Friday OT #1 - Two Kids In the Yard

[Angie]

Thanks to @ruxCYtable for todays’s first OT! I apologize for being spotty lately - new job that leaves not a lot of time for posting OT’s prior to work in the morning.

What is your craziest story from buying or selling a house? I think rental stories also work, if you have them!

 

[coolerifyoudid]

No crazy stories, but I was wishing I had a shorter last name to sign. If my signature was an EKG readout, I went from healthy to flatlining by the end of my closing meeting.

 

[JM4CY]

Thanks to @ruxCYtable for todays’s first OT! I apologize for being spotty lately - new job that leaves not a lot of time for posting OT’s prior to work in the morning.

What is your craziest story from buying or selling a house? I think rental stories also work, if you have them!

Gal I know was a part of team that cleaned apartments during turn over week in Ames. My god…. Some of those stories.

 

[keepngoal]

1)
Bank messed up on closing docs..... automatic two week extension for closing. Bank gets paperwork finished 30 minutes after the extended deadline. Buyers won't sell now (they don't need to), keep our $50k (DD), relist the house and sell it for $100k more than our price with a cash offer. This happened April 2021.

Lawsuits filed for $150k (actual and potential loss). Bank offered a settlement of $7500. I don't need to type our response to that offer.

2)
Current house: Owners allowed only one showing, wouldn't allow a final walk through, and required they live in the house for 5 days after closing (with a $500 deposit, shoulda been thrice that looking back). House appraised $200k less than our offer (whole different story, I think the owners pissed off the appraiser), so we work the clock and counter $50k over appraisal, also knowing they had moving trucks loaded the previous weekend (they wanted to be in PHX for Christmas, close was on Jan 5th). They write a two page letter how they are victims and please like us .... we held firm.

Day after closing we knew they left the house prior to the close so it sat empty. They refused to alter the agreement and let us in. Fine. We start changing the names on utilities, we learn they turned them OFF! Realtors worked with previous owners to get service back on... they did.

We go into the house, every picture hole was patched horribly, batteries taken out of all remotes (AV room), dip switches changed on ceiling fan remotes. And stopped cleaning up after their two large dogs early into the purchase. I billed them out of their deposit, $800 for wall repairs (actual invoice), $100 for doggy do pick up (15#s), reconnecting LP line $300. They cried foul... I said sue me.

Then they realized they forgot to add in the LP tank as a credit in the sale paperwork for what was in the tank, asked for that payment as its the law. I again got to say, sue me for the $250.00 in gas. Being they moved to PHX, they would have needed to fork out money just for spite (and I was secretly hoping they would).

EDIT: Left one key and one garage door opener. Pricks.

3)
My CR home closed during the dercho, without power or any roof repairs done. $35k in a filed claim that the new owner oversaw.

GOOD ******* TIMES.

 

[CascadeClone]

Not sure if crazy, but I sold my last house twice...

This was 2019, market was hot in the Corridor. Realtor put the house up for $40k more than I thought it was worth. Got a signed sale the first weekend at the offer price! Holy crap, jackpot! Off the market it goes.

A few days later, "oops, we thought it was in Solon district, not Prairie; not going to buy it". So now it looks like there is something horribly wrong with it - why did the buyer change their mind?? Must be some terrible problem.

6 months later it sold for what I thought it was worth in the first place. So overall still a good outcome, but 6 months of aggravation and $40k less in my pocket.

How can you buy a house without knowing what school district it is, when you have kids???

 

[Cyclonepride]

Thanks to @ruxCYtable for todays’s first OT! I apologize for being spotty lately - new job that leaves not a lot of time for posting OT’s prior to work in the morning.

What is your craziest story from buying or selling a house? I think rental stories also work, if you have them!

I had my old house sold and ready to close, and FHA stopped the loan because there was a petroleum company diagonal from it that was 50' closer than they wanted it to be. Didn't care about that when I bought it 8 years earlier, so **** me I guess.

 

[carvers4math]

No crazy stories, but I was wishing I had a shorter last name to sign. If my signature was an EKG readout, I went from healthy to flatlining by the end of my closing meeting.

I kept my last name when we got married. First and last is 8 letters. Always appreciated this when doing standardized tests as well.

 

[keepngoal]

Oh... a tale from 2020... Corridor house, 5ac, shop, farm buildings, pond. Owned that property for 13 months. When we needed to sell, I told the realtor, list it at 15% more than we purchased it for. Put a timeline/deadline on when we will accept offers, and best offer wins. Had three at our asking price, the one with the higher escalation clause was our choice. Easy close.

 

[carvers4math]

Gal I know was a part of team that cleaned apartments during turn over week in Ames. My god…. Some of those stories.

I have a relative who is a teacher and did this as her summer job. Students are total slobs.

 

[KnappShack]

Had my wedding rings stolen during a showing (had 2....lost the first one briefly).

I thought something was missing but just thought I misplaced them again. Nope someone walked off with my stuff.

