Living in a Busted Home
Dec 31st, 2005 by Alex
When you walk through the house you’re going to buy, you’ll take notice of all sorts of minor problems. Make sure you can live with them, taking into account the possibility that they won’t ever get fixed.
Whether it is the first showing or a walk-through with a home inspector you’re going to see little dings, dents, scratches, and all sorts of little problems. Nothing that would prevent you from closing the sale. Things that make you say “oh that’ll be easy to fix.” A little caulk or drywall patch here and some Liquid Nails over there.
Sure, they are easy to fix. But consider this: if they’re that easy and small enough that the previous owner didn’t fix them, chances are neither will you.
Trust me.
I’ve got a deck that isn’t level. I mean, you can see that it’s not level just by looking at it. I’m almost positive that a can would roll from one end to another if you let it go. I pointed this out to the realtor early on and the owners ended up giving me a credit on the purchase price. Now the credit was more than enough for me to pay a contractor to fix the deck or possibly even build a new one. Do I intend on doing so? No.
That would be a pain in the ass. Getting the quotes to fix it, taking off work to allow the contractor access, or putting through the HOA paperwork in the case of a new deck. All this is not worth the hassle. I rarely use the deck anyways. People who need a place to smoke during parties utilize the deck more than I do, and I live here all the time!
If/when I sell my house, I’ll end up offering the same credit to the next prospective buyer. They’ll turn around and say “oh, that’s no problem at all.” After the purchase… well, you know what will happen.
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