Inspection Results, Offer #15, Offer #13

Inspection
I met the inspector and my agent at the property a little after noon yesterday. I took the day off, because the inspector said it could take 3-4 hours to inspect the house. He finished the inspection about 2:45pm, so I guess he was almost right.

The inspector found numerous little things, but nothing that would cause the house to not sell, so I am happy. I liked this inspector because he does a thorough job. He found many things that are not a problem right now, but could potentially turn into something serious later. For instance, the rear door had a small crack in the bottom of the frame. He said over time, water would seep into it and cause rot. There were other such things like a small crack in the fireplace, gaps in joists in the attic, holes in the siding that needed caulked, and whatnot - but nothing major, thank goodness. As I said in an earlier blog entry, the range vent hood is missing and needs replaced as does the rear patio coach light.

The one thing that really angered me was the ordeal with the gas company. After the inspector was let in, I decided to peruse the neighborhood in search of a final answer to this problem. It was bad enough the inspector couldn't inspect the heater and other gas appliances, because the gas was turned off, but I have been getting bad information from my RE agent about who services the gas for this property (I'm assuming the listing agent is feeding my agent the information). I called the listing agent's number directly and got her voicemail, so I left her a message. She has yet to call me back. I then found a construction office on the other side of the neighborhood and talked to a lady there. She gave me the information I've been trying to find for over a week now. I called the gas company, which is not the one the listing agent says services the area, and they started giving me a run-around. The lady said she can't do anything because HUD needs to give her the 'ok' first. WTH?!?! I had absolutely no problems with the electric or water companies turning their respective services on for a few days, but the gas company has to give me a hard time.

So, now I need to call my agent first thing this morning and tell her she needs to tell the listing agent to tell HUD that I need the gas turned on for an inspection. The sad part is I'll have to pay for the inspector to come back out just to inspect the gas system.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

Offer #15
On Truesday, I was notified by my agent that offer #15 was rejected by the seller (it's a bank REO) and that the other offer that was submitted by another person was also rejected. My bid was for $60,000 on a property that lists for $84,900. The ARV on this property is only about $92,000, so I decided to drop out of the race. I could probably go up another $5k, but my dealings with bank REO's is that they don't like to go down very much. I figure if I offered $65,000, they would either reject it entirely or reject it with a counter of $82,000, or some other ridiculous price. It needs about $20k of work, too, so I just decided to bail on it.

Offer #13
This was the property my wife and I wanted for ourselves to live in, but the sellers wouldn't budge on their $18k-over-FMV price. They had an open house on the property over the past weekend, and I received word yesterday that they lowered the price from $249,900 to $247,500. I'm guessing that the open house was a big flop, and they realize that they need to drop the price some. Any change in price on a property in the local MLS is flagged as being a "Price Changed!" property. I figure their miniscule drop was a result of trying to set this flag and get some people looking at it.

All the while, my wife and I are laughing outloud. I figure this property will be sitting a l-o-n-g time, unless they decide to drop their price in the $230's, at least.