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SpecialClassical
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So I mentioned in the other thread that we sold a home and the buyer showed up on the day we moved out, parked himself in our lawn, and watched the move while offering the occasional commentary.  No, they did not have possession of the house yet. 

The second house we sold to a nice family that expected to move in right after closing.  Except our realtor arranged for us to have 24 hours to finish moving after closing. Apparently their realtor didn’t tell them, so they asked us to move out ASAP because they had friends lined up to help them. They begged us not to clean and just move as fast as possible. On our end we weren’t scheduled  with our friends to move that fast, so it was quite stressful. 

With that move we bought a house whose seller refused to leave the house for showings, inspections, etc.  He was in the house while his wife was in the pole barn in an RV with their dogs. Our realtor tried to get him to leave for the second showing, but he said he couldn’t leave his animals. Guess he and his wife never went anywhere together. 🤔  When we took possession of the house we found loads of  stuff left in the pole barns and house. During showings everything was spotless. He was moving out of state, so I guess he left what he didn’t want to move and stopped taking care of the property.  Our realtor felt so bad he paid to  have the junk hauled away.  

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2 minutes ago, happi duck said:

When we bought our house the seller didn't know that the closing was when it became our house.  They had nothing packed and nothing lined up.  They rented from us for a few weeks. 

Wow!  What did you do? 

In our case it was prearranged for us to rent our house back  for several days as we fixed up the foreclosure we bought, so I was pretty mad when he did that and then later that day called to ask when we would be out.  How about when our time was up? 🤦‍♀️  

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31 minutes ago, SpecialClassical said:

Wow!  What did you do? 

In our case it was prearranged for us to rent our house back  for several days as we fixed up the foreclosure we bought, so I was pretty mad when he did that and then later that day called to ask when we would be out.  How about when our time was up? 🤦‍♀️  

Fortunately, we were already crashing with family and they were okay with a few more weeks.

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Not an all that entertaining or dramatic but... We drove our realtor a little nuts. We asked to see this house multiple times. It was honestly a difficult decision to make. There were a lot of cons about the place, and we were trying to sell *ourselves on the pros. And we were very young and nervous.
The realtor eventually just started giving us the lock box key and sending us alone. Probably 3 different times while deciding AND another time or two between the accepted offer and the closing. 😮 
The house was uninhabited, but I still can’t imagine how many rules that broke, especially in a private community.

Also, I knew what offer I wanted to put in, but dh went ahead and offered more. He was shocked that they didn’t counter. There was no room left for them to counter!!! I still want to kill him over it.

Dh handles a lot of negotiations at work. He isn’t allowed to negotiate in our family purchases anymore.

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When I bought this house I saw the list on Zillow for an open house.  I had always said I would not live in a subdivision in this township but a friend and I stopped because we had time between looking at other houses.

We pulled up and there was a garage sale but no for sale or open house sign in the yard so we tentatively walked up to ask.   It was the right house so we went around with the kind elderly owner that had built the house himself.

A few days later I asked for another showing (it was a for sale by owner) and came with a friend and my brother.  As we were looking around the owner offered it to me for $5,000 less than the already very low asking price.

Third showing I came with my realtors (parents of my good friend) and my daughter.  They invited us in, my daughter sat and watched TV with them while we looked around.  Made a written offer right then (as realtor said it was worth $30,000+ more than asking) and the owner started throwing in lawn mowers, trimmers, Christmas tree, etc.  Before I even asked for anything.

Super nice elderly couple that wanted me and my kids to have their home.

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Our very first house we bought (tiny old house with carpet in the kitchen and bathroom) was weird. Apparently the older woman who owned it had been letting her adult son live there. He had addiction issues and I guess she had threatened to sell the house if he got in trouble one more time. So she put the house on the market and we put in an offer right anyway and it was accepted, etc. At closing the woman cried all through the closing. Kept saying she never intended to really sell the house and that she wanted to retire there. She was just threatening her son. It was very awkward.

Our second house we bought from an old couple (in their 80s) who had moved to a nursing home. First, they were outrageously offended at our offer which included them paying some closing costs. It was pretty typical of our market and we were following our realtors suggestions but that made them livid. Then, I cannot even remember the exact reasoning or details but our closing was late in the day and our realtor had arranged for us to begin moving in that morning. So a neighbor calls them and tells them we are already there and that nearly blew up the whole sale. Our realtors were able to salvage it by an agreement for us to pay them rent (our realtor then reimbursed us) but they were so angry we had to be kept apart at the closing and were in separate rooms. I felt awful because there was no anger on our part for the misunderstandings but they really hated us.

 

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Not my story, but a friend's---the night before closing on a new home there was a storm that dumped a bunch of rain in a short amount of time. When they did the walk through they found significant water damage to the ceilings and walls. It was a huge inconvenience as she was expecting soon, but they were so glad that rainstorm wasn't  a day later!

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48 minutes ago, Ottakee said:

When I bought this house I saw the list on Zillow for an open house.  I had always said I would not live in a subdivision in this township but a friend and I stopped because we had time between looking at other houses.

We pulled up and there was a garage sale but no for sale or open house sign in the yard so we tentatively walked up to ask.   It was the right house so we went around with the kind elderly owner that had built the house himself.

A few days later I asked for another showing (it was a for sale by owner) and came with a friend and my brother.  As we were looking around the owner offered it to me for $5,000 less than the already very low asking price.

Third showing I came with my realtors (parents of my good friend) and my daughter.  They invited us in, my daughter sat and watched TV with them while we looked around.  Made a written offer right then (as realtor said it was worth $30,000+ more than asking) and the owner started throwing in lawn mowers, trimmers, Christmas tree, etc.  Before I even asked for anything.

Super nice elderly couple that wanted me and my kids to have their home.

 

How wonderful!

There was a similar story with my friends, returning missionaries from Sudan, who wanted to buy in a particular area.  They were with their realtor but they were walking through the house and the older couple didn't leave the house while they were there.  They looked on the mantle and my friend said, "Hey, are you John's parents?  I see his picture up there, I went to college with him!"  (college had been in another state, so it really was a weird coincidence!)

The older couple were thrilled to lower the price for them and really wanted them in their old house!

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Most of ours have gone smoothly until the house we live in now. 

The previous owner also would never leave the house when we went to look at it... including during our home inspection.  His wife was scheduled for surgery (we didn't know) so they did eventually leave.   I should have realized that he was hiding a lot of problems with the house that the inspector picked up (and some he missed).  He gave me control-freak vibes.  

When we went through the walk-through on closing day we were shocked that *nothing* from the yard had been cleaned up.  I'm talking 3 sail-boat masts, 3 trailers (2 were boat trailers), lots of wood and lumber, lots of junk & insulation bats left over from a small metal shed that had been removed (it was full to the brim with junk).  Four large metal tripod things that you put boats on to clean the bottom.  I can't even remember what else.

