What's A Partially-Tripped Circuit Breaker?

On Fri, 30 Jul 2021 16:42:53 -0400, Ed Pawlowski posted for all of us to digest...

I am sure the bubble will burst, it's just when. My crystal ball is cloudy, out of power and I'm not a betting man. I will shelter in place... I have a neighbor that wants to buy the place; I'm sure to flip. Not while my fat ass is in it.

The "waving" of an inspection is a bit of a misnomer.

I have had 3 family members involved with buying houses during this market period. One is a real estate agent. They all employed the same tactic. (It's common)

You put in an offer that is not contingent on an inspection. When your offer is accepted, you ask for time to have an inspection done. In most cases the seller is not going to say no because if (s)he does, you can threaten to walk and they will have to start the selling process again or, if they are lucky, one of the other offerers will agree to buy, but in most cases it will be for a lower price.

In one case, my family member (the agent) discovered that the water main to the house was leaking. He said "Fix it or I walk." That cost the seller $2500. He then asked for an additional $2000 to be returned at closing for other minor issues and the seller gave him that also.

In the second case, there was nothing worth haggling over.

The third case is interesting and is still under dispute. They bought the house "as-is". However, the seller didn't leave the house "as-is". After he took down his numerous pictures and other personal objects from the walls, he patched the holes (many, many holes) with either spackle or drywall mud and then painted over the patches, without sanding or priming. Almost every wall in a 3000 sq ft house.

The buyers were coming in from out of town for the closing so their realtor did the final walk through for them. She came to the closing and said "We have a problem. The seller screwed up almost every wall in the house." The seller wasn't there, as he had pre-signed his closing papers because he had to get out of town. She showed the pictures to the seller's agent who tried to brush it off as cosmetic. The buyers and their agent all said it looks like crap and the house was not left "as-is". It was now less than "as-is" and they wanted payment for re-painting. They agreed to set aside $5K until estimates could be done and an agreement reached. The estimates (3) are all in the $3K range and the seller is balking. All 3 painters - even the one that the seller sent over - have said that it can't be "fixed", this is no touch-up job. All of the walls need to be repainted.

They are moved in, but haven't hung any pictures or shelves because they don't want to touch the walls until the dispute is settled.

I don't know that prices will actually go down, but htey will stop increasing even as normal inflation** continues, until they are back to where they were, proportinally.

General inflaticn ahs been high too but it may either go to deflation or stay still for a while, then go back to moderate increases.

Have people posted about this here already. House prices are high some places, because Zoom taught some people they don't have to live so close to work. They can live farther out and go to work one or two days a week. And other reasons I forget. But things will stabilize.

Some of the jobs that involve computers where people can work from home are interisting situations.

My son was working for about 8 months for Microsoft as a freelance type person trying to get on full time. During the virus he had been working from home for about 2 months. He got a call saying he was hired if he wanted the job. He took it. So far he has not seen the one that hired him in person, been to the office building,or any other in person contact. That has been going on for over a year. Microsoft uses something of theirs I believe called Teams that is similar to Zoom.

When I bought the last house I had it inspected and followed the inspector around. I was not interisted in a burnt out light bulb or some minor thing. I wanted to know if there were any major things. I could look at the roof and see that it would need replacing in a few years. He found a few other things and me knowing how old some things like the heatpump was I priced the house and told the agent what to offer the sellers, take it or leave it. They took the offer and I spent a lot of money reworking the house before I moved in. I knew I would spend that, like the wife wanted one of the bathrooms redone and some painting done, and the dishwasher replaced.

It really gets to me watching some of the houes selling programs on TV where the house is selling for$ 400,000 and up and they haggle over about $ 2000 worth of things. I am sure that is mostly for show most of the time.

I read recently the remote work is making security a bit harder. It's tougher if the home worker's computer is 100 miles from the office instead of inside the office walls.

They are selling at high prices and thousands more are planned to be built.

My next door neighbor sold his house for a 30k profit in one day. Listed Wednesday, sold Thursday.

Would love to see it in person, or at least photos. I'd not be surprised if the issue was minimal but the buyer is looking to chisel a few bucks, especially if the set aside covers the problem.

LOL How does he know he's really working for Microsoft?

If either computer is connected to the internet it is doubtful it is much more difficult to hack. In my son's case for what he is doing , he has to connect to computers in other towns anyway.

If the origional owner had just removed the pictures the buyer would probably still need to paint all the walls. Many times the paint is a different shade where pictures have been for a long time.

I guess because Microsoft pays him. They even told him and others to take a weeks vacation this summer to a place MS paid for the cottage.

As I said, the buyer is a family member, so I know it's not a "chisel". They are not like that.

This is one of the pictures. This is after one of the patches was painted. This area is about 18" tall. From what they were told, the type of paint that was used (some type of satin) is not the type that you can just touch up in the middle of a wall like that. The differences in sheen will stand out as shown. Just about every wall in the house has multiple spots like this.

"A satin finish can withstand scrubbing; but the problem comes with touch-ups, since slight differences in sheen will stand out."

As I mentioned, it was their agent that did the walk-through and reported the problem. Actually, it's a bit deeper than that.

The day before they arrived for the closing, the agent's assistant did the walk through. She reported to the buyers and to her boss that there were some paint issues, something didn't look right, all throughout the house. The buyers got into town early, not expecting to have time to go to the house, but they did. Almost immediately after entering the house they grabbed their phone and called their agent. "Have you seen this place?"

"No, but I understand there are some paint issues."

"Oh, it's bad. Can you come over?"

They said the agent gasped when she walked in. "This is not as it was and not what you should be paying for. Let's deal with it at closing."

In fact, she felt so bad about not realizing how bad the situation was until just before closing, that she is chipping in $500 towards the painting. I don't think she'd do that on a "chisel".

Their argument (the buyers and the agent) is that they bought the place "as-is" based on when they had toured it a month earlier. Had the seller simply removed his wall hangings and not tried to fix anything, it would have been their choice to fix and paint or simply hang stuff over the existing holes. However, with the huge splotches all over the walls - splotches that weren't there when they agreed to as-is - it's impossible to hide the terrible job that he did.

Probably is not definitely and regardless, it would have been their choice. See my response to Ed, which includes an in depth explanation and a link to a image.

Looking at the photo, yes, it would be a mess. Would have been better to leave the holes, then would be "as is". Only way to fix it is to paint the wall, actually the entire room.

But if it's direct deposit, it could be anyone.

I think he's being set up. The Russians have bugged the cottage. Either that or some floozie will drop by followed by a photographer.

;-)

Oh, look! Rod's talking again...

That is exactly their argument: Should have left it as is.

That is exactly what 3 painters have said. The buyer is still balking, offering something like a grand, when the estimates are closer to $3K.

And ready for this? The house was listed at $375K, sold for $415K. Why he's stalling over $2k for a problem he caused is a bit ridiculous.

And ready for more? The sellers weren't even out of the house by the time closing was over. A lot of their stuff was still in the garage while the buyer's movers were moving stuff in. The seller's son was off renting a truck. There were still dishes in the sink and pet hair all over the house. The buyers sat out on the deck - their deck - for

Tell the seller the case went to AHR Arbitration. Pay the $3k and move on.