Cheer me up with your house-selling horror stories

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My @!#@!% house won’t sell.

Last summer, homes in our neighborhood sold like hotcakes. I’m talking full-price offers within 2 weeks of going on sale, and average sale time from first day for sale to closing of 60 days. Yay! At that point, we decide we want to do The Big Move back to Michigan. Our timing was impeccable - it went on the market a week after September 11, when nobody was doing anything. Since then, we’ve had gazillions of showings - up around 100 at this point. Nothing. Wait - we had one semi-offer, for $15K below what we were asking and they had a house to sell. Given that we were having so much trouble selling our house, waiting for their house to sell wasn’t what we wanted to do.

That was in January. I just hear today that those people, who last week were reportedly still interested in our house once their house sold, got a $40K gift from their parents, sold their house, and put an offer on a different, more expensive house in our neighborhood. Also, a house 3 doors down from us which countless people have told us was a ‘weird’ house with a basement that looked like it had been finished by monkeys has an offer on it. Meanwhile, our house, which many nosy neighbors have told us was the nicest house for sale in the neighborhood, languishes. (these nosy neighbors go around to all the houses when they come for sale and look through 'em). It’s been eight bloody months. Up until now, I’ve told myself that it’s just because nothing in the neighborhood was selling. Now it seems that stuff is selling, but not ours! We’ve dropped the price $20K from what we were first asking. We’ve spiffed the house up, rearranged, etc. etc. Doesn’t seem like there’s much else we can DO!

2

Have you tried reverse psychology? Take your house off the market, tell all real estate agents to stop calling you, swear that you refuse to sell regardless of price?
Or you could take a clue from your neighbour’s basement and hire some monkeys to redecorate.
I’ve been told by a real estate agent that if you can afford to move out and show the house when it’s empty, it makes the house look more spacious and you can get more offers that way.

3

I’ve heard that as well. However, when I asked my agent about that, he said he hasn’t seen a big sales difference in our area between empty houses and full houses. He did say when he used to live in California that empty houses sold worse than full houses. Regardless, we’ll probably be trying this, since I want to be out of Colorado this summer, and we’re purchasing a relatively inexpensive house so both mortgage payments won’t be too bad. Won’t be great, but we can limp along for a while at least.

4

I feel for you, Athena – not so much from personal experience but that of acquaintances. The guy we bought our last two dogs from lives in a beautiful log cabin-style house that he’s been trying to sell for months. No takers, and they’ve had several open houses.

We did have an awful buying experience, though. Mr. S shared the folks’ house with his sister and her daughter after their parents died. They had an agreement that if one got married, he or she would buy the other out. Mr. S continued to work on the (unfinished) house, and he also paid the lion’s share of the bills (until he moved out to live with me) since SisterS was a single mom with a crap job. She did a not-so-hot job of housekeeping, and her daughter was a lazy slob. And SisterS never really did have any interest in improving the place, although she often grumbled about its state of unfinishedness and seemed happy to live here for practically nothing.

So I came along, and after a few years, we decided that yes, we’d like to buy the house and fix it up the way we wanted it. OK, so the house needed to be appraised. We weren’t living here, so it was up to SisterS to make it presentable for the appraiser (what with her being the seller and all). She didn’t do a damn thing – the house was its usual mess when the appraiser came through. Even so, the appraisal came through at pretty close to the tax assessment value, which we thought was fair – BUT SHE DIDN’T. :eek: :mad: Whined and moaned about how it wasn’t enough, and she wouldn’t sell to us for that value. Yeah, it’s an unfinished house, but she never did a damn thing to help fix it up. Then she tried to claim that her share of the household bills somehow amounted to equity in the house :eek: :confused: , so that entitled her to more than half of the house’s value. :mad: I was so mad I could barely see straight. Talk about a dog in the manger – she doesn’t want the house, but won’t sell it. Finally Mr. S had it out with her, and we ended up grudgingly agreeing to buy her a new riding lawn mower for her new place, just to get her out. :mad: :mad: :mad: (Never mind that WE didn’t even have a (working) riding mower, and we had a LOT more to mow.)

And THEN . . . The day came to move her out. I had worked 3rd shift the night before, and Mr. S and I showed up with our big car, and his brother showed up with his pickup, and we all moved SisterS to her new house across town. She hadn’t even packed! So we’re carrying all this stuff loose in laundry baskets and whatever boxes and containers we could scrounge. I was beat by the end of the day, having not slept the night before. Now when people move you, you provide beer & pizza, or the equivalent, as thanks, right? Wrong. She didn’t even SAY thank you. Mr. S thanked his brother for coming with his truck, while SisterS stood there and said not a word. :mad:

Thank God we did finally get her out, the loser. That was 1993; she didn’t set foot in this house again until last fall, when some family stuff came up. Boy, did I have fun privately gloating as Mr. S gave her the tour and showed her all the fun stuff we’ve done to this house in 8 years.

5

Here’s a house-selling horror story for you:

About 6 or 7 years ago, my parents got divorced and sold our house. It was a really nice house in a great neighborhood, so everything went real smoothly. Then, a few months later, the new owners realized the house was not perfect. For example, the back yard is a hill that slopes down towards the house. At the top of the hill is a small ditch, to stop water from running down to the main yard and house. They were of course warned beforehand that they needed to keep the ditch clear to avoid the water-running problem. They sued us.