My realtor explained that it was customary to ask the sellers to put good-faith money in escrow until the stuff was cleared up.  We decided on $1000 and went to closing.  

OMG - you'd a thought we'd ask for his first-born child.  The 2 realtors and they were gone a long time to discuss this.  Apparently, he was screaming and yelling at MY realtor for her gall to ask them to clean up their crap.    They were so angry they wouldn't even sign the papers in the same room with us.  If I'd known how badly they'd treated my realtor I would have walked from the deal.  She told me later.    They did give their realtor $600 to pay for removal (it cost more because one trailer was infested with wasps).    I've since found, buried in the brush we've cleared out, more masts, motors, approx 50 feet of heavy chain, winces, drywall,  metal rigging for sailboats,15 rusted saw blades, lots of empty caulk tubes.   We realize now that he used his back-yard as a dump.

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We pretty much just have drug stories from CA.

Our first house purchase was actually an awesome house.  It was in the foothills of Altadena and backed to the mountains in the back and the LA washbasin was on the side and it was the end of a cul-de-sac, so very few neighbors around.  

We arrived for the showing with our realtor and the lady finally came to the door after about 10 minutes and peeked her head out and said, "Go away!"  and slammed the door.   

My realtor knocked again, and the lady yelled through the door, "What do you want?"  We spent another 10 min. explaining who we were and what we were doing.  She didn't want to let us in, but finally did.

They had HUGE windows in the living room all covered with heavy blankets, one light hanging from wires in the room, otherwise very dark......and it was a huge mess.

Turns out, there were like 10 people living in the house, one of the men was dealing drugs out of the house.  The grandmother, who owned the house, had died, and her kids and grandkids were like vultures living in there for free.

When they moved out, they left half their stuff.  We found horrible stuff.....drug paraphernalia, a used condom in a drawer, etc......and then for years we had random people showing up at 2am honking their horns or coming to bang on the door asking for whoever it was that sold them the drugs.  And we got mail from prison, a delinquent child support subpoena, and a confirmation of a lab report for genital warts.  

We bought the house.   The neighbors all brought us muffins and thanked us for moving in!  It was NOT a drug type area at all.

The front bedroom had a closet as you first walked in and they had built a door in the hallway outside the bedroom to go in, so the closet had a door to it in the bedroom and one in the hallway, that is where they dealt the drugs out of.  The kids loved going in and out of there when they were little.

We fixed it up and sold it and made a profit.  

The story of the man who bought it is a story I have shared before, but that is for another thread.

Edited by DawnM
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A few houses ago, and at the height of crazy prices in an incredibly hot Northern VA market....

Our buyers had a letter from Chase bank saying that they were approved to buy our house regardless of whether or not they sold their current home.  So closing comes around and we were not there (common practice in the area for only your realtor to go to closing if you were the seller).  Our realtor turns the keys over to the closing agent and leaves to go to another closing.  Well something happened to the buyer's buyer's closing and they didn't close on the sale of their house.  Chase refused to honor the loan without our buyers home selling.  But they already, for reasons never explained to us, had been given our keys.  And they moved in.  Oh you should have heard me lose my **** when the realtor called to tell us (on closing day Thursday) that gee, sorry, closing will now have to be Monday but your buyers are in the process of moving in.  She messed up big time turning the keys over before the sale was actually funded.  And of course we were buying a home the following day and needed the $100k profit we were getting in order to put money down on the new house.  Luckily my parents were able to loan us $100k so we could actually close on our new home.  But for 5 days all that I could think of was how big a jerk the buyers had to be to move into a house they didn't pay for.  Would they trash it?  What guarantee did we have that we would actually close Monday?  I was so stressed out about being able to pay my parents back on time.  We learned our lesson - always add a few days buffer between houses in case something like this ever happened again.

Another horror story (again in Northern VA).  Our realtor did an open house at our home and a woman who came through claimed (no one saw or heard a thing) that she tripped on a 6" step from our living room to the deck.  Within 24 hours we had a letter from an attorney explaining how we owed her some ridiculous 6 figure amount because the fall aggrevated her carpal tunnel syndrome and she would be unable to work for a year.  We freaked out.  Our realtor (who ran the open house) pretty much said "not my problem".  I had a friend who was a police officer and she was able to look up in some data base that this woman was a serial insurance scam artist.  We called our homeowners insurance (USAA) and they told us not to worry.  They took care of the entire thing and we never heard another word about it and our rates never went up.  

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8 hours ago, Seasider too said:

We once bought a house with the clause written into the contract that we have access one week prior to closing to get some painting done. This was a very reasonable request in lieu of the seller not reducing the price further (which they would have needed to do for any other buyer to get the market value where it should be to make a sale).

There were friends of the sellers living in the house (for free!) after a relocation of their own, and despite being informed of the date to be out, they Would Not Leave. They’d been in the house for over a year, and the house had been on the market a long time. I guess we should have expected a problem, because they got a little testy when we called for a third showing because it “inconvenienced” them (the FREE boarders🙄). The seller finally had to help them move their stuff and was carrying out the last of it when we arrived at the house after closing.

 It was quite a drama, the sellers were obviously distraught so we didn’t threaten with breech of contract or anything, though we could have. I just couldn’t get over the nerve of the freeloaders who were living there at the kindness of the sellers. Obviously it severed that friendship. 

That's nuts!  I'm continually amazed at how entitled people are.

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2 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:

Not an all that entertaining or dramatic but... We drove our realtor a little nuts. We asked to see this house multiple times. It was honestly a difficult decision to make. There were a lot of cons about the place, and we were trying to sell *ourselves on the pros. And we were very young and nervous.
The realtor eventually just started giving us the lock box key and sending us alone. Probably 3 different times while deciding AND another time or two between the accepted offer and the closing. 😮 
The house was uninhabited, but I still can’t imagine how many rules that broke, especially in a private community.

Also, I knew what offer I wanted to put in, but dh went ahead and offered more. He was shocked that they didn’t counter. There was no room left for them to counter!!! I still want to kill him over it.

Dh handles a lot of negotiations at work. He isn’t allowed to negotiate in our family purchases anymore.

I love that your realtor trusted you, and I always thought it was crazy that you are supposed to make such a large purchase after one or two short walk-throughs!

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2 hours ago, Ottakee said:

When I bought this house I saw the list on Zillow for an open house.  I had always said I would not live in a subdivision in this township but a friend and I stopped because we had time between looking at other houses.

