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Wow, these are all great. I feel so much better about house hunting!
So far, this one wins hands down. The "drug addled wackadoodle fruit loop" description had me LMAO. I was scared for you just reading about him. The fact that you proceeded with the deal tells me the price must have been worth it. You are a much stronger person than I!
Quote:
Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke
House buying horror stories?
I bought a house from a drug addled wackadoodle fruit loop. All the neighbors were terrified of him. He owed years worth of HOA fees and the HOA said they would forgive all the past due fees if I would just buy the house and get him out.
Halfway through the sale, it was discovered that he'd put his minor child on the title so it had to go to court to get permission to sell the property.
When it closed escrow, he made no effort to move out. He said he had no way to transport his stuff so he couldn't move. His agent and my agent were terrified of him and afraid to go tell him he had to get out.
I went up and got him to sign a receipt that said he had to get out and anything left in the house on Monday belonged to me. He took off and left everything, including a sink full of dirty dishes covered in vomit, 6 layers of filthy carpet, light fixtures wrapped in aluminum fojl, and extra layers of drywall nailed to the bedroom walls.
I agree with Avalon on the whole NEVER hire an inspector a realtor recommends. With a different home we owned we knew of some issues when we bought the house...( And we bought the house anyway... ) They were minor things but still we expected they to be brought to our attention and the building inspector that the buyers realtor hired caught NONE of the red flags. The buyers realtor was there at the inspection too and she wrote him a check and he was in and out in maybe an hour if that long. After we experienced that we decided we would be finding our own inspectors from then on...
I agree with this also. Our agent was a lovely and patient person who showed us 36 houses and wrote 6 contracts before we found our house, but she was completely out of her depth showing houses in our area, which was 35 miles outside of her usual area. She got the name of the inspector from the selling agent. She also relayed to us the sad story the selling agent told her about the owners of the house we purchased. The 8 year old son the couple conceived and gave birth to as a bone marrow donor for their 15 year old who had leukemia, was diagnosed with leukemia himself. Sadly, the 15 year old ultimately died, and the family met our inspector at a grief counseling class; the inspector had also lost a son to cancer. I found this out 15 minutes into the inspection. I should have stopped it there, or even after the inspector teared up while telling the story. Not that I wasn't sympathetic, but there was too much conflict of interest. I'm inclined to think the inspector gave the owners a break by not reporting the exterior drainage issues or the inadequate electrical panel that was partially melted, both of which were expensive fixes when we owned the house. Yes, I'll pick a random inspector out of the phone book or flip a coin before taking a realtor's recommendation again.
Last edited by FairMindedLL; 03-30-2016 at 12:27 PM..
Oregonwoodsmoke for the win! No way anything tops this.
Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke House buying horror stories?
I bought a house from a drug addled wackadoodle fruit loop. All the neighbors were terrified of him. He owed years worth of HOA fees and the HOA said they would forgive all the past due fees if I would just buy the house and get him out.
Halfway through the sale, it was discovered that he'd put his minor child on the title so it had to go to court to get permission to sell the property.
When it closed escrow, he made no effort to move out. He said he had no way to transport his stuff so he couldn't move. His agent and my agent were terrified of him and afraid to go tell him he had to get out.
I went up and got him to sign a receipt that said he had to get out and anything left in the house on Monday belonged to me. He took off and left everything, including a sink full of dirty dishes covered in vomit, 6 layers of filthy carpet, light fixtures wrapped in aluminum fojl, and extra layers of drywall nailed to the bedroom walls.
We bought a foreclosure--while I wouldn't call it a "horror story," it had its challenges. We definitely didn't pay foreclosure price for it, though, which is why it was kind of annoying to have to deal with this stuff.
--We offered over asking the day the house was listed. We had been looking for a few months and inventory was low--we liked it and had been outbid before, so decided to jump on it. The owning bank accepted immediately. Great! Except they only accepted verbally. It took them THREE FULL WEEKS to actually sign our offer due to the bureaucracy of it all. We only got it signed because we told our agent if they didn't have it signed by 5 pm at the end of the week, we were backing out. And we were serious. At that point, our lease was coming up and we needed to get the inspection/mortgage process going or move on. That ultimatum finally got the darn offer signed.
--Someone came in and stole the new oven and dishwasher while we were under contract. In the end this worked out for us because the bank replaced both and replaced two old sliding doors with brand new french doors--they were broken and had allowed the access in the first place. It delayed closing, though, as the new appliances weren't delivered on time and we refused to close without them in place.
