I think you’re being a bit unfair with this one – the seller can hardly be expected to put his religion on hold until he sells the house, and will presumably take his little shrine to his new abode.
You’re entitled to your opinion.
Well, if that’s too expensive, for less than half the price, you can get this. No central air and “electric service available.” :eek:
I lived in a house that was built in the 1800’s. No built in closets (there was one, but it was actually the closet for the water heater).
Estimated property taxes on a $375,000 house are only $1700? At least that’s a bargain!
I think I’ll just stay in this apartment!
Girl_Incognito and I were shown a townhouse that was listed at $20k more than the local comps. It had a gaping water damage hole in the living room ceiling, warped and buckled wood floors on the second floor, no gutters, no fixtures or finished floor in the upstairs bathroom (hence the water hole in the first-floor ceiling), and no functioning windows on the second floor. The appliances smelled like dead animals, and the inside of the refrigerator was black with mold. Needless to say, we left in disgust.
Just as we were walking out the door, however, our realtor started to scream. She fell to the ground and began rolling around in the dirt, wailing “FLEAS! FLEAS!” Girl_Incognito and I looked at ourselves, and sure enough, we were also covered with fleas. We stripped down to our underwear right in the goddamned front yard, brushed each other off, jumped in our cars, and called our families to instruct them to bring fresh clothes.
To this day, I still itch when I think about that fucking place.
The worst one we saw when we were house hunting was pretty cute from the outside. We should have gotten a hint from the knee-high grass and the car on blocks in the driveway. Inside, everything was covered with a 1/4" layer of dust (and yes, the owners were still living there). It was also not very attractive–it looked like they decorated in the 60s and never did anything after that.
But, we thought, carpet can be torn up, walls painted, etc., so we bravely ventured into the basement. The walls were black, wet, and slimy and the place smelled like a rotting swamp. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Yup, I’m pretty much itching just reading about it.
What I’d like to know is where were the realtors in all these horror stories? Are they all so bad that they seriously thought you would like the abomination that they showed you, or had they never been there themselves? At what point, as a realtor, do you say “Screw this - it’s a hole.” and walk out in disgust?
Very true MOST of the time. I’m currently rehabbing a house where the grandkids the former owner let live in the finished basement painted all the walls, receptacles, light switches, ceilings, trim, windows, hardware, light fixtures, and FLOORING with black polyurethane paint. Going into the basement was like going underground! First we had to wash it down with a chemical solution to clean/etch the old paint. Then, one coat of oil based Kilz followed by two coats of paint. Thankfully, they didn’t paint the bathroom fixtures. If I never paint again, it’ll be too soon. (Still going to be making money on this one.)
Of the huge amount of things that can be wrong with a house, pet soilage is one of the easiest reasons to negotiate a price reduction, but is one of the cheapest things to fix. If the house was otherwise nice, as you say, you probably missed out on an opportunity to buy a good house for a great price.
And what’s a plasma TV got to do with valuing a home, anyway? 
Sounds like a first-time home buyer to me. :dubious:
Well, in mt case at least the realtor was hustling me out of the houses. Especially the one where the tenent was there watching tv, the house was a pigsty and there was urine all over the unflushed toilet and visible on the floor. She was much more horrified than I was. I figured all of thier crap would leave with them or be tossed out on the street. I didn;t particularly like the house. For the most part the houses in my price range just needed to much work or were in parts of town I felt would not continue to increase in value (I was right). As we were coming down to the wire of haveing to sign a new lease on the duplex or give notice, I liked one of the last ones we saw. Now it belongs to me and the bank.
Unaccountable toilets, the duplex I lived in had a toilet in the room with the washer/dryer connections and the furnace. If you sat on it you could touch all three.
Another house had a basement, one large room, with a toilet over in one corner, ok maybe it was previously walled off, but the really weird part was there was a pipe coming from the ceiling that went through/into the bowl. I mean, huh? What were they thinking?
That is true in some cases. However, as I said earlier, my house was built in 1760. It is a true colonial and has 4, large, identical rooms that form the core of the main part of the house. All four of them have two rather large closets on the back wall of each room. There is more than enough closet space in them. Other closets were added later but that was in places like the bathrooms which didn’t even exist at the time. My in-laws have a farmhouse built in 1790 in New Hampshire. It has good-sized closets too but they are not in every room. On the other-hand, my sister-in-law is going to graduate school in England and the house that she is renting is only 10 years old. There is not a closet to be found in any of the main rooms.
You’re missing the point. You’re assuming the pet thing was the only thing wrong with the house - it wasn’t. It was just part of what really stood out about the house.
