NWR Rant

chica7484

DH and I have been looking for a house for about a month and a half now. We've seen close to 20 houses. We are going to see one for a second look tomorrow (yay!) and bringing our parents.

This house is the second home out of the close to 20 we've seen that is well-kept. Seriously, why don't people in southern NH maintain their homes? Leaking bulkheads, holes in the walls, cracked foundations, terrible DIY maintenance, decks that are falling apart. This is a sad process.

Cross your fingers for a successful second showing tomorrow! 

ericandheather

Good luck, hope it goes well!!

DrPB2b13

It's not just Southern NH that doesn't take care of their homes; I've seen it all over New England, and various other places in the US I've visited.  I think a lot of it is too many people purchasing homes and just not knowing how to properly take care of them. 

I also think another large part of it is the economy right now; a lot of things can happen to a house in a couple of years, and when you're having financial problems you take care of the absolute essentials first - furnace, roof, water tank - and leave the "lesser" things for later.

Good luck with the second showing though, I hope it goes really well!

DirtyWater

It's also a case of people thinking they have the $ to fix up places and they don't.  We bought a 3 family 21/2 years ago and have found crazy amounts of problems in the last year.  So as DrPB said we just take it one step at a time.  Now we're on to the driveway that is gigantic and cant get a quote less than $15,000.  So we borrowed a bob cat and started to rip it up ourselves to save a couple thousand.

We've been looking at houses also for FSIL who lives out of state for the last few months.  The ones we walk into are just trashed and messy.  If I knew someone was going to visit to potentially buy my house the first thing I would do is scour it from corner to corner inch by inch!

mariegra

Good luck with your house visit!

dhdaydream

Fingers are crossed! Good luck!

chayer227

This will all make much more sense when you own a home in this bad economy...  trust me.  We found mold in our house and had to completely redo 2 rooms and a very expensive deck as a result - which added over $30K to our already huge mortgage payment.  There is so much more that needs to be done to our house, but we're so strapped for money now.  I'm sure people come into my house and think "why don't they just fix x, y, and z?"
I'm sure this is very common. 
Good luck with your search!

litskispecialty

DH and I just put an offer in on a house Saturday (fingers crossed we get it we REALLY want this house!) and it's the same thing only MA is a lot worse.  MA you get teeny tiny properties and tiny houses that aren't kept well for triple what you would pay in NH and get triple the land (in NH).

The house we hope to get is a foreclosure and I guess we got lucky the previous owners didn't do a lot more damage.  DH said understandbly if you're getting kicked out of your house you might say well then screw you and cause damage although I think that's really immature and sucks for us if we get this house.

Just make sure you do keep in mind how much you will need to get into the house.  I think that's part of what got us all in this wonderful financial crisis.  Good luck tomorrow *vibes* it's the one!

chica7484

It wasn't the one. There was so much work that needed to be done on the outside.

However, DH came home last night with some good news. He's got some pretty sweet deals lined up at work, so we're going to wait until winter/spring to go back to look. That will allow us to increase our budget and hopefully buy the home of our dreams. We also put in an email to a builder about a new community being built right now. We'll see!