We pulled up and there was a garage sale but no for sale or open house sign in the yard so we tentatively walked up to ask.   It was the right house so we went around with the kind elderly owner that had built the house himself.

A few days later I asked for another showing (it was a for sale by owner) and came with a friend and my brother.  As we were looking around the owner offered it to me for $5,000 less than the already very low asking price.

Third showing I came with my realtors (parents of my good friend) and my daughter.  They invited us in, my daughter sat and watched TV with them while we looked around.  Made a written offer right then (as realtor said it was worth $30,000+ more than asking) and the owner started throwing in lawn mowers, trimmers, Christmas tree, etc.  Before I even asked for anything.

Super nice elderly couple that wanted me and my kids to have their home.

This is awesome.  I'm so glad you had this blessing.

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1 hour ago, teachermom2834 said:

Our very first house we bought (tiny old house with carpet in the kitchen and bathroom) was weird. Apparently the older woman who owned it had been letting her adult son live there. He had addiction issues and I guess she had threatened to sell the house if he got in trouble one more time. So she put the house on the market and we put in an offer right anyway and it was accepted, etc. At closing the woman cried all through the closing. Kept saying she never intended to really sell the house and that she wanted to retire there. She was just threatening her son. It was very awkward.

Our second house we bought from an old couple (in their 80s) who had moved to a nursing home. First, they were outrageously offended at our offer which included them paying some closing costs. It was pretty typical of our market and we were following our realtors suggestions but that made them livid. Then, I cannot even remember the exact reasoning or details but our closing was late in the day and our realtor had arranged for us to begin moving in that morning. So a neighbor calls them and tells them we are already there and that nearly blew up the whole sale. Our realtors were able to salvage it by an agreement for us to pay them rent (our realtor then reimbursed us) but they were so angry we had to be kept apart at the closing and were in separate rooms. I felt awful because there was no anger on our part for the misunderstandings but they really hated us.

 

What is it with sellers getting so mad?  They agreed to the sale.  Your first story is so sad, and so uncomfortable for you.  Wow

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1 hour ago, Pippen said:

Not my story, but a friend's---the night before closing on a new home there was a storm that dumped a bunch of rain in a short amount of time. When they did the walk through they found significant water damage to the ceilings and walls. It was a huge inconvenience as she was expecting soon, but they were so glad that rainstorm wasn't  a day later!

Wow!

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There was a little bit of weirdness when we bought the piece of land where we now live. There was no house yet, just a vacant piece of land out in the country. The sellers left a rusty old riding mower, a real piece of junk, and we were planning to get rid of it. In the meantime, every time we came out to the land, we could see that someone had mowed the grass - but not in a coherent fashion, just random patches and zig zags. It looked like whoever did it had been drunk. Well, sure enough, we found out that the male half of the couple we bought from was an alcoholic who was apparently confused about the whole transaction and thought he could still come out here to mow (no idea where his wife was while this was happening). Our realtor called the sellers and told them to please stop and to take the mower if they wanted it. That put a stop to the mystery mowings, and the mower disappeared shortly afterwards, too.

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1 hour ago, PrincessMommy said:

Most of ours have gone smoothly until the house we live in now. 

The previous owner also would never leave the house when we went to look at it... including during our home inspection.  His wife was scheduled for surgery (we didn't know) so they did eventually leave.   I should have realized that he was hiding a lot of problems with the house that the inspector picked up (and some he missed).  He gave me control-freak vibes.  

When we went through the walk-through on closing day we were shocked that *nothing* from the yard had been cleaned up.  I'm talking 3 sail-boat masts, 3 trailers (2 were boat trailers), lots of wood and lumber, lots of junk & insulation bats left over from a small metal shed that had been removed (it was full to the brim with junk).  Four large metal tripod things that you put boats on to clean the bottom.  I can't even remember what else.

My realtor explained that it was customary to ask the sellers to put good-faith money in escrow until the stuff was cleared up.  We decided on $1000 and went to closing.  

OMG - you'd a thought we'd ask for his first-born child.  The 2 realtors and they were gone a long time to discuss this.  Apparently, he was screaming and yelling at MY realtor for her gall to ask them to clean up their crap.    They were so angry they wouldn't even sign the papers in the same room with us.  If I'd known how badly they'd treated my realtor I would have walked from the deal.  She told me later.    They did give their realtor $600 to pay for removal (it cost more because one trailer was infested with wasps).    I've since found, buried in the brush we've cleared out, more masts, motors, approx 50 feet of heavy chain, winces, drywall,  metal rigging for sailboats,15 rusted saw blades, lots of empty caulk tubes.   We realize now that he used his back-yard as a dump.

Unbelievable.  It sounds like our sellers are twins! That is an incredible amount of junk to leave behind. 15 rusted saw blades? 

 I love this house, but it also has lots of problems that were hidden and mostly things he did himself.  When we went through the house we loved the walk in shower in one bath, but the light and fan switch were on the shower wall, so we asked for that to be brought to code.  He bought an ugly exterior weather proof box and put it over the switches....in the upgraded bath his wife had carefully designed. 🙄

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4 minutes ago, Selkie said:

There was a little bit of weirdness when we bought the piece of land where we now live. There was no house yet, just a vacant piece of land out in the country. The sellers left a rusty old riding mower, a real piece of junk, and we were planning to get rid of it. In the meantime, every time we came out to the land, we could see that someone had mowed the grass - but not in a coherent fashion, just random patches and zig zags. It looked like whoever did it had been drunk. Well, sure enough, we found out that the male half of the couple we bought from was an alcoholic who was apparently confused about the whole transaction and thought he could still come out here to mow (no idea where his wife was while this was happening). Our realtor called the sellers and told them to please stop and to take the mower if they wanted it. That put a stop to the mystery mowings, and the mower disappeared shortly afterwards, too.

Interesting that he was that motivated to mow, but just a little. 

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We were selling a house my deceased uncle owned. He had been renting it out, and there were all kinds of issues with the people and the lease. We finally got them out on the brink of evicting them and put the house on the market. We knew it was a hot market and expected that it would be bought as a tear-down, so we just cleaned it up and scheduled an open house.

When the realtor got there, she opened all of the curtains and went around. However, someone showed up early, and she did not check the backyard. Then someone showed up who wanted to see the backyard. And there was the husband of the previous renters, feeding all of the cats in the neighborhood on the back porch. The realtor tried to get him to leave, but he has Alzheimer's and was very confused as to why he shouldn't be in the backyard. The realtor called my estate co-administrator, and she came as well to keep people away from the back yard while they tried to reach the wife of the previous renter. Finally the wife showed up and convinced her husband to leave with her after they threatened to call the police for trespassing. He was in the backyard though for most of the open house with the cats.

