The Arnett Adventures

Just an update on the house in Cleveland. Turns out the buyer wants the basement waterproofed and new tile in the basement, neither of which are we willing to do and neither of which is required by the home inspection or needed. She wants to finish the basement and says she can’t do it unless those two things are done. The tile being replaced is purely cosmetic and the basement doesn’t leak so there’s no point in waterproofing it. So, our Realtor told her that she would have to sign something to release us from the purchase agreement and that she would have to forfeit all the earnest money since she didn’t follow anything agreed to in the contract. So, she said that she wanted all the earnest money back and refused to sign. Our Realtor went back and said let’s just split the earnest money so we can both move on. She still refuses to sign. So, we are still “under contract” with her, but she has no intention of buying and if we get another offer, it can’t go through until she signs the release. Rather ridiculous.

If you’re the praying type, keep praying for our house in Ohio! The buyer faxed our Realtor the home inspector’s report demanding everything mentioned on the report be fixed, totaling about $31,000 in repairs. Only a few of the items were items that the inspector deemed to be done immediately. The buyer also completely disregarded the purchase agreement that states she needs to file an amendment for what she would like to have fixed within three days of the inspection. The inspection
was done April 29th and she forwarded the inspector’s report with handwritten notes all over it to our Realtor on May 12th. No signed amendment. We’re suppose to close on May 19th. But now I don’t think we are. Hopefully, we can work out something more reasonable with the buyer. We’re willing to do all of the immediate items and a couple others, but not $31,000 worth of work on a 60 year old house. If that’s not acceptable the deal is going to fall through. It aggravates me that she was able to totally disregard the agreement, there’s still no amendment to the agreement, we’re doing some of the requested repairs, and she may still be able to back out. Lame.

My house in Cleveland has been on the market to be sold since January 2008. We finally got an offer last week and accepted. Now we just have to wait for the final details to be done. The closing is on May 19th. I’m glad to be almost done with the house. It’s hard to maintain a house when you live in another state. Plus, I was becoming weary of paying expenses for the house when we weren’t living there.

I guess the new people met some of my old neighbors and really liked the place. So much so that initially they were planning to put up a privacy fence, but after meeting the neighbors, they decided to only put the fence up around two sides and leave that neighbors’ side open so they can see into the neighbors’ yard. I’m glad that they’ll get along. They were good neighbors.