reminds me of the homes in my neighborhood growing up. It's a midwest looking house to me. It was even built in the 70's so definitely of the same era of the homes I grew up around. It's listed at $186,000. So I had realtor mom look it up. A short sale (duh- most of the houses around us sell for around 300-400k) with an offer on it. Oh well, I thought.
Then I got a phone call.
"There's a problem with the offer and it may not go through. The realtor said he is going to allow showings on it. Wanna see it?"
Oh, ask me twice!
Funny when you build up a fantasy in your head, how reality comes crashing in.
I'll say this: it has good bones. I love the layout. Formal living room, dining room, huge L- shaped kitchen, and a tiled family room screaming for playdates. It had a wet bar. Can you imagine those playdates??? A WETBAR! My margarita fueled playdate fantasies were still dancing through my head when I saw the first sign of trouble. My mom had been saying something about exposed wiring (I couldn't hear her over my imaginary blender whipping up some cool frothy drinks) when I stepped into the bathroom. Oh my. Now forget that it had not been redecorated since 1987, (something I can live with) there had obviously been some kind of horrible flood. I'm going to keep telling myself that was mud on the side of the toilet because it was certainly a layer of mud on the floor. It had a large, deep empty pool in the backyard, save for a few inches of green water with McDonalds cups floating in it- an oasis for the Mosquitos building their west Nile virus HQ in my pretend backyard. So, the pool would have to be covered up. Going up the stairs to the bedrooms I saw the aforementioned exposed wiring. And I could feel how the stairs were beginning to give way- a thought that frightened me as I held the baby a little tighter.
The 4 bedrooms upstairs were enormous. The right side of my brain was keeping track of the tally of fixes necessary to make this place livable & the left side of my brain was painting each room and deciding if you could put 2 kids in one room and have a playroom/ office AND a guestroom/office.
When all was said and done, I estimated there had to be another 75k worth of fixes to plumbing, carpentry, electric- all areas I'd be afraid to tackle as a first time buyer.
Replace a ceiling fan? Sure can do! Figure out what went wrong here? That's beyond my abilities.
I brought it up to my husband. He didn't say much. Of course, I didn't expect him to- we hadn't even listed our place yet. Did
I think he would want to move in and make an offer?
Later that evening, I sent him a text with the one item I took a picture of at that house:
This was in the family room where I pictured all the little guys playing.
He called me-
"is this the house you wanted?"
"well, yeah. Those lion heads do come down, you know."
"We can't move there."
"Because of the lion's head???"
"Yeah. You see, we are of the house of Stark and those are of the house of Lannister..."
Damned Game of Thrones coming back to bite me in the butt.
I'm glad I got to see this house. Even though as I live in my fantasy world & my husband lives in his, I would have always
Wondered about that house and why it was selling so cheap. Now I know.
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