Realtors

Kinda like husbands . . can’t live with them and can’t live without them. We’re actually dealing with two – one in Nevada, MO and one in NE Arkansas. The one in Nevada is perfect – a dream realtor. She’s honest. If I call about a house, even if it’s her listing, she’ll say “I don’t think you will like that one” and goes on to tell me why. We actually made an offer on a house there last week. It’s only been on the market for a little over a month, the people invested a lot of $$ updating it and it looks amazing but it’s only about 80% of what we want. It’s about 3 minutes from Chad, which counts for a whole lot. But, I loved it so Vince made an offer. The counter was only down a bit off the asking price. Vince told our realtor that we’re just too far apart to keep going so we rejected their counter and we’re back to Square One. Vince knew I was a little upset but after we signed our offer and emailed it back, I kept thinking . . I REALLY want that house and then I’d think . . I hope it doesn’t get accepted. I would have been happy with it but there was enough that I didn’t like (the basement wasn’t really a basement and it wasn’t walkout) that I wasn’t terribly upset that we didn’t get it . . more upset that I want to spend Christmas there and if we don’t find something soon, it isn’t going to happen.

Vince was telling me “don’t be upset . . we’ll find something.” I said “I’m really not upset. I’m just thankful that you agreed to buy a little house there.” Vince said “I don’t know why you’re surprised. I told you I’d do it.” I said “Well . . just this time last year when I was wanting to buy a house there, you said “I’ll never own a house in Nevada. I don’t care if they’re GIVING them away!” That would kinda lead one to believe he wasn’t going to buy a house there!

But, at the same time, we’re dealing with a realtor in AR. We’ve gone through several realtors there. The one we’re currently dealing with is very nice, and very agreeable but they’re just so not in a hurry, not in a rush, slow talking; slow moving. I say “We have to have a walkout basement.” She sends us pictures of a house with a guest house with a shop with 10 acres . . no basement and $120k over what we said was our max to spend.

The icing on the cake — there was a house we had looked at online for a month or so. There’s a bathroom right off the main floor family room. Literally, you have one foot in the bathroom — one foot in the family room. The master bedroom and a second bedroom – right off the family room. In fact, if you’re in the second bedroom, you walk through the family room to get to the bathroom, so I had ruled that one out. Then I started looking at it again, out of desperation, and that’s never good. I said “We could make a hallway, close in that back half of the living room and use it for storage and to block the bedrooms from having to walk through the living room. The family room is about 38′ long so even doing what I was talking about doing, the family room would still be 18′ long, which is plenty long enough. So, the realtor went out yesterday to facetime and walk us through it. OMG. That house is even worse than I thought. First, it says it has 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms. The third bedroom is in the basement but they had just started closing off one end of the basement to make that a bedroom. No windows. No air conditioning or heating vents in there. Whatever happened, the house is now empty and that room is “almost” finished but still . . there’s no window or a/c vent in there. Not a bedroom! We only saw two a/c/heating vents in the 1,300 square foot basement and maybe one return air vent but I think it wasn’t even a return air vent. We kinda figured that was the case so we had talked about putting a mini split in the basement family room (which would probably be the sewing room) and the bedroom down there but that’s when we thought it was a real bedroom.

And, the septic tank permit was for a two bedroom house, which they’re advertising as a 3 bedroom house. In an older listing I found online, it said the house has a whole house generator, and most houses there do. It doesn’t! It’s a portable generator with a big cord hanging down from the house to plug into it. There wouldn’t be much you could run off that little thing. Why say it has a whole house generator when it doesn’t? The current listing doesn’t mention whole house generator so either (1) they sold that generator or (2) the current listing agent said that is not a whole house generator or . . it could be any number of things. With that house . . who knows?

Vince was pretty ticked. He wanted to call the broker (not with our agent’s firm) and tell him what he thought. I told him . . they don’t care . . don’t waste your time. Vince was apologizing to our agent for wasting her time and he told her . . if the listing info had been accurate, we would never have asked you to go out there. I guess someone will eventually come along that likes the house . . it’s been on the market for quite a while with several big reductions in price. I see why!

So . . no house in Nevada; no house in AR. Just a heck of a lot of time spent looking online for a house and a heck of a lot of time communicating with realtors!