It's Definitely a Buyer's Market

Well, I can tell you it's definitely a buyer's market out there. We've been trying to sell a house for almost 18 months. It's not pretty. For a bit of background, never buy a house with your in-laws. When we came to Texas, I was weeks out of the strongest Chemo on the market and radiation treatment for breast cancer and a stage IV diagnosis. My in-laws said they ought to just sell their house and go in on a house together with us. That way, we could get a better quality house than either of us could get on our own (should have been a big red flag) and they would be there for me should my cancer come back (another red flag - she'd never been there for me in the past). If my cancer didn't come back, we would be there for them in their old age - another red flag because she is a very selfish person to start with.

But, we didn't listen and 3.5 years later, we were looking for our own house. We're holding down 2 mortgages, which means we would have been capable of that better house on our own. But, water under the bridge. When we started this "adventure" our house appraised at $162,000. It's a 5 bedroom, 3.5 bath house with almost 3,000 square foot (if you count a sun room) and a 2 car garage and a 2 car covered car port. That's what we bought it for back in 2005. We had talked them down from $169,000. We had gotten a mortgage for our half and they had paid cash gotten a mortgage which they paid off when their house sold a month later.

When we originally put the house on the market we marked it up because we had done some improvements. We had put siding on the upstairs addition, replaced the AC fan on the upstairs unit, replaced the hot water heater, other minor things, and it appraised for more than when we bought it (we were told $169,000). My MIL wanted to list it for $174,500 because she wanted to get her investment after closing costs. That's why it sat there so long. We came down a little, but not much.

After 2 Realtors, that she claimed didn't do anything but list it on the MLS, which I believe is Multi-Listing Service (correct me if I'm wrong), I threatened to stop paying the mortgage and let the bank have it.

We're now working with my realtor. She has open houses, and really promotes it. But the master bedroom had a god-awful paint scheme that everyone commented on as a stopping point. No one wanted to put the time and/or money into having it redone. MY MIL can't understand why that would stop someone from buying a house. She's from the era when you repainted automatically when you bought a house anyway, so why would color stop you from buying? She just doesn't understand that today's buyer doesn't repaint/decorate AT ALL, so they want it to match their tastes already. Let me try and describe this room that they've been living in for 5 years now: It was all wallpaper for starters. 3 out of 4 walls had a pink background with a small almost paisley pattern. The 4th wall was a gray almost paisley print. The border around the top was an actual paisley (yes a different print) in gray stripe. The bathroom is accessed through 2 pocket doors in one wall. This room is done in the top border print of the gray paisley stripes. The Water Closet where the toilet is is done in the larger "almost paisley" pattern of the one wall in the bedroom. Can you say "puke?"

You saw my earlier blog about the contractor blues....if not, I'll summarize here. We hired a contractor to paint the bedroom. He tried to take the paint down and it was stubborn. So he went and got a special tool and chemical. Then, my realtor calls and says there's a new EPA rule that says you have to be lead based paint certified to "disturb" any paint in a space larger than 6ft by 6ft. Luckily, they couldn't get the paper off. They decided to paint over it. But they had agreed to swatch it, in case they needed Kilz. Our agreement on price was based on a set amount plus paint. They knocked off $100 when they didn't need to take the paper off. We were supplying the paint at our expense. The guy shows up and just starts painting, no swatch. MIL is livid. We back and forth, because it's a guy my husband works with who does this as a second job with his brother. We finally settle on giving them $75 for their trouble and deciding to paint ourselves.

So, after painting for 3 days (just a few hours a day), we have a "creamy beige" master bedroom. I got out-numbered 3 to 1 and they kept the gray paisley bathroom. They said it looks modern now against the creamy beige bedroom.

But we'll see if it sells better now that it's painted. No one wants to actually put in the 6.5 hours worth of painting and the $75 worth of money for the paint? Really? I won't count the $75 for the trouble of the painters. And actually, I've got half of it left. It would have taken about 3 gallons of paint. People today are that lazy? I'm in the wrong business. I should be a painter.