Here's a brief history of the process. After paying lots of rent for a 1 bedroom apartment for the past 3 years, I decided I would be better off putting the money into my own pocket by buying a house. Conveniently, my mother Karen Kern was a realtor with Long and Foster so I had that step covered. I had enough money saved for a small down payment. Finally there was the $8,000 stimulus for new home buyers. Now seemed to be a good time time to buy. We looked at many different houses and the areas I wanted to live in (Church Hill, Near West End, Fan, Museum District) were either out of my price range for in bad condition/in a bad area. My mom convinced me to begin looking in the northside of Richmond near Ginter Park as well as off of Forest Hill. I wasn't extremely keen on either area.
My mom noticed a fixer upper in a great area of Westover Hills and took me to see it. It was a TOTAL mess. There was stuff everywhere, hardly enough room to walk. Everything was dirty. It was clear that no one had been taking care of anything but the house had 'good bones.' The roof was new, the AC unit was put in recently, and most of the work that needed to be done looked to be cosmetic. Unfortunately, there was so much junk piled up in the house it was difficult to see everything. I liked the layout and the yard. The location was not exactly in the city but still within city limits with lots of things to walk to.
The other house we liked was another little rancher. This one did not have AC and was smaller but nothing needed to be done. The yard was spacious and well taken care of. The best part was the location. The house was on a little hidden street near Dogwood Dell. Although it felt kind of suburban it was still within the city.
First, I made a very low ball offer on the Westover Hills property. It was not accepted. Then, we made an offer on the Dogwood Dell house. They had just made a full price offer on another home and everything was lining up perfectly. Unfortunately, the seller of the home they wanted decided to accept a different offer and everything fell through. We again made another offer on the Westover hills property. They said they needed to sell it for more than I had offered so me wrote up another offer requesting all of the appliances and for the property to be painted. It was accepted.
The family living there said they were professional painters and talked about everything they were going to fix and replace before closing. They were supposed to move everything out the first week in June, paint the second week, and be done before closing on June 17th. A few days before closing they still hadn't cleaned everything out. In addition, there were problems with an old debt on the house from the 1970s. They thought it had been paid but could not find documentation. The mortgage company it was with was now closed and the paper trail could not be found. We had to put off closing because it was too risky for me to take the house without a clean title. They ended up needing to hire a professional to do the research and put money into escrow so that closing could happen. In addition, when the termite inspector came, he could not do a full inspection since he could not see everything due to the junk still left! We rescheduled closing for Friday the 26th. When we did the walk through just before the closing, it was apparent that they were STILL not ready. Much of the painting had not been finished. They left a water bed in the house along with all sorts of chemicals in the garage and assorted junk. Instead of taking stuff to the dump, they piled everything in the parking area behind the house and said the city would pick it up midway through July.
We decided to put off closing again so they could finish everything over the weekend. On Sunday, we got there for the walk through. The other realtor was at the house complaining about how he "wasted his whole Saturday" helping them get rid of all of their junk from outside. When I commented that they had not painted the ceilings in 2 of the rooms he told me that they had done all they were going to do. They did not prime the kitchen walls to prevent the darker color from showing through. When I pointed that out he told me they did- that that was the red color. Either he thinks I am an idiot and can get one over on me or he's the idiot. Anyway, we decided that they would not do a quality job if we asked them to redo it again as they already had pained over electrical outlets without even taking off plates and did an overall poor job. Instead we said we would keep all of the ladders they had left in exchange for the work they did not do. The following day, we went to the lawyer's office and signed the papers. With all of the other problems I encountered, I expected it to be more of a to do. It took less than 30 mins to sign the papers and get out of there. I left kind of in shock that it had actually finally happened.
And now the preparation for the wood floor refinishing begins.
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