We went to look at a house in Florida that was a DEA-seized house. Remember that....DEA.
The interior was bad enough. Every room was papered with extremely gaudy metallic wallpaper, including the ceilings. Every room was different. Floors in the entire house were very high-quality expensive patterned tile, except for a 4x6' rectangle in the middle of each room that was carpeting. Why? Who knows. The point is that it would have been extremely difficult to match the tile to fill in where the carpeting was.
Here comes the best part. There was a HUGE screened/glassed in porch that had been added to the back of the house. Gigantic. Shutters had been added to the windows, closing them off. It had a dirt floor, which had been recently plowed up. There were six large ornate crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, along with a dozen or so grow lights and an elaborate sprinkler system. The realtor's explanation for this was that the previous owners were South American and "South Americans love horticulture and growing their own vegetables." Uh-huh. Vegetables.
I bought a house from a drug addled wackadoodle fruit loop. All the neighbors were terrified of him. He owed years worth of HOA fees and the HOA said they would forgive all the past due fees if I would just buy the house and get him out.
Halfway through the sale, it was discovered that he'd put his minor child on the title so it had to go to court to get permission to sell the property.
When it closed escrow, he made no effort to move out. He said he had no way to transport his stuff so he couldn't move. His agent and my agent were terrified of him and afraid to go tell him he had to get out.
I went up and got him to sign a receipt that said he had to get out and anything left in the house on Monday belonged to me. He took off and left everything, including a sink full of dirty dishes covered in vomit, 6 layers of filthy carpet, light fixtures wrapped in aluminum fojl, and extra layers of drywall nailed to the bedroom walls.
So this terrifying slob lived in an HOA? Considering the stated condition of the inside of his house I doubt the outside was much better......so much for the protecting property value argument.
We went to look at a house in Florida that was a DEA-seized house. Remember that....DEA.
The interior was bad enough. Every room was papered with extremely gaudy metallic wallpaper, including the ceilings. Every room was different. Floors in the entire house were very high-quality expensive patterned tile, except for a 4x6' rectangle in the middle of each room that was carpeting. Why? Who knows. The point is that it would have been extremely difficult to match the tile to fill in where the carpeting was.
Here comes the best part. There was a HUGE screened/glassed in porch that had been added to the back of the house. Gigantic. Shutters had been added to the windows, closing them off. It had a dirt floor, which had been recently plowed up. There were six large ornate crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, along with a dozen or so grow lights and an elaborate sprinkler system. The realtor's explanation for this was that the previous owners were South American and "South Americans love horticulture and growing their own vegetables." Uh-huh. Vegetables.
We passed on it.
Did you look under the carpet pieces to see what was there?
I had a house under contract to purchase. I was using a USDA loan so it had to pass basic inspection.
I was also selling my current house and had it under contract as well. I was planning on closing both the same day. My buyer had to move up closing due to a job change that she knew was coming. Fine, I just rented back from her while I waited on my closing.
The windows on the house I was purchasing did not pass inspection. Seller agreeed to fix. My loan was funded. All that I was waiting on was the seller to fix the windows. He stalled. And stalled. My contract expires. He refuses to renew. Turns out he had a higher offer and it was a conventional loan - he did not need to fix the windows. He went under contract with them.
So, I was out all the money for that house. I had to move out of the house I sold - I couldn't extend the rental agreement. I was homeless.
I sued and the seller convinced the judge to go to mediation at $200 an hour. At that point I cut my losses. Karma will get him.
End of story - I ended up finding a better house a few weeks later. The seller did not evern counter my offer. I ended up with a better deal.
I don't really have any house hunting horror stories per se... but when we were looking we saw this charming older colonial in the MLS book.. It was just what we were looking for and the price was reasonable, so we made an appointment to see it.
The house was perfect..... except for the next door neighbor. The first thing you couldn't help noticing when we pulled up was all the day glo orange KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING signs he had posted all over his property. His front yard was a mess of beer can's and junk. He had a tree in his front yard with a sofa in it that he obviously hung out in because it was covered in empty beer cans, multiple signs on his property about gun ownership and 2nd. amendment rights, and a huge sign just showing a large black rifle. I was even afraid to look at the house for sale because I had visions of psycho neighbor staring at me with a sniper rifle.
