The Yellow Stain House has been on the market for three days now. The foundation has been repaired, as has been the main water line from the meter to the house (there was a rupture that would have cost as much to fix as to replace the whole thing). As the house is still in only “rent condition,” the MLS listing is currently marketed specifically towards investors; but it didn’t surprise me that potential owner/occupants would be interested in the listing as well.
On Sunday, my wife received a call from another agent who had a potential buyer for the house. She was only looking at properties under $100K, was looking for a house to move into, and wanted to see ours. My wife gave the agent the code to the lockbox, we headed over to the property to drop off some fliers that were geared towards a homeowner (the flier we had left were specifically for investors), and we turned on all the lights. A few hours later we returned, turned off the lights, and verified that one of the fliers had been taken. Okay, at least someone had come by to look!
We didn’t really expect to hear anything further, but on Monday, my wife got a call from the agent saying that his client was very interested in putting in an offer. The bad news is that she had not yet qualified for a loan, so they were holding off on the offer until financing was in order. We probably won’t hear back until Tuesday or Wednesday about whether she gets her financing, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed.
The other issue we face — even if she gets her financing — is that if she goes FHA, we have to wait 90 days from the time we closed on the house to the time she can buy it. Since we didn’t buy it until November 3, we couldn’t close with her until February 3. Whether we’d be willing to wait that long to close on this property is something we haven’t yet decided, but if she comes in with a full price offer and a reasonable earnest money deposit, I would consider it. While it would be mildly frustrating to have to hold this property for three more months, getting it under contract a week after buying it would be very nice. And while I have a good bit of cash tied up in this property, I don’t have a mortgage, so my holding costs are under $100/month (utilities and insurance).
Anyway, these are good problems to have, and just getting an offer from one of the first people to look at the house is encouraging. I was especially concerned when, while speaking to the other agent for the first time, my wife told him that the foundation had been repaired (there are obvious signs of repair and we wouldn’t be there during the walk-through, so we thought it was better to preempt any concerns than to scare the potential buyer off when they see the repairs). He said on the phone, “Oh, that may be a problem.” But, after explaining that the repair was done by a company with a great reputation, had a lifetime warranty on the repairs, and had an engineering report indicating the problem was fixed, they decided to look at it. And apparently the buyer was still very interested.
Anyway, a lot of people have asked what kind of evidence was left by the foundation repairs. Here are some pictures. And also some pictures of the plumbing evidence…
are those silver things on the wall part of the repair? What are they? Looks pretty good to me!