The Ruins

The house seems to have fallen into foreclosure sometime around last November, 2008. Title switched to a foreclosure company in March 2009.

The house went on the market in June at $275,000. It has a nice layout, but needs a tremendous amount of work. For starters, the wall to wall carpet is truly disgusting, it has black dirt all over it and smells horrible. Some combination of mold and cat pee. Very overpowering.

The garage smells worse. There is the remnants of a fourth bathroom out there with all the fixtures removed. The garage smells like a combination of an open sewer, plus stronger cat pee. As a special bonus, they left a load of wet laundry in the washing machine. It is ruined, and smells horrible.

There is graffiti in three of the bedrooms and a hallway. Most of the ceiling fixtures have been pulled loose and are left hanging from the ceiling by their electrical wires.

The place is a disaster, but it has promise.

The layout is nice. It is 2400 square feet, and five bedrooms with a separate family, dining and living room. The kitchen is a nice layout, but the counters will have to be replaced. The family room has a large brick fireplace that will have to be cleaned up.

The bathrooms are all original, with linoleum floors. The vanities look original as well, which dates back to the 1969 construction of the house.

The kitchen and living room windows have been replaced. There is a nice set of French Doors out to the patio. The patio itself is another disaster, it does not look close to meeting modern hurricane standards, all the screens are shot, and it is home to quite a bit of amphibious wildlife. It's filthy, dirty and will require a lot of pressure washing and bleach to make it inhabitable.

We decide to take a shot at buying the house. We give a low-ball offer, the bank actually responds and drops the price. We come back, they come back. We do it again. We finally give them a final price we are willing to pay and hear.... nothing. It takes them five business days to respond. We are told this means they had to bring the decision up to another level to get it approved. We have done a good job negotiating, thanks to our excellent real estate agent.

It takes another week to sort out all the paperwork and finally get everything signed. On to the building inspection.