We did end up going to look at the T-111 last weekend. And we put in an offer.
It’s a short sale, meaning that our offer first has to go to the seller for approval, and once approved by the seller it goes to the bank.
As expected, the house is a dump. However, it actually surpassed my expectations. After seeing the Unibomber home and other rarities the week before, I was ready for anything. So yes, the house is going to need a LOT of work. A new roof, new siding, installment of central air, probably a new water heater, installment of radon filter, and the interior will need to be re-insulated and basically gutted. But what did surprise me is that it actually seemed very structurally sound, and technically IS livable right now. If DC collapsed today, we could go and live there and be fine. But hopefully we will not have to do that 🙂
Even though we are engaged now, we are still proceeding with buying the home under my name only. This was due to a recommendation by our lender. He said that it makes more sense to have loans under just one person’s name, so that the other person is eligible for loans still. I thought this was pretty genius. If we do need a construction loan, or decide to buy more properties, we can hold those loans under Dave’s name.
The asking price for the house was $156,000. We estimated that the land alone (remember, almost 11 acres and the biggest lot in the neighborhood – see picture below) was worth about $100,000. Due to all the intense work & sweat that we’ll have to put into it, we came in with an offer of $130,000.
Here are some maps of the neighborhood to put the location into perspective:
As you can see, the land area is absolutely huge. It is still the original lot that was plotted back in 1969. Most of the other lots, with the exception of our neighbors to the north, have been cut up into multiple plots and each plot has a house on it now.
Here are some lovely photos that the seller has put up online. We took better ones which I’ll get from Dave (he has on his iPhone).
There was a kid asleep in this bed when we viewed the home. Pretty hilarious.
The tenant told us he “cleared out about a foot of dog crap” from the basement floor. Lovely. The smell conveyed.
This is the downstairs bath. The upstairs was larger but in similar condition.
Notice a trend with the dog crates everywhere?? The property was literally overrun with animals, both inside and out. Even I was shocked at the menagerie, which is saying a lot.
Hallways. About 50 cats followed us on our tour.
Here’s the guest bedroom upstairs. Maybe we can keep the bed? LOL.
I was most surprised by the kitchen. It actually looked somewhat useable and was the cleanest area of the house.
The living room was very small. I’d probably want to knock down that wall you see on the left and create a more open floor plan.
The master bedroom. Purple paradise.
Most of the house had no flooring and was just the contractor wood. We’d probably have to rip that up too, since I’m sure it’s soaked with animal urine.
This is the barn. It was a lot nicer than the house. The upstairs could be renovated very easily, and the space was perfect for either boarding animals or for our future wine fermentation shop. Next to the barn was a pool! Dave totally called that. It was actually in really good shape because the tenants have been using it, so they installed a new liner last summer.
As you can see the place is not in stellar shape. Hopefully we can convince the bank of that too.
Just got an update from our realtor. The seller is really dragging his feet. He told the realtor that he thought the price was too low, to which our realtor responded that it reflects the large amount of money we’ll have to put in the house to repair it. I think he’s having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that a) he’s losing his house, and b) it’s worth half of what he paid for it. It’s gotta be a tough thing to accept. But sooner or later he’ll have to face reality. Apparently he’s over a year behind on his mortgage payments.
Anyway I think/hope he will cave eventually. Once the seller accepts, that’s when it really gets serious because our offer will go to the bank for approval. The banks are notoriously tough and slow. So we may be up for a several-months-long battle but we’re not in a huge rush and I think it will be worth it. The way short sales work is that they only deal with one offer at a time. So basically if we can convince them that our offer is competitive (which it is!) and that the bank is not going to get more from somebody else, then we should be able to work something out with them. I’ll keep you posted 🙂