Our home inspection was today - husband went but I had to work. He emailed me an hour later saying it was bad news. A lot of bad news. He took photos and emailed me a few at work, then showed me the rest once I got home. The photos showed some pretty major issues that we didn't notice during the showing - large cracks in the basement walls, missing parts of the siding, and parts of the brick facade that are actually pulling away from the house - in short, a whole bunch of costly repairs are needed.
The inspector sent us this full 30 page itemized list of everything he looked at, and it's not pretty. Wiring issues, mold, uneven beams, unsealed doors, ancient plumbing... It's a mess. It is starting to remind me of a "before" house on one of those home renovation shows.
(Where are those Scott brothers when I need them?!)
Cosmetically, it's in decent shape, but structurally... Not so much. Basically, we have two options right now: wait for the seller to make the repairs or walk away. We simply can't afford to take on a house that will more or less turn into a flip, and it's not likely that we could ever turn a profit on it if we did. We divided all of the issues into three categories: things the seller must fix for the safety of the house, things that a professional needs to take a closer look at to determine if/when repairs need to be made (and how much that will cost), and things that we are willing to fix on our own. The repairs needed to make the home safe to live in are pretty major, but I'm hoping they will willingly complete them.
This process has been pretty rocky so far with this particular house, and as much as I love it and want to move in, I also am ready for it to be over, one way or another. I don't want to spend the rest of 2014 the way we've spent the summer so far - looking at houses, putting in offers, negotiating back and forth with different sellers... I guess we will see what happens with this house and go from there, although I'm not very hopeful. We have to put in our requests by Wednesday so we should know something by the end of the week - fingers crossed!
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