Then they realized that they would never win with a complaint so miniscule, especially since they were warned about it. So they picked apart every little problem with the house. We advertised it as 4 bedrooms, because there was a guest bedroom downstairs. Of course, they saw the house and the room before buying. Now, however, they researched and found that technically it isn’t a bedroom, because it doesn’t have a window.

There were 2 or 3 doors in the house a few inches narrower than standard. There were no plastic covers (79 cents at Home Depot) on the electrical outlets in the garage. And so on.

We fought it for probably over a year before we were finally forced to settle out of court. Even though 99% of the items on their list of complaints were complete garbage, the list was so long a judge probably would have sent it to trial. We couldn’t afford to do that. My parents had to get a loan and pay these people $32,000. I hope that covers the cost of buying replacement electrical outlet covers.

6

I’ve heard it both ways. It really depends on how good you are at decorating. If you are a whiz, or had your house professionally decorated, don’t remove your stuff. People respond to decor, and if yours is great, it doesn’t matter if the rooms are less than spacious - they look cozy. DO remove excess clutter, though. If your furniture is all nouveau parental handmedown like mine is, by all means, get it out of there. However, empty houses often look institutional, whereas it’s a lot easier for people to identify with a house when it’s furnished. That’s why they furnish and decorate model homes.

Examples: Two years ago, friends of mine put their house on the market. Since they had pets (five dogs and five cats), they waited until after they’d moved to list the old house, because they figured people looking would only notice all the animals and figure the place was filthy (which it was not). So the house was empty. Eighteen months and a $70,000 price reduction later, it finally sold (and a good thing, too - they got the pre-qualified offer and earnest money two weeks prior to 9/11). During that time, they were paying on two (fairly hefty) mortgages.

Around the same time, my parents decided to buy a condo. They purchased the condo, and listed their house. My mother is a decorating marvel. She rocks. Even though they had closed on the condo and wanted to move in, they only took out what did not affect the look of the old house. In less than a month, they got close to full price, in an area which almost always sees a $5-10K reduction before a deal closes.

Good luck to you!

7

I’m about halfway between. IE, it’s not professionally decorated, and I’m not a whiz, but Mr. Athena and I have put a good amount of cash into the furniture, and have stuff like high quality oriental rugs and leather couches and such. I’ve asked my agent to be brutally honest about what needs to be done to the house, and we’ve done what he asked, but it was stuff like removing some of the curtains to make the house look brighter, and getting rid of clutter. The house doesn’t look like a model house - I don’t think it’s possible to do that and also live in it - but I think it looks OK. I would hope that if my agent thought there was something we could do he’d tell us, since I’ve pleaded with him on several occasions to do so.

Mr. Athena thinks it’s wear and tear on the house that’s keeping it from selling. I disagree. Neither of us are professional real estate people, so it’s hard to tell who’s right. He thinks that we (mostly ME, since I lived in this house for 3 years before shacking up with him) haven’t kept up on the maintenance and that’s why it’s not selling. My stance is that the house is only 5 years old, is cleaned once a week by a professional cleaning lady, and we do stuff like patch any holes, touch-up paint where needed, etc. There’s stuff like scratches on some of the woodwork from the dog, but face it - any house where children live is gonna be more torn up than a child-free house. There have never been children in this house.

The most apparant problem is there’s some holes in the backyard where the dog has been digging. Make that 2 holes. We’re gonna fill 'em in now that the grass is growing. I’ve asked my agent about them, and he doesn’t think they’re a problem.

sigh I have no clue why this house doesn’t sell. It doesn’t look like a model home, but it’s not a mess, either. I’ve looked at houses when buying 'em, and I can honestly say our house looks cleaner/less cluttered than many of 'em. But still, no offers…

8

My horror stories?

#1 - Man was buying my first house for himself and his mother. Shortly before closing, his mother decided she didn’t want to move. He didn’t show at closing. I got half of his earnest money (all of $500) and lost 6 weeks of market time.

#2 - Same house - buyer was due to get a chunk of money prior to closing. She showed up $12K short. We could either kill the deal or hold a second mortgage. So we took the second. And we sold it a couple of years later - at a loss but glad to be out from under it.

#3 - Second house - bought in a neighborhood that was new but rapidly became a rental neighborhood. Couldn’t sell it. Would up giving it to a realtor who intended to rent it. No cost to us to sell, and we did get out of 2 monthly payments. Glad to be out of that one too.

#4 - Another house that we were renting - the tenants wanted to buy it so we struck a deal. Our realtor lied to us - he said we’d maybe have to bring $50 to closing. The day before, it turned out we needed $2K - that we didn’t have. So it was off to Daddy National Bank for a quick loan.

#5 - We hadn’t bothered to get the house inspected before we bought it, but when we listed it 3 years later, the buyers did have an inspector. He uncovered a bunch of stuff that we could have had done by the previous owner had we known about it. So, between the repairs we had to make and the allowance we agreed to (we HAD to sell that house because we’d been transferred) we had to take $400 to closing.

Of all the houses we’ve owned, we’ve made money on 3, lost on 3, and we’re pretty sure we’ll make out when we sell this house in 2 years.

Enough horror stories for you?