples houses already.
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Congratulations. With my son (Gabe, by the way) moving to the San Mateo area you may have to spot me a beer some day. How far are you from there?
 
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