I wish I could narrate like you. Your prose is like pemmican - all
nutrition, no filler.
This is meant to be a compliment, BTW.
On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 11:18 AM, Joel Cairo via Mercedes
<mercedes@okiebenz.com <mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com>> wrote:
When we bought our house in Melrose (outside of Boston) it was a
complete wreck. The old Irish couple had 9 or 10 kids of their
own and had kept 20some foster kids over the years. They were all
pretty much losers. 4 or 5 of them were still living in the house
with them, 18-31yo. The daughter, who was a real prize, lived in
an upstairs back bedroom with a piece of plywood hinged at the top
for a door, like a dog door. Ol Frank had warned us she was up
there when we went to look at the house, "She's a f'n pig" was how
he described her. Nice. (He was correct BTW)
So anyway we buy the place, I knew what I was getting in to, would
be a good fixer-upper, good price for the town and neighborhood.
So we do the closing one afternoon, it is a stormy day,
thunderstorms and raining hard. Frank tells us that one of the
kids left some furniture on the front porch, will pick them up in
a day or two. Fine. Frank and his prize wife (who could peel
paint with her screeching) got a small apt nearby, out from under
the kids finally after 35 years or whatever.
So we get to the house, raining like hell. Walk onto the
(closed-in) front porch, and there is a kid passed out on a
couch. hmmmm. So I go over and kick the couch, trying to stir
him up, no motion. Do that a couple more times, shake him by the
shoulder, nothing. Holy shiite we are thinking the kid has ODed
and is dead or something but he finally starts to stir, his eyes
open and the pupils are blown, very clearly high as a kite. We
keep trying to stir him, he finally sits up and looks around,
kinda woozie and unstable, then manages to stand and stumble out
into the storm and off down the street. OK, Frank left the
youngest there, no place to go. Nice.
We go inside and some of his crap is in there, sleeping bag and a
few clothes and a candle, he had managed to climb into a window
and was camping out. I put all of it on the porch, I guess they
came and got it the next day or two. Never saw that kid, but
Frank had owned the cab company in town for quite awhile until the
kids ran it into the ground (and took a brand new cab to a lake in
NH to go ice fishing, the cab crashed through the ice and sunk),
but the oldest one, who was actually sorta decent, still drove a
cab and he would take me to the airport occasionally and I would
get stories about Frank and the fam from him which were always
entertaining. He had no idea what had happened to the one left
behind.
--JC
On 6/4/16 9:54 AM, Kaleb C. Striplin via Mercedes wrote:
The only thing I see that could have been a problem is letting
the buyer store their cars there. It can be a bad idea to let
buyers move stuff in before closing because in general you
would be responsible for their items. Most common thing is
buyers will sometimes want to store furniture or something in
the garage before close. Probably not a problem most of the
time but could potential turn into one.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 3, 2016, at 11:08 PM, Craig via Mercedes
<mercedes@okiebenz.com <mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com>> wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2016 21:41:24 -0500 "Kaleb C. Striplin via
Mercedes"
<mercedes@okiebenz.com <mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com>> wrote:
Holy crap, what is the commission rate on listings
there? Its usually
6% here.
Commission rate here is 3%/3%. We had the house listed on
Zillow for
$364,500.
The first agent who brought someone by started her
presentation by
saying, "You're not going to be happy about this." She
ended up
presenting an offer for $310,000 from some people who
needed to move in
quickly so they could get set up to foster children. The
things she
related they said just didn't make sense, so we hesitated.
Then the
husband of the couple who wanted to buy it contacted me
directly. His
contacts put us off even more. We finally told him we did
not want to
sell to him.
The second couple who wanted to buy our house found it by
the sign I had
put out in front. They were a Chinese couple who came
through the house
three times with her parents, who spoke no English. The
four of them
walked through the house jabbering to each other in
Chinese. One time,
the husband asked me what was the lowest price I would
take. I told him
if they didn't use a real estate agent, I would require
$330,000. If they
used an agent, I would require $340,000.
Their agent brought their offer over for $310,000, with a
3% commission,
plus the gross receipts tax on top of that. We said no.
The couple came over again, this time to present their sob
story and
plead with us to sell it to them for their price. The wife
said she was a
light sleeper and the forced-air heat system made too much
noise, so they
would have to change it to a hydronic system, which would
cost more than
$25,000. She really tried to put a guilt trip on us. Note,
though, that
the house is built on a slab. We again said, "NO!"
A few months later, an older couple stopped by to inquire
about the
house. When I showed them around the house, the husband
remarked how
quiet the heating system was. They lived down the mesa
about a mile from
us and were scouting for their daughter and son-in-law.
The son-in-law
was possibly going to get a job offer from the Lab, thus
needing to move
from Texas, and they were scouting for them. The older
couple were quite
taken with the house and the remodel I had done and said
they would tell
their son-in-law and daughter about it.
A while later I got a call from the daughter. She said her
husband had
gotten the job offer and that the Lab wanted him there
quickly, so he was
going to come look at houses the next weekend.
He was brought to our house by his mother-in-law. As I was
showing him
around the house and the 0.6 acre yard, the mother-in-law
sat at the
dining room table and talked with Shirley. She told
Shirley her
son-in-law had another house to look at, but that she was
going to push
ours.
A couple of days later, I got a call from the son-in-law.
He wanted to
come over and talk with me about making an offer. When he
came over, we
discussed whether he should use an agent, since it was his
first time
buying a house. I told him we had done it many times and
that the title
company was the center of the transaction. He agreed to
not use an agent
and offered $335,550. Shirley and I accepted.
The next day, he and I met at the lobby of the local bank
and walked into
the title company's office. Motioning to him, I told the
lady there,
"This young man wants to buy my house." She responded,
"And you're here
because you don't know what to do ..." I replied, "Yes,
it's not like we
do this every day." She said, "Well, we do do this every
day and we will
help you through the process."
She was true to her word. She got us a contract form and,
with her
guidance, he and I worked through each item of it,
haggling about who
would pay what and coming to agreement.
It was such a pleasure working directly with the buyer! At
one point in
the process, he remarked that it was a pleasure working
directly with the
seller. For example, he and his family arrived in Los
Alamos about a week
before closing (staying at her parent's house). He was
having some cars
shipped from Texas to Los Alamos and called up to ask if
he could have
them put out of the way at the back of our lot before
closing. I said,
"Sure, no problem." I found out they were not going to
move into the house
until two days after closing, so I asked him if we could
stay until then.
He said, "Sure, no problem." Can you imagine the
difficulty of getting
those things done with going through two agents?
Anyway, that's how it went ...
Craig
On 6/3/2016 9:37 PM, Craig via Mercedes wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2016 20:49:16 -0400 Dan Penoff via
Mercedes
<mercedes@okiebenz.com
<mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com>> wrote:
This is also why, for many years, we have
often forgone the use of a
realtor and used a good real estate attorney
and a home inspection
company, along with doing our due diligence.
We sold our house in Los Alamos without a realtor
involved in the
transaction and netted $25k more than selling to
those buyers realtors
brought by.
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_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
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--
--BB
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