My son a renovator found a house for sale, contractor special it read. He send me the link, blue prints, a couple of photos, it looked interesting. The price was tempting so was the location, I was impressed, an architect had been hired to convert this character on the outside home to an amazing modern home on the inside. I encouraged him to set up an appointment to view it. Then as it happened I was going to be in the City that afternoon as well, so I tagged along.
They certainly had gone to town on it. Totally gutted, but new support beams installed, roughed in plumbing, all windows new except a couple, several skylights. Their vision was going to look great once someone completed it. I guess they ran out of money and the bank was going to foreclose therefore the sale. When we walked down to the basement we were pleasantly surprised, there was more headroom than I expected, bonus there were 3 huge windows, certainly didn’t expect that! Yes, the basement floor had all heaved, that would need dealt with, but not a biggy, in dealing with that more headspace could even be created. There was even a small loft for an office, or….
The outside was cute, kept to it’s character, some had been re done. That was what else impressed me, everything that had been done had been done well, even if not complete. There was aluminium soffits and gutters, new supports under the porch, the stones had been re-pointed. Yes, we were definitely interested.
As we drove away, in different directions, I thought wow, won’t that place be amazing, and such a great location too, something like that sure isn’t going to come along very often. He called as I was on the road, he was impressed too, offers were being looked at the following day. His money was tied up, could we figure out how to finance it and put in an offer? We were certainly going to try. We both knew this would be a great flip house, but as I said to him, this would be a fantastic home for him, and he had to agree. Heck I was already thinking, maybe I could have a gallery in the basement if we could have access from the outside, being only a block off an artsy fartsy street, how perfect!!! We were pumped! Did the phoning to various sources for funding, had a plan in place, made an offer, clean, quick possession, well over list as there was 10 offers before we wrote ours. Should we offer more? You do what you are comfortable with, no reason to go crazy as multiple offers are a total crap shoot. We waited……Our offer expired at 9pm, by 7pm we heard there were 28 offers!!!!! Well, yes we had gone in our opinion well over list, but 28 offers, someone was going to go crazy on their offer. My son figured maybe they would go as high as $40,000 over list, maybe but we weren’t ready to do that. 9:25pm, we hadn’t heard anything, he said the realtor said she probably wouldn’t hear until close to 10pm. Just before 10, guess what it sold for? Totally gutted, so you can’t get a mortgage on it until it’s livable. …..$120,000 over list price!!! We will have to take a drive by in 6 months just out of curiosity. well, we had a dream, and it was exciting, we tried, so no regrets.
Man I am glad we don’t have such a crazy market where I live. Multiple offers like that are so dangerous for Buyers, more so on complete homes where you can put nothing in to protect yourself from things that aren’t visible. Having previously been a realtor, and taken the courses, it was always my understanding that the list price was suppose to be in the ballpark of the market value, that doesn’t seem to be the game in the City, list stupid low, and then let everyone gamble, and go crazy on their offers.
That was a fun dream for a day and a half, makes you feel alive! And if we had gotten it, we would have been hyped for a long time, and busy, fun busy. Next!
YVETTE CUTHBERT, Artist 