Evening SQ - got some good real estate type stories. When we bought our house we used an individual real estate agent. We got the house, about week later, a real estate agent arrived at our door to show the house. Upon informing her it weren't for sale, she informed us it was and she had the exclusive. I assured her LSA & I were the new owners.
Seems the old owner, a sort of mail order type preacher fella, had signed several exclusive contracts and then ended up stiffing them all and our agent. That was too bad since she got us a good deal on the house.
Howdy howdy everbody... :-)
When we bought our first house, it was a FSBO, SSQ gave it a good look-through, even up into the attic, and pronounced it well-built. It was a good price; about $17,000 below the original asking price, which we happened to discover in an old magazine of real estate listings from a few months before we saw it. This was in April, and we discovered after we moved in that the owner had been removing bushes and shrubs from the house since we'd signed the contract. We frankly hadn't noticed because the place was so overgrown. But we did notice before closing that the bathroom exhaust fan didn't work, so we made it a requirement that he install one. A few weeks after closing he shows up at the front door and thankfully SSQ was home cause I might have just booted him. He said he was there to install the new fan. It was one of those little round boudoir fans from the early 60's! It wasn't even an exhaust fan. I guess he thought I'd just say "OK Stanley, thank you". What a putz! We made him give us the cash for a REAL one.
Later on in the winter, we noticed a glacier in a low spot in the back yard. When spring came, we realized it was downright mushy, but the grass was growing really well there. Yep, the septic field had failed. When we told our neighbors, they just went DOH! They had seen them hauling laundry out to be done, and couldn't figure out why. The folks wanted the yard to be dry when they showed the house so no one would question the health of the system. We had to have a dry-well installed. We chalked it up to lessons learned, but we made sure that everything was taken care of before we closed on this one when we moved to MA!