Thankfully we got multiple offers and sold the house. I've always wondered if he ever showed up again there. The new owners did indeed tear down the house and put up a new one.

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When doing the walk through before closing on our previous home, the sellers were still moving out and not nearly finished (closing was in an hour). They broke a window moving a gun cabinet while we were walking though. They showed up two hours late to closing and when we went back to the house after closing, it was filthy...disgustingly filthy...not "broom clean" as it was supposed to be. It took us three days of cleaning until we were able to move our stuff in. They left a couple things like a boat chained to a tree and a trampoline. He came back for the boat the next day and tried to take the trampoline six months later, at which point my husband told him no. (They also left an entire, very stocked cabinet of liquor...which would have been great if I drank at all.)

When we purchased our current home, my husband did not even see the home in person until the walk through before closing. We were moving from NJ to NC and dd and I were in the town and walked through a few homes about eight months before our home sold. When it did this house was still available. Dh is very handy and would normally have done the inspection himself but with such a long move, it was less expensive to pay an inspector. Luckily he loved the house once we bought it and there was nothing horrible wrong with it.

 

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11 hours ago, happi duck said:

When we bought our house the seller didn't know that the closing was when it became our house.  They had nothing packed and nothing lined up.  They rented from us for a few weeks. 

We had a buyer who was selling her house to buy ours. Our closings were back to back, and her sale (and subsequently, our sale) almost fell through because she hadn't packed anything. She thought she had a month from closing to downsize from her 5 bedroom house to a single wide mobile home. 

I bought that single wide from an old lady who was being relocated to assisted living by her kids. Somehow she found out I was engaged and who I was engaged to. During the closing, she commented that she hated my fiance's family (they had all gone to the same church - I'm assuming that's how she knew who I was marrying). "Those [Last Names] think they're so above the rest of us. They look at us like we're just under their feet." Later, my MIL talked to me about her; MIL thought of the owner as a friend (talk about an awkward feeling!). Then, she followed me back to the house after closing, and she drove up and parked in the driveway. She said she had decided that since I was young, she would show me around the new house. My entire family was waiting there with cleaning & remodeling supplies (another seriously awkward moment). She wouldn't leave for about 2 or 3 hours, no matter how much we tried politely to steer her away. 

My parents bought a fixer-upper house one time that had dead washing machines lining the driveway and had 5 dogs in the house. They did a final walk-through, and the realtor looked at them and flat-out told them that they didn't have to go through with it. He said, "Just walk away. You don't want to do this." They ended up buying it, and when we pulled up to our new house, the next door neighbor came running out and immediately threw her arms around my mom, and cried, "Thank you for buying this!" 

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5 hours ago, happysmileylady said:

I don’t know if this fits the theme of the thread or not but selling our house was awful.  We had to move before it was ready to sell so DH was driving back to mow regularly.  Once it was ready we set up with a realtor who had plenty of great reviews.....who then did nothing.   I think we had like 3 showings in 6 months.  In our neighborhood most homes were selling within a week or two so I don’t know if she expected it to just sell itself or what.  

Then a couple days after the first of the year I get a text in the middle of the night from our neighbor that the garage door was going up and down.  We call the police to go check it out and when they got there the garage door was closed but they heard noise.  So, front door of course locked and gate to the back yard locked, they broke the gate and found the back sliding door unlocked.  No one was inside but it was *raining* in the house.   

The thermostat had quit working so the heat didn’t kick on and a pipe had frozen and burst upstairs.  The entire upstairs had flooded with an inch of water, and it was coming downstairs through the walls and ceilings and light fixtures.  When we called my parents to go check it out my dad said “oh honey, it’s *really* bad, you might have to walk away from this. “

Thankfully the insurance did cover it, it was well over $20k worth of damage, over 6 months of reconstruction, drama over getting the actual checks to the contractor cut, contractor threatening to sue us, etc etc etc.  

And the. We got a different realtor, much better and still took 6 months to sell.  We had plenty of showings, but people would leave weird feedback like “no back yard” when there was very clearly a large fenced in back yard.  Dang near the entire downstairs was new-walls, light fixtures, all the flooring upstairs and down etc etc.  And we ended up short selling it, which took another two months to close because the buyer switched lenders in the middle of it. 

And that short sale almost prevented us from renting this house but thankfully we had a letter of recommendation from our previous landlord.  

I was the executor for my mom's estate and being out of state during winter, pipes freezing were a huge concern. At one point we had an emergency delivery of furnace oil late at night because it had run out during that bad cold spell last winter. We took a lower offer just to get out of the risk.

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7 hours ago, DawnM said:

We pretty much just have drug stories from CA.

Our first house purchase was actually an awesome house.  It was in the foothills of Altadena and backed to the mountains in the back and the LA washbasin was on the side and it was the end of a cul-de-sac, so very few neighbors around.  

We arrived for the showing with our realtor and the lady finally came to the door after about 10 minutes and peeked her head out and said, "Go away!"  and slammed the door.   

My realtor knocked again, and the lady yelled through the door, "What do you want?"  We spent another 10 min. explaining who we were and what we were doing.  She didn't want to let us in, but finally did.

They had HUGE windows in the living room all covered with heavy blankets, one light hanging from wires in the room, otherwise very dark......and it was a huge mess.

Turns out, there were like 10 people living in the house, one of the men was dealing drugs out of the house.  The grandmother, who owned the house, had died, and her kids and grandkids were like vultures living in there for free.

When they moved out, they left half their stuff.  We found horrible stuff.....drug paraphernalia, a used condom in a drawer, etc......and then for years we had random people showing up at 2am honking their horns or coming to bang on the door asking for whoever it was that sold them the drugs.  And we got mail from prison, a delinquent child support subpoena, and a confirmation of a lab report for genital warts.  

We bought the house.   The neighbors all brought us muffins and thanked us for moving in!  It was NOT a drug type area at all.

The front bedroom had a closet as you first walked in and they had built a door in the hallway outside the bedroom to go in, so the closet had a door to it in the bedroom and one in the hallway, that is where they dealt the drugs out of.  The kids loved going in and out of there when they were little.

We fixed it up and sold it and made a profit.  

The story of the man who bought it is a story I have shared before, but that is for another thread.

OH. MY. WORD.  

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Oh...and upthtead I mentioned the owner who sold the house to teach her son with addiction a lesson. Two or three years later that guy knocked on my door and gave me a long speech about his problems and getting his life together and making amends. I don’t know anything about recovery programs but never figured out why he had to come speak with me.  

That guy showed up at the house a couple more times looking for items left behind. He was always polite but I sure felt bad being in the middle of that situation. 

