Our 20 something age daughter is living in the condo that my husband and I own and are selling, "as is". Yesterday she called me up in a panic saying that the doorbell rang early in the morning, while she was asleep. She looked outside and there was "a bunch of people" waiting including a House Inspector. She asked me what to do. I said to get dressed, let them in & I would call our real estate agent.
I finally got a hold of our agent and she did not have a record of them setting a date to do a house inspection and the buyers real estate agent was on vacation and the person helping her with her clients was "clue less".
I finally arrived at our condo and discovered,
two House Inspectors,
two contractors, the buyer, her mother, and
four children. BTW, when I arrived the children were upstairs, roaming the house unsupervised.
Ten people all around our condo, who came without an appointment and my daughter was trying to stay calm and cool.
I arrived when they had been there for an hour. I was livid, but I stayed polite. If we would have known that the House Inspector was coming we would have done the dishes, straightened up and our daughter would have been up and dressed. While the house was not a mess, we realized later that my daughter had left cash laying out on the counter, together with grocery bags, from when she went shopping the previous evening, jewelry & medicine out on her dresser and things like that.
Obviously there was some type of mix-up because everyone acted like we were supposed to know that they were coming. They even had a dog in the car for part of the visit barking & barking (someone must have taken it somewhere else before I arrived). Those ten people stayed for over two hours
My questions are.
1. Is it common or reasonable to have that many people come along with a Housing Inspector?
2. From my view from the couch, I noticed the House Inspector took photographs of every area of chipped paint, stain on the carpet, damaged edging, listed every window crank that did not work, etc. Aren't they looking for structural damage more than cosmetic problems?
3. I overheard him telling the new buyer that there was a lot of lint behind the dryer (which IMHO, is not true). Why in the world would a house inspector care or notice that?
4. He also informed the new buyer & her mother that they basement windows were only single pane and did not have storm windows. They acted like that was shocking and unacceptable news. The House Inspector opened up the dishwasher and commented that some of the "posts" were damaged & the dishwasher was "old" and again the potential buyer acted shocked and amazed. She could have opened up the dishwasher when she had the private showings.
5. What do you think. Are they going to come back and revise their offer because of these cosmetic things that they should have noticed during the private home showings? To my knowledge there are not any structural problems and we did list the damaged walls & carpet & window cranks in the report (plus they were in plain view).
Arrggg!!!!
BY the way. Our appraisal came in "as is" at $162,000. We listed at $157,000 (since that is what recent condos sold for in our complex). Our appraisal was probably higher as we have a three bedroom condo & the others were two bedrooms & we have a new furnace & new air conditioner. We have a signed, accepted offer at $150,000 with them and are scheduled to close in two weeks.
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