I almost couldn’t believe a story I read in the paper this morning. It was about former grow op houses and how they’re listed on the market as sellable homes. The specific example the paper had used was a house I’d seen listed a few weeks back. It’s a big house, about 2000 sq ft, with double attached garage. It’s in the Garden City area of the city. It is older. But the pictures were atrocious, to say the least. The house was a downright mess. The amount of mould in the place was disturbing through my computer monitor, let alone to envision seeing this place in person. There was mold everywhere…and I do mean everywhere!!! In fact, the house was in such horrendous condition that it stated in the listing that the home was not available for showings. Only the potential buyer would have the chance to walk through the home after their offer was accepted. Oh, and the appropriate hazardous attire would be issued for this walk-through. Now, if a house is in such horrid shape that it would be a danger to my health to walk through it, it should just be free, right? Right?!
So, it was listed for $120,000. We were joking around when we’d seen the listing about how we could probably get it for like under $100k and then use the rest of our money to completely demolish and start from scratch. I refuse to mess with mould. And, being a former grow op, who knows what other kind of surprises were hidden in the foundation and other necessary areas of the house itself?
Well, turns out the listing realtor got over 1500 phone calls about this house. He had a total of 61 offers… No, not six point one, but sixty-one!!! It finally sold for the grand total of $191,000. That’s what, not 70,000 over list price, right? All for a crappy house, literally.
And that’s what made me mad today. At the moment I’m homeless, largely in part to these types of over-offering people. (Thank God I’m not shelterless though!!!) But houses that are many a times over priced are being outbid for ridiculous amounts. And there are actually people out there willing to pay some amount that’s substancially above list price. Why?? Because they can?? But the kicker is that you then have to turn around and do renovations of some sort in the house. Our grow op winner could just give me the 71,000 dollars he’s/she’s got kicking around and I could buy a nice, and CLEAN, piece of land and build a fantastic house.
What is this world coming to?