We passed on that house. I often wonder if the owner ever sold it.
Not really a horror story but we went to see another house. The owner was in the process of cooking dinner and had so many kids so we're stepping over Lego's and toy cars trying to see the rooms and the owner looked so stressed. I felt like we were intruding at a bad time, so I apologized and said 'I"m sorry for intruding. I can only imagine how you feel' I thought she was going to bite my head off. She said "You have no idea how I feel'..
We passed on that house too.
Both these happened years ago when you looked at MLS books and not online, and 99% of the time the owners were home when you went to see their houses.
I have had a couple of bad experiences. The worst one, was when we sold a house years ago. We put it up for sale at the peak of the market. Our realtor was nice enough and seemed eager to get our place sold. She was pregnant and I did have some concerns on the what if's if she went into labor during our deal but before I could even express concern she said the broker would assist if anything should happen early. Ok great. We had our pre approval all set for the house we would buy when we found it. She told us that she didnt think we were getting a good enough rate and suggested that we use a guy she works with (first mistake). My husband and I met with him and he did offer us a much better rate, less down which increased our buying power. To add to this, a co-worker actually used him as well and sung praises so we thought well, why not?
We get a buyer for our home fairly quickly. Our realtor didn't seem to be giving me listings that I wanted. Red flag I ignored. Her research was horrible. I actually found the house on my own using realtor.com. An estate sale 10k below our budget that we really liked. It fit all the criteria that we were looking for. Plus with all this extra money we were saving per the mortgage guy, we could fix the house up. Win win. Our offer was excepted and we were on our way. Then odd things started happening.
The mortgage guy would take forever to return our calls. I wanted a same day closing on both properties which we had done before. I was told this was definitely an option, then that started to change. Our closing on the new house would be delayed a week, then two. I finally got the guy to return a call and he sounded odd on the phone. Something didn't seem right. Long story short, our mortgage guy was a recovering alcoholic. He fell off the wagon after 20 yrs and of course during our deal. The realtor knew what was going on but didnt want to say anything to me about it so she was covering for him. Mainly because she was getting very close to her due date and wanted to get paid. She no longer cared if we bought a house, she just wanted to sell ours and be done with it. I know this because we had a bit of a tiff over the phone due to all the inconsistencies and she said, "You hired me to sell your house not buy a house." I flew off the handle then and she back tracked. Of course we hired her for both!
So the mortgage guy totally forgot to submit paperwork on time and that is why the closings kept changing. Then the rates changed, he didnt lock us in. Something else he didnt tell us about. Everyone lied to us and set up the closing on the same day to get us there. When we arrived were told that it would be just the sale of our home. The home purchase would happen later with no date set. I said I wasnt going to become homeless. If I wanted to sell my house and not have anything to move into, I would have planned for that. Lots of screaming took place. Our buyer was livid (can't blame him), his realtor, the broker brought out her lawyer husband and threaten to sue us if we didnt close and my realtor started faking labor pains. It was a circus. They said the mortgage guy promised we would have a closing date soon. I said I wanted specifics and on paper since everyone was so eager to sue. I would sue as well!
Took 6 hours but our mortgage guy was able to put in writing that we would indeed close in the next week. We waited 6 hours for that fax. I bet he was scrambling all over town. The buyer of our house agreed to let us live there rent free for a week. We finally closed on our new house, the terms were wrong, interest rate was higher, money down was higher. So we moved into a house that needed a ton of work and no money to do it. Horrible experience and if I could turn back the hands of time, I would have told them all to go to hell and let them try to sue me which wouldn't of happened because it would have been too much effort. I was so mad at myself that I didn't walk. I wrote a letter to the board of realtors and the broker was investigated. Our buyer's realtor called on our behalf without telling us as he was so disturbed by what had been done to us. Not sure if anything was ever done to the broker. I know the realtor didn't go back, maybe she was fired. She did have the nerve to stop by my house after the baby was born to say hello and offered me some business cards from her new office. I politely told her that she would be the last person on earth I would ever use again. She seemed surprised. That house ended up being bad karma for us. Anything that could go wrong did. We sold it 4 yrs later at a loss because the market started to tank but grateful we were able to get out!
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That house ended up being bad karma for us. Anything that could go wrong did. We sold it 4 yrs later at a loss because the market started to tank but grateful we were able to get out!
