Housing Nightmares

I read D's blog on house dealings and it brought up a lot of bad memories for me.

I owned a house in Wichita and when it was pretty clear that I was going to be married, I put it on the market. It was a small two-bedroom brick house with an attached garage and a fenced in yard. Back then the neighborhood was pretty safe so it was in a good area. I had listed it around $50,000 or so maybe a little lower. The realtor whom I dealt with at the time lined up some houses that we could move into once the original house was sold. I saw some up north, west, (those are the ones I wished I would have settled on now), and down in Haysville. There was a new development there and we got to pick out the color of carpet, the light fixtures, and even the exterior color it was exciting to think that we were getting a brand new house!

Meanwhile, I was trying to sell the brick house. It seeming took forever to sell it. I tried all the tricks in a book I read to sell the house. L was commuting from Harper to Wichita during this time. So it was a long drive back home to Wichita. Well we finally sold it!!! We were so happy. That is until the contract and the stipulations came up.

The buyer wanted our nice pink curtains in one of the bedrooms. They were customed made for those windows and I really liked them. But I couldn't take those off the property. They took a humidifier as well. They took my drapes in the front room too. Then they wanted my refrigerator and took my stove (an electric range as well). We negotiated them out of the fridge. When it was time to sign on the dotted line the house away, it was the coldest day in the year!! Icy, cold temps way below zero. We packed our stuff away in our trucks and we were ready to move into the other house in Haysville. We closed and sign and we were to be out of the brick house the following day. I don't recommend EVER doing that. Give yourselves at least a full month or more....

Because what happened was that the buyer changed my telephone number to their new number. This was before cell phones. The people who were going to help (our parents) had no way of contacting us. I even worked for the phone company, yet these buyers took over my lines before even moving in! I was ticked! It was a lot of pressure moving out and dealing with these buyers.

Because they didn't take the fridge we negotiated the deal for $500 less than the selling price. Also our loan was an assumble loan (don't ever get one of these make the buyer get their own loan as they could default and you are the one who would have to pay for their problems!!).

So here it was bright and early like 8 AM. We were barely out of bed and yet here were these neighbors ready to swoop in to take our house. We quickly, as quick as we could move packed things up (accidentally leaving a ladder behind but coming back for it) and went down to Haysville to move into OUR new house.

HA! The house wasn't completed. We didn't get a key. We had to call my realtor to find out what was going on. I had moved my number down to that house. So the realtor talked to the contractor and for some stupid reason we couldn't move in that day. Here all of our stuff was in trucks and we were basically "homeless," for a few hours.

Then our realtor told us we could move into a house that she needed to sell it but we could pay her rent. It was a nice house on the west side of Wichita. So we moved in and got our stuff in there. Later L went back to the old house to get the ladder.

Then those ingrate buyers were mad because they put an electric gas dryer in the laundry room only it didn't work. Because they had bought my electric range we "assumed" that they knew we had a gas dryer. Our electrical box wasn't big enough to support an electric range and an electic dryer.

So about 3 weeks later they sent a note to our realtor and their realtor claiming they were going to take us to small claims court. They signed the contract that after the housing inspections that they bought the house as is. So basically they didn't have a leg to stand on. They wanted us to buy a new electrical box for them, but we told them that we lowered the price on the house by $500. It was up to them to get the new box. Selling the house, really did cost us a lot more than I thought it would end up being.

Then, the house deal in Haysville went sour too. We really liked the west side house pretty well. So we pursued getting a contract on that. I thought the price was high and then bank person told me if it wasn't for my job then we could never swing it. Well, things weren't going great at work and I was wanting to quit the job. Also during that time my dad was diagnosed with liver cancer. Things really got to me. Later on we found out that we could have negotiated for a lower contract and we probably could have bought the house. But instead we backed out of the deal. Needless to say, the people whom we were buying the house from didn't like us too much after that. We did not get our $500 deposit back. :( We moved to Harper and rented for three years and I ended up quitting my stressful job. Granted I missed the money, but not the hassles of working at that particular job.

Three years later we dealt with a nice realtor (who no longer lives in Harper) when we bought this house. The deal went so much smoother. It really does pay when you get a good realtor whom you can actually trust.

So when dealing with realtors make sure you get everything in writing such as a specific date and time that you are to take possesion and move. Allow enough time between signing the contract and moving out. You, as the seller, should have the final say in when you will leave the house. Give yourselves enough time to move out. Or you'll end up like us. Inspections are important!! Take advantage of them and find stuff that the seller needs to do before you sign the contract. Because once the contact is signed, you can't take them to court. Never let the buyers take over your assumble loan, if they default on the loan, then it will revert back to you. Make the buyer get his own loan. Make sure a lawyer looks over your contract and that everything is agreeable between you and your seller/buyer. Things will go a lot better and you won't end up hating your realtor!