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5 hours ago, happysmileylady said:

I don’t know if this fits the theme of the thread or not but selling our house was awful.  We had to move before it was ready to sell so DH was driving back to mow regularly.  Once it was ready we set up with a realtor who had plenty of great reviews.....who then did nothing.   I think we had like 3 showings in 6 months.  In our neighborhood most homes were selling within a week or two so I don’t know if she expected it to just sell itself or what.  

Then a couple days after the first of the year I get a text in the middle of the night from our neighbor that the garage door was going up and down.  We call the police to go check it out and when they got there the garage door was closed but they heard noise.  So, front door of course locked and gate to the back yard locked, they broke the gate and found the back sliding door unlocked.  No one was inside but it was *raining* in the house.   

The thermostat had quit working so the heat didn’t kick on and a pipe had frozen and burst upstairs.  The entire upstairs had flooded with an inch of water, and it was coming downstairs through the walls and ceilings and light fixtures.  When we called my parents to go check it out my dad said “oh honey, it’s *really* bad, you might have to walk away from this. “

Thankfully the insurance did cover it, it was well over $20k worth of damage, over 6 months of reconstruction, drama over getting the actual checks to the contractor cut, contractor threatening to sue us, etc etc etc.  

And the. We got a different realtor, much better and still took 6 months to sell.  We had plenty of showings, but people would leave weird feedback like “no back yard” when there was very clearly a large fenced in back yard.  Dang near the entire downstairs was new-walls, light fixtures, all the flooring upstairs and down etc etc.  And we ended up short selling it, which took another two months to close because the buyer switched lenders in the middle of it. 

And that short sale almost prevented us from renting this house but thankfully we had a letter of recommendation from our previous landlord.  

What a nightmare. 

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5 hours ago, G5052 said:

We were selling a house my deceased uncle owned. He had been renting it out, and there were all kinds of issues with the people and the lease. We finally got them out on the brink of evicting them and put the house on the market. We knew it was a hot market and expected that it would be bought as a tear-down, so we just cleaned it up and scheduled an open house.

When the realtor got there, she opened all of the curtains and went around. However, someone showed up early, and she did not check the backyard. Then someone showed up who wanted to see the backyard. And there was the husband of the previous renters, feeding all of the cats in the neighborhood on the back porch. The realtor tried to get him to leave, but he has Alzheimer's and was very confused as to why he shouldn't be in the backyard. The realtor called my estate co-administrator, and she came as well to keep people away from the back yard while they tried to reach the wife of the previous renter. Finally the wife showed up and convinced her husband to leave with her after they threatened to call the police for trespassing. He was in the backyard though for most of the open house with the cats.

Thankfully we got multiple offers and sold the house. I've always wondered if he ever showed up again there. The new owners did indeed tear down the house and put up a new one.

Odd and sad

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3 hours ago, beckyjo said:

We had a buyer who was selling her house to buy ours. Our closings were back to back, and her sale (and subsequently, our sale) almost fell through because she hadn't packed anything. She thought she had a month from closing to downsize from her 5 bedroom house to a single wide mobile home. 

I bought that single wide from an old lady who was being relocated to assisted living by her kids. Somehow she found out I was engaged and who I was engaged to. During the closing, she commented that she hated my fiance's family (they had all gone to the same church - I'm assuming that's how she knew who I was marrying). "Those [Last Names] think they're so above the rest of us. They look at us like we're just under their feet." Later, my MIL talked to me about her; MIL thought of the owner as a friend (talk about an awkward feeling!). Then, she followed me back to the house after closing, and she drove up and parked in the driveway. She said she had decided that since I was young, she would show me around the new house. My entire family was waiting there with cleaning & remodeling supplies (another seriously awkward moment). She wouldn't leave for about 2 or 3 hours, no matter how much we tried politely to steer her away. 

My parents bought a fixer-upper house one time that had dead washing machines lining the driveway and had 5 dogs in the house. They did a final walk-through, and the realtor looked at them and flat-out told them that they didn't have to go through with it. He said, "Just walk away. You don't want to do this." They ended up buying it, and when we pulled up to our new house, the next door neighbor came running out and immediately threw her arms around my mom, and cried, "Thank you for buying this!" 

Had to laugh about the washers.    Wow

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15 hours ago, Seasider too said:

We once bought a house with the clause written into the contract that we have access one week prior to closing to get some painting done. This was a very reasonable request in lieu of the seller not reducing the price further (which they would have needed to do for any other buyer to get the market value where it should be to make a sale).

There were friends of the sellers living in the house (for free!) after a relocation of their own, and despite being informed of the date to be out, they Would Not Leave. They’d been in the house for over a year, and the house had been on the market a long time. I guess we should have expected a problem, because they got a little testy when we called for a third showing because it “inconvenienced” them (the FREE boarders🙄). The seller finally had to help them move their stuff and was carrying out the last of it when we arrived at the house after closing.

 It was quite a drama, the sellers were obviously distraught so we didn’t threaten with breech of contract or anything, though we could have. I just couldn’t get over the nerve of the freeloaders who were living there at the kindness of the sellers. Obviously it severed that friendship. 


You were so lucky on this one. If they had still been there after you closed, you would have been forced to go through the eviction process. I am guessing that you knew they were gone when you closed. Glad the owner got them out and it did not kill the sale.

Note to people thinking about buying a house--NEVER close on a house that has unwanted tenants. Always do a walk thru to ensure no one is living there right before you close. 

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When we first moved back to the States from the UK 15 years ago, we were looking for a horse property in a very specific area. Every property we looked at either had a really small house that wouldn't work for us, or it had a huge McMansion that we didn't like and couldn't afford anyway. Finally we found a property with amazing horse facilities and a small house right on the edge of the property, and we were able to convince the owner to subdivide it and sell us the part with the horse facilities and then sell the house (with a half-acre) separately. The realtor said she had clients who had been looking for a house in that area for ages and hadn't been able to find anything they could afford, and she thought they would jump at the chance to buy the house. Seller agreed and even lowered the price a bit on the house so these other buyers could afford it. Once the surveyor marked the new property line, we all (seller, realtor, us, house buyer) walked the property line so everyone was on the same page. Since we knew it would be about 6 months before we were able to move from the UK, the guy who bought the house asked us if he could use the barn and paddocks on our part of the property while he built his own, and in return he would look after the property while we were gone and keep the paddocks cleared, etc. So we said sure. Then he asked if he could use some of the scrap metal that was in a pile behind the barn to build a pipe stall and again we said fine. 