Agent told us recently to be careful about talking in the home. I guess one of those Amazon devices was being used by sellers to hear what potential buyers were saying

 

[carvers4math]

When we sold our first home in West Des Moines, I bought what I considered a pretty shower curtain for one of the bathrooms for staging the house. Apparently it was a wise $20 purchase because they asked for it in their offer.

 

[KnappShack]

I have a relative who is a teacher and did this as her summer job. Students are total slobs.

I did some of this in my hometown prior to the ISU days.

People in general are ******* dirty animals

 

[carvers4math]

I did some of this in my hometown prior to the ISU days.

People in general are ******* dirty animals

How does a toilet even turn green? They must not have even cleaned it once.

 

[KnappShack]

How does a toilet even turn green? They must not have even cleaned it once.

How do they straight up miss the goddam thing? What is a person's tolerance for **** on the bathroom floor and wall?

This wasn't a convenience store. People's homes

 

[BCClone]

Sold my mom's house at the beginning of the pandemic (she had passed about 6 months before). Since the lawyer had put the house in JT W/ROS with me (so if mom went into the care center and needed cash I could liquidate it for her quickly). So I had to rep the house myself and not as an estate. Had just had it sided and I asked the guy siding what he thought of the roof, he said it was okay but nearing the end of life, a couple years he said. They hired an inspector, (I had told the realtor that the price I said is the price as is and I wasn't moving, even told her that if countered I would raise the price out of spite, didn't need to sell it) and he said 1-2 years of life on the roof.

A month or so after the close, I get a letter saying that if I didn't give them 13K or so for the roof and some other stupid stuff that they would hand it to their attorney, I contact the realtor, she got a letter too. She calls me the next day and the inspector got one also. Buyers had a contractor (a sketchy one) come in and say the roof is rotten and needs to go, they did things that would mess other things up and make it look worse so they can get more work and the buyers ran out of extra money so they were trying to con all of us out of money to keep doing pet projects. BTW, this house sits back to back with ours.

The letter had forged signatures and everything, I sent it to my attorney and said heads up if something happens I may need you. Nothing happened and I am not saying a word to the neighbors until the 7 year term is up incase because they are batshit crazy. They complained about the lawn but as I look at it as I type it is a weed mess since they piled a bunch of dirt everywhere for dumb projects and ran out of money to seed the lawn so they could route all funds to the kitchen.

 

[RING4CY]

Gal I know was a part of team that cleaned apartments during turn over week in Ames. My god…. Some of those stories.

I did turnover cleaning one time because it does pay fairly well for a couple days work but never again. Never again. There were actually people who just left the apartment. As in they moved out but they didn't take anything of theirs. They left everything behind. Of course it was the apartments that were absolutely trashed. What I thought would be cleaning floors and walls turned into literally moving someone out for them because they abandoned the apartment.

 

[coolerifyoudid]

I kept my last name when we got married. First and last is 8 letters. Always appreciated this when doing standardized tests as well.

My wife kept hers as well. Her first and last name if 5 letters. My last name is 10.

Whenever I had to fill out my entire name on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, I ran out of bubbles.

 

[BCClone]

The house that I mentioned that I sold earlier, when it came up for sale, I told mom it was perfect for her (I actually saw her less when she lived behind us than when she lived on the farm) and maybe it would be a good buy. So I contacted the realtor to look at two homes, as a negotiating ploy, I had her look at that one and one more. I ripped the house she bought to shreds, nitpicked everything, the other house, I talked up and made it sound like she was leaning that way.

When we threw the offer in, I told the realtor that my mom just hated the interior color (it was burgundy) of the walls of the house I talked well of and we are placing on offer on this one and if not taken would offer on the other. I hit it lower than I should and felt bad because I don't lowball, I give a price and walk away if not taken generally. This time I was willing to counter though. Got a call and they took it. Realtor said she was surprised we offered on that one, and that the owners of the other house had painted the whole interior white to make it more to our liking. That had to take like 10 coats. I knew the owners of that house and hoped I didn't see them for a bit.

 

[MJ29]

Not sure if crazy, but I sold my last house twice...

This was 2019, market was hot in the Corridor. Realtor put the house up for $40k more than I thought it was worth. Got a signed sale the first weekend at the offer price! Holy crap, jackpot! Off the market it goes.

A few days later, "oops, we thought it was in Solon district, not Prairie; not going to buy it". So now it looks like there is something horribly wrong with it - why did the buyer change their mind?? Must be some terrible problem.

6 months later it sold for what I thought it was worth in the first place. So overall still a good outcome, but 6 months of aggravation and $40k less in my pocket.

How can you buy a house without knowing what school district it is, when you have kids???

This is the first thing I look at. We are casually shopping (it's a nightmare) for our next home, and school district is a major deal-breaker.

 

[RING4CY]

Went to buy my first house in 2018. Hadn't mentioned it to the mortgage lender that it was our first house. When he pulled my credit report he asked if I intended to sell the house I currently own. I was obviously perplexed. He rattled off the address on the report and I said that's my parents house. The house my parents bought in 2014 somehow was placed on my credit report, and it's not like my dad and I have the same name. This wasn't a senior's house got put on junior's report. So that created headaches getting that corrected.