Strange Characters During The House Sale

Photo by Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash

Seven and a half years ago, my Mom and I sold our house. A lot of factors came into effect on why we wanted to sell. I’ll get to that coming up soon but first let’s see how we got the house in the first place.

Ever since moving to Florida back in the early 1980s, we had lived at multiple places, four different apartments and a townhouse, to be exact. We lived on the beach and on the mainland. We didn’t actually live on the beach. We were beach side, across from the beach. With all of the apartments we had constant noise. The walls were paper thin. You could hear everything, and I mean everything, if you get my drift. I may dive into that story one of these days. It was rather embarrassing when you are a little kid.

During my last year of college, someone mentioned to my Mom that she should buy a house. That way, we would be rid of the noise and it would be something we owned. We were skeptical at first. We weren’t too sure about it. But we decided to start looking at the classified ads in the newspaper. Yes folks, they used to put listings for houses in the newspaper.

We found a place that interested us. We contacted the Realtor and he showed us this particular one. He also showed us a few more. One was in the same subdivision. The place we didn’t select had a strange thing happen when we went to look at the place. The Realtor kept ringing the doorbell but no one was coming to the door. There was a car in the driveway. All of the sudden, a guy came to the door naked! But he wasn’t totally naked. Phew! He had a towel on. This place proved not to be the one because it had pink carpeting.

We asked to go back and look at the other one. When we returned, the owners had already come home. But they allowed us to take another look.

A few days later we met with the Realtor who showed us the property. He was located inside a large building which housed multiple offices from a variety of companies. He led us to the conference room which had a bunch of glass surrounding it. Basically, anyone walking by could see who was in the conference room. The outside view was tremendous. You could see out into the large parking lot and over toward the airport.

What we didn’t know until the last second was the Realtor was also representing the seller. As you can probably imagine, this was a conflict of interest. So we were only able to get the house for about $450 below asking. Had we known that before the process started, we could have retained someone else as our Realtor to negotiate better. But having never done this before, we had no idea.

There were a few things wrong with the house when we did the initial walk-through when the sellers were back home. We noticed the garage door opener where it was supposed to be connected to the wall was loose and not connected. The wood piece was dislodged from the stucco wall. As the garage door opened, the long bar that was part of the opener flung off the wall and moved up and down. The seller told us he would fix it. The door coming into the kitchen from the garage was all scratched up. They had a very large dog and he had scratched at it when they were at work. They apparently left him in the garage during the day. We told them that was okay. In hindsight, we should have had them fix it.

The day comes to do all of the paperwork. We find out that the sellers can’t move out for a month and they want to stay because they haven’t signed their paperwork for their “new” place yet.

We agreed to let them stay, if we received a rent payment. Later, they tried to stiff us on the payment but we held firm and they paid. They told us they thought that was part of the paperwork when they sold the house to us. It was not. So they were trying to get out of paying us for staying in our house now. We stood there while they wrote a check.

The house was built in 1988. We moved there in 1994. We sold it in 2015.

Things We Had Replaced or Fixed

As luck would have it, not everything turned out so well.

One day, the refrigerator quit. We thought what are we going to do now? We lost all of our food. The next day we went to a local appliance store.

We told them what we wanted. They showed us a few options. When it came time to buy it and sign the paperwork, we hit a snafu. They wouldn’t be able to get it for one week. And this was not feasible for us. How could we go a whole week with no food? Then, I made the ultimate statement and miraculously I succeeded.

Me: “Well, do you know where else we could get a refrigerator?”

Employee #1: “We have that one for Mr. Dennis.”

Employee #2: “We can give you his because we’re not supposed to install that for a few days.”

Suddenly, they had one for us. It was someone else’s but they ordered another one in time for that guy. They didn’t want to lose the business.

