House showing today

[Zee09]

I am selling a house of mine and marketing it myself. The house is immaculate inside and out and fully furnished.
Couple come over with 4 kids.
They love it and the young lady says how do you keep it so clean. I work hard and keep 3 like it spotless. She is impressed and asks all the important questions and is very educated.
Even the oldest child (14) is asking me about all the features etc. I actually enjoyed their company.

The father...he walks through...he approves quickly but is found outside obsessing over a cable PVC tube at the end of the lane that is like 3 inches above ground... That was his only concern and he was solely fixated on only that which I told him I could take care of it quickly....

I like that kind of buyer. The house could be falling in from termites and his concerned is a piece of PVC pipe at the end of a 250 ft lane...lol

I guess that is why his wife is so informed and very capable without him.

 

[oggb]

I like that kind of buyer. The house could be falling in from termites and his concerned is a piece of PVC pipe at the end of a 250 ft lane...lol

Farm I managed was for sale. The main house was originally built in the 1800s, owned by three different families who all did large additions/renovations (most of them poorly done). Owners I worked for had done their fair share of shoddy repairs. Desperately needed new metal roofing, a lot of the wiring was still knob and tube. A lot of the plumbing was galvanized, iron, or copper pipe. Nobody had any clue where the septic system was (or if there was one). Large (9 foot tall, 5 foot wide) single-pane glass windows on the main floor, 8x5 foot on the second floor and NO ceiling fans of any kind meant the house was insufferable in the summer time and cost 2-$3000 per month to heat in a mild winter.

Nobody asked those questions. They asked if the porch columns were original (who cares?), if the chimneys "worked". The closest the house came to selling while I worked for them was to a couple where the husband was fixated on light fixtures (some cheap thrift store sconces) and light bulbs (cheap "vintage" bulbs from amazon). He was willing to look past the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of repairs necessary if the owners would just have included $1000 in lights and fixtures.

Owners refused and ended up losing about $300k when they finally did sell a year later. People are strange.

 

[Ed_Flecko]

Some people wait until all of the lights are on green before leaving the house!

Ed

 

[Zee09]

Farm I managed was for sale. The main house was originally built in the 1800s, owned by three different families who all did large additions/renovations (most of them poorly done). Owners I worked for had done their fair share of shoddy repairs. Desperately needed new metal roofing, a lot of the wiring was still knob and tube. A lot of the plumbing was galvanized, iron, or copper pipe. Nobody had any clue where the septic system was (or if there was one). Large (9 foot tall, 5 foot wide) single-pane glass windows on the main floor, 8x5 foot on the second floor and NO ceiling fans of any kind meant the house was insufferable in the summer time and cost 2-$3000 per month to heat in a mild winter.

Nobody asked those questions. They asked if the porch columns were original (who cares?), if the chimneys "worked". The closest the house came to selling while I worked for them was to a couple where the husband was fixated on light fixtures (some cheap thrift store sconces) and light bulbs (cheap "vintage" bulbs from amazon). He was willing to look past the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of repairs necessary if the owners would just have included $1000 in lights and fixtures.

Owners refused and ended up losing about $300k when they finally did sell a year later. People are strange.

Yep...nuts
But that stuff is the draw to them..crazy.

 

[fsdork]

We just closed our sale last week. One person who viewed the house declined to make an offer on the basis that the house "didn't look lived-in enough". I still don't know what that means.

 

[opus1]

We just closed our sale last week. One person who viewed the house declined to make an offer on the basis that the house "didn't look lived-in enough". I still don't know what that means.

They really do walk among us.

When I listed my townhouse, the listing made it very clear that a) it had a 1-car garage and b) there was no basement. Two biggest complaints from people who viewed but declined to make an offer? A) it had only a 1-car garage and B) it was built on a slab and didn't have a basement.