Fast forward six months. We arrive at the property and discover the paddocks are full of weeds and manure, there are two old (nonfunctional) vehicles on the property, the barn is padlocked with two huge dogs locked inside, and instead of using the scrap metal we agreed to, the guy actually dismantled two full pipe stalls and reassembled them on his property. Once we were able to get inside the barn, it was full of dog feces and dozens of trash bags, many of which had been ripped open by the dogs. Instead of apologizing for the state of things and offering to clean it up, the guy complained that we hadn't paid him to look after the property! He asked if we were planning to put up a fence, and when we said yes, he threatened to file a lawsuit to block it because it would ruin his view — of our property. 😳 He claimed that he got screwed in the real estate deal (in fact he bought his house below market, and didn't have to compete with other buyers because it was never publicly listed), and complained that since his friends and family all thought he owned the whole property, we were "humiliating" him by putting up a fence, because it would be obvious how small his property really was. We heard from several neighbors that for years he continued to tell people that he "intended" to buy the whole property but we somehow tricked him and screwed him out of it. The whole thing was so bizarre. 😳

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Our sellers were retired military that had taken one of those "How to be a House Flipper" courses and tried for a year to sell this house FSBO.  They painted the walls and trim in the LR and DR mustard yellow and fire engine red.  The office was sponge painted orange. The bathroom was lavender with metallic gold paint on the trim.  It was AMAZING in how bad their sense of design was and how they truly believed this house was a rare jewel.  They bought the house in 2008 right before the bubble popped, painted it this nightmare of colors, priced 125K above market, and tried to sell it with themselves as the real estate agent.  After a year, they got a "real" realtor who insisted they paint the inside something neutral and lower the price.

They were kind of weird about money.  They wanted to sell the appliances for cash outside of the house sale, but then keep using those appliances until they moved out.  So, you want me to give you money for appliances today and you keep using them, (and potentially breaking them), but keep it outside the sale of the house, so I have no recourse if you *do* break them??  No thanks!  

We saw the house on a Wednesday and decided on Friday that we wanted to make an offer.  On Thursday, right before we made an offer, the sellers raised the price of the house by $100 because they'd just received a propane delivery and wanted to be reimbursed for that expense.  Really?

They also wanted to sell us the water softener system for cash, separate from the sale of the house.  I told them I was not paying extra for it.  They said they'd disconnect it and take it with them to their new home 1000 miles away.  Um, ok.  Knock yourself out, but you will have to pay a plumber to disconnect it, reconnect the plumbing, AND I am demanding a new inspection of the plumbing, paid for by the seller, to make sure this is done right.  The seller decided to leave the water softener after that.    

We live near 2 military bases and I am former military.  Our bank is a major, national bank that has tons of experience with VA loans, but our loan officer acted completely baffled by the process.  There was a lot of drama there that I won't detail, but the overview is one of the underwriters threw a HUGE tantrum right before closing because I said I was frustrated by the lack of communication between her and the loan officer.  Her tantrum pushed closing back by 2 weeks, which caused the sellers and their realtor to throw a fit.  Everyone started acting ugly and rude, and we almost backed out of the deal.  It only got resolved because I threw a massive fit about how everything was handled and CC'd everyone's bosses. A regional director called me at 9 pm on a Saturday night and said "You will close on Tuesday. I will make it happen".  And we closed on Tuesday, after weeks of nickle-and-diming and petty melodrama.  I hate that I had to throw a massive fit to get everyone to behave. 😞 

The sellers were in the house on the walk-through.  They'd already moved all their things out, and sat in the livingroom in lawn chairs while we went through.  As soon as we were done, they locked up and drove off to their new home out of state.  I have no idea why they were there.

Edited by MissLemon
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The first house we bought was a foreclosure, and it was in rough shape. We didn't realize when we first went through it, but the people living there had removed ALL of the outlet covers, in every room. They had removed the thermostat, so the inspector couldn't actually inspect the A/C unit (no way to turn it on & test it; he did inspect what he could see of course). They had apparently burned a lot of stuff in the fireplace, and left if FULL of ashes. Full. Then, sometime between the first time we went, and when we closed, "someone" came by and actually removed a piece of trim off the back of the house; we did get that fixed before we closed, I think. 

Then the backyard hadn't been mowed in......ages. It was HIGH.  A neighbor kid came by and asked to mow it for us, and quoted us a price. We made him come and look, because we knew it was a very low price. He had his dad with him, and they agreed and said nope, no problem, that's fine, I'll do it for that price. When the kid came, it took (of course) forever. He ended up going home and getting his dad to come finish. We felt bad, we knew it was a huge job, but both the kid & the dad had seen it ahead of time, they named/set the price, so.....

It was a good house, though; we loved living there. 

Our weirdest story is probably one of the rental houses in Brazil; landlord/tenant laws are different there, which worked to our advantage in this instance. Our landlord raised the rent on us, and it was just way too much for an already too small house, so we started looking around (we were on a month-to-month lease at that point). Found a house, which we mostly loved, in a neighborhood we really wanted to be a part of. One aspect of this house was odd, there was a little extra room that you had to access from outside, which we figured was fine (not super odd for the houses there, really, just that we actually wanted to use the room), only when we did the walkthrough of the house, the landlady had locked it. We were assured it would be unlocked (and empty) when we moved in. We agreed on terms, and gave our 30 days notice to our landlord that we'd be moving out, now that we had set a date of possession with the new landlady. 

Fast forward the 30 days; we had the movers there, packing up our current home, prepping to move the next day, and we went to sign the contract, get the keys, etc., to move in. We'd asked for, and the renter had agreed to (and put in), a clause allowing the lease to shift to month-to-month after the first 12 months. When we actually went to sign the contract and get the keys, she had removed that clause and told our realtor that we had verbally agreed to the change. No, we had not, and we could not. This is where Brazilian law protected us; our poor current landlord, expecting to have us out the next day, could not do anything (thank goodness!) while we scrambled to find something else. We had to live with boxes for a few weeks while we looked for, found, and made arrangements on a different home to move into. It ended up being a blessing; that last house is still our favorite home ever (despite some odd layout issues), and we adored that owner/landlord, neighborhood, etc.  And we always kind of wondered if the lady renting the other house actually *would* have unlocked the little outside room or not, or if we'd have gotten there and found it locked with all her stuff in storage (it had been open when we first looked, then locked when we went back to look again, with no explanation from the realtor). 

Of course, then the landlord of the house we were leaving was so upset, he ended up requiring us to pay to replace the pool lining because it had "faded" from the sun in the time we were there, and required us to buy a new pool cover (we'd switched from a kind that floats on top, to a kind that secured into the concrete that was safer for children (you could crawl out on this one), with the owner's permission, and we'd stored his old one (with his permission) in a closet outside; he claimed it had deteriorated too much. This was where Brazilian law was not so much in our favor, and we had to pay all those things. It was absurd. 