No, it has nothing to do with buying or not buying the home, it was an incongruous observation - ratty ill-kept home, father out of work, AND YET, multiple cars and a plasma screen TV.
In many states, the realtor legally represents the sellers of the houses, not the buyers. So they are ethically bound to show any house that could possibly meet your minimum criteria (3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, $350,000), even the nasty ones.
Around here, it’s a little easier. The nasty homes get snatched up right away by developers who tear 'em down and put in condos. Blech.
Only if the Realtor is a seller’s agent. It’s common for the realtor who actually shows you homes to be a buyer’s agent, and they’re obligated to represent only the buyer. When you use a buyers agent, their commission comes out of the commission of the sellers agent–so, instead of a single agent getting 5%, the two agents split the commission.
Actually, we looked at one house that was actually quite lovely save one thing - it smelled like cat pee throughout the entire house. I’m talking major cat pee. Like the cats had no litterbox and just peed wherever the urge struck them. I got a headache just standing in the living room after five minutes.
We liked the house very much, but I’ve been living with cats my entire life, and cat pee is one of those things that once it’s there, it’s there. Very hard to get the smell out. My two have NEVER peed anywhere they shouldn’t have (well, my girl peed in the bathtub once, but that was it - rinsed it out quickly and no smell). However, since cats want to mark their territory, our fear was that we’d get in the house, they’d smell where the former owner’s cats had peed, and start peeing willy-nilly.
I don’t know about dogs, but it’s almost impossible to get the smell of cat pee out. My in-laws had a cat who peed in their house ten years ago, and ten years later, you can still vaguely smell it in the room - that’s after they stripped and refinished the hardwood floor.
E.
I submit that it is possible to remove cat pee smell to the human nose, but not to the cat nose.
Someone in my house, not the previous owners but the one;s before them (so 15 years ago), someone’s cat peed a lot in a particular place in the livingroom corner. My otherwise well behaved cats began peeing here. Constantly. There was a stain in the floor, but no smell once I cleaned up their pee. Didn’t stop them. Tried everything. Eventually we put up a dressing screen and stuck a box back there, which made them happy.
Dog pee will come out. So will kitten pee. But full grown cats (esp. unfixed)? Good luck. (Though if they peed on the carpet and it hasn’t gotten to to wood, you should be fine if you ditch the carpet, but most sellers won’t let you look)
Well, in fairness to the all of the sellers’ agents out there, we were told that the “Flea House” was a fix’er-upper. (I know my way around a workshop, and I wouldn’t have minded saving about $75k on a project house.) But fleas? When we notified the listing agent about the little fuckers, she replied: “The seller assured me he’d gotten rid of the fleas.” So she knew, and had kept it to herself. I can’t really blame her, though; it’s her job to sell the house, not clean it. I used the flea incident to bargain the seller down another ten grand. After some negotiation, he’d lowered his asking price by a full $60,000 - that’s $40,000 below the local comparables. I would have bought the place if Girl_Incognito hadn’t put her foot down about living in a dump for a few months while we performed the necessary repairs…
I just had to throw this one into the hat. I used to rent this dump, and I just noticed it’s for sale.
The House that Geometry Forgot
It started with a small cinderblock house on a lot - living room, kitchen, two “bedrooms” and a bathroom; all the rooms were small. At some point, a cinderblock garage was built next to it, with 15’ of space between the two. Then the fun began.
Whoever owned the place decided it needed something. Since they couldn’t build out (lot is oddly shaped), they built up. A second story was built over the garage, and extended to the main house. Except, the garage wasn’t the same height as the main house, so they had to make adjustments…
Now, this wouldn’t have been so bad, had the builders been possesed of a level, or a measuring tape. There were exactly three rooms upstairs at the same height. Two rooms were higher than the rest, and there was a step up into the bathroom.
The space was oddly divided - there was yet again a small bedroom, a “living room” at the top of the first stairwell, one cramped bathroom, and a giant common room with two prison cells at the back. 8’ x 10’, no windows, padlocks on the exterior of the doors. The common room was at least 30’ x 20’
When we moved in, the upstairs back porch wasn’t supported from below - there was a 6 by 6 piece of lumber under the corner that stopped two feet short. The steps in the second stairwell varied in height by as much as 4" from one to the next.
They’re asking $125,000 for it in a town where most houses cost less than $60,000. Did I mention the fact that there’s a single 20 amp circuit for the entire upstairs? Lights and outlets both.
When I moved out, I offered to do the landlord a favor, if he’d buy the gasoline and the matches. He never did take me up on it.