We replaced the water heater. This is a funny story and I wish I could find the photo for this. We didn’t know that you had to measure for it. We just went to Lowe’s and told them we needed a water heater. The guy they sent was given the wrong size pipes. When he installed it, he had to put a bunch of concrete blocks underneath the water heater, so it was high up in the air. We took a photo of it and went back to Lowe’s. They told us that the technician should have never installed it like that. They sent him back out with the proper equipment and re-installed it. The photo was such a hoot, I wish I could find it.

We had a water leak and it destroyed some cabinets. We had to file an insurance claim and they had to remove mold and the lower cabinets. They had to replace the counter tops. The company that fixed everything didn’t do everything on the list they provided us. They still ended up with most of the insurance money though.

The outside air conditioner needed to be replaced.

We were hit by multiple hurricanes and tropical storms one year and had to replace the roof because some of it blew off.

We had to have the house painted on the outside.

We painted the privacy fence that was around the patio. Every few years, we would have to do this. It was a very difficult thing to do because we would always do it during the hot summer months.

Repairs Still Needed

The garage door needed to be replaced as well as the garage door opener. The automatic garage door opener that I referenced above eventually pulled out of the stucco wall again. We tried to fix it ourselves but that didn’t work. The actual door was made of wood and started to crack and a small section came up. We were able to fix it slightly by applying some caulk and pushing it back into place.

The screens needed replacing. One of the screens was damaged when the people who mowed the common areas hit something and it spiraled into the screen. It put a huge hole in it.

The door from the garage into the kitchen needed replacing. This is the door that the dog had scratched before we moved in. Apparently, code changes had occurred and we needed a permit to replace it. The permit cost money we didn’t have. And then, you needed an inspection.

The inside air conditioner needed to be replaced. It was going to be very costly.

Selling

When we decided to sell the house, it was because a lot of that stuff needed to be fixed. And we didn’t have the money to do it. I think when people buy houses, they think everything is going to be easy. I’m here to tell you it isn’t. You don’t think that things will break down. You believe that the previous owners took care of it to the point where you won’t have to make repairs. And old age can cripple things in the house that you don’t expect.

We needed to find a Realtor to help us. I researched online and located someone whose office was close by. They were right down the road. When we started talking about this to our banker, she suggested someone else. She knew a Realtor who was top-notch. She provided us with his business card.

He was going on vacation but he came over before he left. He told us what he was going to do and how everything would go. Once he got back from his vacation, everything moved fast.

Several buyers were interested on day 1. We vacated the property so they could come and look. We ended up going to Wendy’s for some dinner and then going to the library. We just relaxed on some couches at the library and perused through some books.

The next day, we received multiple offers on the house. We took the highest offer.

Usually, when a house goes under contract, Realtors place an “under contract” sign on the house for sale sign. For some reason, he didn’t put one on there. A few days went by and then the below happened.

Strange Characters

Next thing we know, a tall guy with short brown hair is peeking over the fence and looking in through our screened patio. I told my Mom and as we went to the french doors leading out to the patio, he started waving. We went outside and told them that it had been sold already. There were a few people along with their Realtor. Of course, we still had to do the paperwork but in essence, it was sold.

Think that was the only strange thing? Nope. There were two women that approached our front door and opened the screened door. They didn’t ring the doorbell and they didn’t knock. It sounded like they were trying the door. We heard them go onto the south side of the house. We looked out my Mom’s bedroom window and saw them looking or lurking around the air conditioner. We opened the front door and told them, it’s been sold.

Thankfully, that was the end of our surprise guests.

Conclusion

When we bought this house, there were already a few problems. In happenstance, we should have never bought it.

Living within the subdivision were a bunch of characters that need to be talked about. There is no space for them in this post. It would be a much, much, much larger post if I had put them in here. As I started writing this post, I tried putting them into this and found out that I would probably have a 4,000 word post. And I certainly didn’t want that. I will have to put them all together in one post. Some have fewer words than others and some have much longer parts to them. I think you’ll be amazed to hear about some of these and probably wonder how we lasted so long there. I’m wondering that too!

Until next time, happy reading!

-Matt