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Oh! Almost forgot.....when we built this house (just a standard build, nothing custom or anything, but a "pick your floor plan, pick your lot, etc." thing), we'd come out and visit once/week checking on progress.  There weren't people living on our street yet, but others were building as well, and of course other streets had residents, and there is an adjacent residential area one street over; their backyards back up to the houses across the street from us. 

So, one day, after they'd poured the front porch, we come out and someone had drawn a big, random symbol in the wet concrete. (It kind of looks like a mariner's compass, but badly drawn). When we finally had our walk-through, we asked about having it resurfaced/covered, and they said they would, but it wouldn't match the sidewalk concrete after that. We said okay. Well, either they thought we meant, "Oh, okay, in that case, nevermind...." or they just never did it; we still have the random symbol on our front porch. We never found out who did it (I imagine kids/teens, but who knows). If it had been something offensive, we'd have fought to get it covered up/redone, but....:shrug: 

 

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We were buying our house 9 years ago when lenders began getting very tight on loan requirements. Our lender's underwriters had some sort of delay, and we were told several days before closing that it would be delayed by a week. Our realtor informed the sellers' realtor.

We showed up for the final walkthrough, which was one day before the original closing date. The seller, who'd bought this house as an investment right before the housing crash 2 years prior, lived across the street and showed up--in the house--during our walkthrough. Her realtor had not yet told them that the closing was delayed. The seller began talking with us, and her realtor literally took her arm and steered her out of the house. I don't know when he fnally told them the closing was delayed. It was crazy. I've seen many deceitful realtors; it makes me so mad.

When the sellers sold their own house a year or two later, their realtor bought it. So now the sketchy realtor is my neighbor. (Pleasant guy with a nice family though.)

 

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When we bought our current house, we had a limited window for closing - my husband travels for work and we had to do it when we were both in town.  The agent called us the day before and said that we might have to delay because the seller was refusing to sign the tax disclosure part of the paperwork because the large lawnmower was listed as part of the purchase price (imagine that the house and acreage was listed as $500, 000, including the $3,000 lawnmower - not the real numbers).  Nobody could figure out what was bothering the seller - his wife was ready to walk out, the 2 agents were ready to hand over cash for the small part of their commission that would have come from the lawnmower price...and it's not like they wanted the lawnmower, since they were moving away from acreage and didn't need anything that big.  Eventually the title folks figure out that we really didn't need him to sign the paperwork for use to buy it - it would delay him getting his $, but wasn't necessary for them to transfer the property and give us the keys.  The kids and I were so happy to be out of the apartment with improper ventilation that pumped the smoke from the 2 chain-smoking folks who lived in the apartments under ours into our place that we spent a night sleeping on the floor of our new house in sleeping bags while we waited for our day with the moving truck.  

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20 minutes ago, ClemsonDana said:

When we bought our current house, we had a limited window for closing - my husband travels for work and we had to do it when we were both in town.  The agent called us the day before and said that we might have to delay because the seller was refusing to sign the tax disclosure part of the paperwork because the large lawnmower was listed as part of the purchase price (imagine that the house and acreage was listed as $500, 000, including the $3,000 lawnmower - not the real numbers).  Nobody could figure out what was bothering the seller - his wife was ready to walk out, the 2 agents were ready to hand over cash for the small part of their commission that would have come from the lawnmower price...and it's not like they wanted the lawnmower, since they were moving away from acreage and didn't need anything that big.  Eventually the title folks figure out that we really didn't need him to sign the paperwork for use to buy it - it would delay him getting his $, but wasn't necessary for them to transfer the property and give us the keys.  The kids and I were so happy to be out of the apartment with improper ventilation that pumped the smoke from the 2 chain-smoking folks who lived in the apartments under ours into our place that we spent a night sleeping on the floor of our new house in sleeping bags while we waited for our day with the moving truck.  

 

Did you end up getting the mower or have to buy a new one?

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When we were buying in upstate NY, we were purchasing from a relocation company, who was concurrently purchasing from the sellers as part of the relo package. That relo company kept losing documents we'd already signed and missed so many meetings with us that we contacted the sellers and told them if the relo folks weren't at the meeting the following day on time, we would cancel the whole deal. That would've put the sellers in a quandry as the housing market had tanked and there were very few people looking for homes in the price range their house was listed in. The relo folks weren't late to a meeting after that.

The closing, though, was in a city 2 hours south of the house and took 5 hours. There were so many problems with the paperwork and each time we noticed something wrong, the entire document had to be sent to whichever party prepared it, hope they were in the office to correct it right away, sent back to the closing agent, and reprinted. We had our 3 kids with us and it was all we could do to keep them entertained and simulteously pay close attention to the docs we were signing. Once we were done signing everything and had the keys, we still had a 2 hour drive back to the community. That was the worst closing ever!! We will not purchase anything again from a relo company!

This was also the house we slept in sleeping bags and borrowed household goods from MWR for 3 weeks while we waited for a delivery time to open up to receive our household goods. The delivery company didn't want to drive the 2 hours it would take to get to our house. 

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@Jyhwkmama, they included it.  It's one with a very large cutting deck, which you need when you live on a couple of acres.  They were older and had decided to move to something in a subdivision (she wanted something in an upscale community, not a semi-rural plot perfect for a giant garden).  We had negotiated it as part of the cost, like many do with appliances, because if they didn't come down on price we knew that we'd be tight enough on cash during that expensive month with moving expenses that we wouldn't want to spend thousands on an expensive mower but we definitely would need to cut the grass (we moved in the summer, in the south).  The realtors speculated that he didn't want to pay them commission on it, although, like any add-on, it was a tiny percentage of the purchase price of the house.  The seller signed the paperwork in the morning and we signed in the afternoon and the title folks were amusing as they described it - they had never seen something like that before.  

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Wow, interesting stories!

We're in the midst of selling our home now, but one thing we've been trying to work around is a chance for our dd (who lives across the ocean) to see our home one more time (and collect her things! :)) as well as show it to her SO.  Our home was a big part of our kids' growing up years of course.  Lots of memories.  

In trying to work out a closing date, the buyer chimed in and said that even if our dd couldn't get back in time to see the home once more before it sold, she and her SO were alway welcome to stay there when they next visited.  And I know she meant it.  She's a really sweet woman!

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On closing issues, when we bought/built our current house, we were coming back from 6 years in Brazil, and that nearly derailed our ability to get a loan, because DH's income had been foreign during that time, so we/he didn't have W-2 forms for those years (we had tax documents, had continued paying/filing US income tax, had check stubs, etc, but they kept being stuck on needing W-2 forms specifically.....). Eventually they came up with some work-around, though now I don't remember what it was. At one point they literally said we might just not be able to buy until we had the last 2 years' W-2 forms, meaning we'd need to rent for two full years before buying.  Very glad they figured out some way to deal with our situation!

