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November 22, 2005
In the beginning . . .
Dana & Laura's search for a house began as a result of maintenance issues with the house that they are currently renting. Their landlords are wonderful people—honestly. It's just that preventative maintenance isn't something that they really want to do. Thus, when the basement flooded due to a torrential rainstorm, improper drainage, and malfunctioning eavestroughing, they were prompted into slow action.
Over the course of several months in the early fall of 2005, they looked at many, many houses in the Saskatoon area. As the school year progressed, Dana's classes required more and more of his attention, so Laura became the one to house-hunt in earnest.
They made an offer on a small house in Aberdeen, with a very nice main floor, unfinished attic, and unfinished basement. While they knew that the foundation had a few problems, they were unprepared for the results of both the house inspection and the engineer's report, both of which informed them that the north wall of the foundation was no longer bearing any load and, on top of that, that the rest of the foundation was in such poor condition that it would require immediate attention. Due to access issues, it was next to impossible to get the required material into the basement without excavating next to the foundation and then cutting a hole through it, which added considerable expense to the already high cost of properly fixing the house. The sale eventually fell through, as the vendor was not willing to re-negotiate based upon these problems.
In the meantime, Laura had gone to B.C. to be with her family, as her uncle was very ill with terminal cancer. Trying to deal with the real estate agent and all of the paperwork for this offer, while out there, was rather difficult. When the sale of the first house fell through, Laura asked their realtor to take a look at another house in Aberdeen that had just come onto the market before she and her father had left for B.C. The realtor's report was promising, so Laura made arrangements to view the house several days later, after she had returned to Saskatoon.
Unfortunately, before she had even returned, the house had sold. So, they made arrangements to look at other houses in the area, even though most of them didn't come close to meeting the criteria that they'd set out at the beginning of our search. They were getting frustrated, but Laura's mother, who's survived many a real estate deal, told them that things would just come together when the house was right.
Their realtor phoned at 8:20am October 19 to tell them that the sale of the house that they'd wanted to see had fallen through. She and Laura made arrangements to see the house at 12:30pm that day, with the possibility of looking at another house in a different town later that afternoon. By this point, the two of them had been in every single house that was for sale within a 45 minute drive of Saskatoon, even the ones that didn't remotely meet our search criteria.
When they looked at the house, it was still full of the vendor's stuff. It seemed promising right from the moment that they opened the lockbox to discover that the key was an original skeleton key. Even though the house was full of the vendor's stuff (and he was already living elsewhere), they could see that the house had a lot of potential. The large, south-facing windows, the original hardwood floors, original doors and door hardware, in combination with 1450 square feet of space and an open floor plan only added to its potential. The main floor's bathroom was hideous, the hardboard panelling not much less so, and the basement had problems of its own, due to poor drainage and a high water table.
Laura liked it, Dana hadn't seen it, and there were three other couples scheduled to view the house that evening. As they drove back into the city, she knew that she had to make a decision, and soon. When they got back to the real estate office, the agent was set to make plans for them to look at another house that had just been listed. She was rather shocked when Laura told her that she'd make an immediate offer.
When Laura arrived home, Dana met her at the door to tell her that her father had just phoned. Her uncle had passed away earlier in the afternoon.
Around five o'clock, the realtor phoned to tell them that the vendor had accepted the offer. Now they just had to make arrangements to get the house inspected, hopefully before they left for B.C.
The inspector was very understanding of their situation, and agreed to meet them at the house at nine o'clock the next morning. Dana was in class, but Laura drove out to attend the inspection. The house had definite issues—cracked heat exchanger in the 1968 furnace, dry rot in the floor joists under the kitchen sink, no drainage around the foundation, horizontal cracking and fragmentation of the foundation walls, mysterious roof vents that drained onto the floor in one of the upstairs closets, among other things—but was structurally sound. Laura and the inspector agreed that it was going to be a lot of work, but that it was by no means impossible, nor did it have the structural issues that the first house had had.
She went home to pack, feeling a little more confident about the sale, but still concerned that things weren't going to go well. The realtor contacted the listing agent about their concerns and questions—primarily the basement floor (which was not, in some places, capable of supporting new foundation walls), the furnace, and the large, mysterious antenna on the west side of the house.
The vendor agreed, soon thereafter, to adjust the purchase price by $1500 for the furnace, but was not willing to renegotiate further. They decided, after thinking it over on the drive to B.C., that they were satisfied with this, and made arrangements with their lawyer for the remainder of the sale.
Buying a house is stressful at the best of times. Buying a house while not in the same province, while preparing for a funeral, was even more stressful. Their agent was wonderful and very understanding, which made things much less traumatic than they might otherwise have been.
Laura and Dana took possession of our new house November 2, 2005, at one o'clock in the afternoon, which was the first time that Dana had seen the house. They didn't move much, a table, some chairs, cleaning supplies, dishes, and some tools. It was old, ugly in places (and worse in others), but it had potential and, most importantly, it was theirs.
Posted by plainstext at November 22, 2005 04:17 PM
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