Knowing When To Walk Away

Looking back, it seems so clear. There should never have been a debate. We should have just looked at each other and said in synch "NO!". James and I have seen several houses that we wanted but after many tugged heart strings, sleepless nights and indigestion we walked away from and in hindsight wonder why they were even considered.
Lets go to the beautiful 10 acre parcel that was $190,000. Oh yes. It had a cute house, a hot tub, beautiful long driveway, clear skies, tons of beautiful trees and a badass shop. It was captivating. It did have some issues. The previous owner had stolen all the appliances when they lost it. They had also let the dog(s) pee their little hearts out. The floor had actually rotted away from so much moisture. The carpet was gone, the floorboards needed replacing. When you have 10 acres why does your animal have to pee inside? We debated. We decided oh what the hell, it's SO cheap we can fix these problems! We were actually thinking of putting a reality home on the land. Then our real estate agent informed us that the property lines were up for interpretation. What? Yes, that's right. Here was a plot of land that the bank knew was 10 acres but had no clue where they started and where they ended. Awesome. We debated some more. It turned out the house could have very well been half on the property, half off. The shop, our top reason for purchasing could have not even been on the property. Who does this? Whidbey Island people that's who. Someone put incredible time and money into building this place and it wasn't even on their property. We also learned that the 40 acres of undeveloped land beyond ours could potentially be developed. That meant our driveway would become a freeway and the house was practically next to the driveway. Hmmmm, still worth it? Ultimately we decided that the money and time it would cost us to figure out the property lines was not worth it. We moved on.
Another winner we debated on was a foreclosure in Mill Creek. When you read Mill Creek you might as well read $$$ signs. It was in this NICE neighborhood, very close to a golf course and it had a pool. James and I went to it 3 times in the same day to behold its potential majesty. We were convinced this was it. We got our agent to drop everything and show us. OMG. That place was N.A.S.T.Y. You walk in and the smell of mold hit you. The laundry room, now void of its appliances, had a huge wet hole in the corner where James guessed the washer had leaked for years. Nothing in the house had been updated since the 70's. That included wall paper, carpeting, cabinets, you name it. The backyard was small and quite intimate with the neighbors. It was all concrete. There were large frogs in the hot tub. The pool was huge. There was not a barrier keeping tiny children from its harmful waters. The bedrooms were the real winners. Every single one of them had poop in them from a dog and the master bedroom had blood all over the floor. I am pretty sure a very sick old dog died in there painfully. The kitchen was the mold culprit. There was a door on the stairway wall that led to an attic crawl space, aka a door to potential death for my children. We left. We debated the whole way home. Could we buy it, fix its problems and flip it before it killed our children? We decided no. It was a painful choice but we got to it very quickly. As it turns out 7 people had put offers on it so we would have lost out anyway.
James found a house on a pleasant 2 acre parcel that had a house and a double wide on it for super cheap. The land was nice and flat. Very square. It was ideal. The house was whack. It had very low ceilings that covered up gorgeous tall ceilings. They put thick boards up on the walls instead of painting the existing walls or putting up wallpaper. The layout was bizarre. It was small. It was whack. The double wide was horrendous. Rabbits had clearly been bred there. It stunk so bad of rabbit. Someone had built a wonderful green house and then let it rot completely away. That place needed to be condemned. It was sketchy, unsafe and becoming one with the land. Our agent informed us that with our particular loan the bank would more than likely make us remove the double wide. For starters, it was never legally put there. It was too close to the house for it to be a legal residence. There was no deed to it either. The bank wasn't even sure it was part of the parcel. They thought the previous owner put it there but they weren't sure. If we bought it we would have to pay for its removal before we got our plot. So we debated again. Was the land alone worth it? No. It was not. That's the house that made us raise our limit. No more shitty cheap houses. We raised our limit and naively thought we would see better things in higher priced houses.