They also had us send a zillion documents explaining some deposits in our account from a friend; it was common practice in Brazil to "trade money" with friends -- so, if you were paid in Brazilian Reais, and your friend in US dollars, and each of you needed some of the other, you'd deposit your Reais into their Brazilian account, and they'd deposit the equivalent amount in US dollars in your US account.  We had a few deposits of that nature (and we're not talking large deposits; usually a few hundred at most), and for every.single.one. they made us show ALL involved bank statements, ours & our friend's. That was interesting, having to contact this friend and explain and ask for bank statements on her end. Fortunately, she was willing to send the documents, which of course, then they had to have translated. 

In the end, they lost one of the documents or one of the translations or something and wanted us to write a letter saying she was a cousin and the money was a gift. We didn't feel comfortable lying, so resent them the documents (we had electronic copies of everything), they scrambled to get it translated in time before the closing, and it all worked out. That one they said, had she not been willing to share her bank statements showing the deposits on her end (it was apparently not enough us showing our side, where we'd made the equivalent withdrawal from our Brazilian account/deposit into her account, hat matched the deposit from her into our account), we'd have had to wait until we had 6 months of bank statements with none of these deposits on them (maybe even longer, since maybe that was part of the W-2 fiasco, too....). 

It was a mess. Luckily it all worked out, but I never imagined buying a house after being out of the country would be so complicated.

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13 hours ago, TheReader said:

The first house we bought was a foreclosure, and it was in rough shape. We didn't realize when we first went through it, but the people living there had removed ALL of the outlet covers, in every room. They had removed the thermostat, so the inspector couldn't actually inspect the A/C unit (no way to turn it on & test it; he did inspect what he could see of course). They had apparently burned a lot of stuff in the fireplace, and left if FULL of ashes. Full. Then, sometime between the first time we went, and when we closed, "someone" came by and actually removed a piece of trim off the back of the house; we did get that fixed before we closed, I think. 

[snipped for brevity]

This reminds me - the house with the washers that my parents bought (dead washing machines lined the driveway) had no screws in any of the outlet covers or light switch covers. The owner also took the traps from under all the sinks. So weird!!

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We purchased our current house in Feb and at closing the owner went on a 10 minute long rant about how to take care of the pool.  She was a very sweet lady and was the original owner so I know how hard it was for her to leave the house she raised her children in but of all the things to go on a rant about taking care of the pool seemed like an odd one.

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I’m glad I’m not the only one who had to deal with craziness!

I bought my previous house, show for walk through and nothing had been packed up. In fact, the sellers were annoyed with me. We had to move the closing up several hours. I go back for walk through and they had left several pieces of furniture covered in inches of dust. No. Then they dragged one dust covered piece of furniture down the carpeted stairs, leaving a huge mess. We landed putting money into escrow to cover the cleanup. Then for months they told a neighbor that I had stolen items from them. Ridiculous!!!

When I sold that house the buyer was a royal pain, would look you in the eye and flat out lie. At closing her mortgage company delayed one day and the next day demanded she come up with $100,000 cash. Her response was she was going on vacation and she would deal with when she got back. Umm NO.

I was so happy to be rid of that house!

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33 minutes ago, hjffkj said:

We purchased our current house in Feb and at closing the owner went on a 10 minute long rant about how to take care of the pool.  She was a very sweet lady and was the original owner so I know how hard it was for her to leave the house she raised her children in but of all the things to go on a rant about taking care of the pool seemed like an odd one.

Oh! That reminds me of another one....

The house we rented in Brazil (the one where we ended up having to replace the pool liner), the guy was moving out and renting the house; we were his first renters. He spent a good while explaining (and it was detailed in the papers with the contract, too) how to feed the birds properly. Seems he had a shelf on the back fence where he routinely placed fruit for the birds, and hummingbird feeders he wanted kept filled. 

We balked at first, but began setting out overripe fruit that we didn't eat in time, and discovered we rather loved the results, so kept up with it (we got a huge variety back there; it was incredible and the only thing we miss from that house), but it was just so odd at the time "Here's the keys, here's the name of the gardener who will keep tending the yard, oh, and here's the instructions on how to properly feed the wild birds back there....." 

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1 hour ago, hjffkj said:

We purchased our current house in Feb and at closing the owner went on a 10 minute long rant about how to take care of the pool.  She was a very sweet lady and was the original owner so I know how hard it was for her to leave the house she raised her children in but of all the things to go on a rant about taking care of the pool seemed like an odd one.

 

People get passionate about certain things.  I was at a BBQ on Sunday and the owner of that house was telling me about the house she sold before buying her current house.  She said the new owners took out all of the trees in her yard once they moved in.   She lives down the street and so she saw them get removed.  She said she didn't think it would bother her as much as it did.

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21 minutes ago, DawnM said:

 

People get passionate about certain things.  I was at a BBQ on Sunday and the owner of that house was telling me about the house she sold before buying her current house.  She said the new owners took out all of the trees in her yard once they moved in.   She lives down the street and so she saw them get removed.  She said she didn't think it would bother her as much as it did.

 

Yes, I imagine the previous owner was quite passionate about the pool because our neighbors were telling us that she was getting upset when people would walk through the open house and tell her realtor that they'd likely tear the pool down if they moved in.

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13 minutes ago, hjffkj said:

 

Yes, I imagine the previous owner was quite passionate about the pool because our neighbors were telling us that she was getting upset when people would walk through the open house and tell her realtor that they'd likely tear the pool down if they moved in.

 

A friend of mine told me yesterday that her mother refused to sell a house to some people she didn't like.  I wish I  had that kind of luxury, but I don't.  I sell to whoever wants to buy!

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16 minutes ago, DawnM said:

 

A friend of mine told me yesterday that her mother refused to sell a house to some people she didn't like.  I wish I  had that kind of luxury, but I don't.  I sell to whoever wants to buy!

 

I had a relative who wouldn't sell to someone because they didn't like them.  It was more pride than actually having the luxury because eventually they did sell to someone they found acceptable but at a greatly reduced price since it sat on the market for so long.  Some people are very odd. We simply accepted the first solid offer we got.

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20 hours ago, Jyhwkmama said:


You were so lucky on this one. If they had still been there after you closed, you would have been forced to go through the eviction process. I am guessing that you knew they were gone when you closed. Glad the owner got them out and it did not kill the sale.

Note to people thinking about buying a house--NEVER close on a house that has unwanted tenants. Always do a walk thru to ensure no one is living there right before you close. 

 

This was a condition in our contract. I knew I didn't want to be a landlord for even one hour so the renters that lived there needed to be out before closing.

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