First-time homebuyers are almost the most gullible people in the world.
Out-of-state first-time homebuyers are the most.
For example, here is an incomplete list of the things we let the sellers get away with when we purchased our century home while still living in New York:
- Not revealing until we were about to sign the contract that the garage would need to be torn down and replaced (which ended up meaning “moved 30 feet forward and rebuilt after addressing the lack of foundation under the old garage”)
- Moving the closing date a month earlier than we wanted, meaning we wouldn’t be there in person for the final walkthrough
- Claiming they had fixed the leak in the ceiling
- Saying they’d fixed the porch
- Leaving the “extra” refrigerator in the basement (which didn’t work, and which we’d told them to remove)
- Not repairing any of the original wood floors that were sloping and sagging
All of these we found out about within a few months of moving in. But that doesn’t mean there were no surprises left for us!
Last week we discovered that the inspector’s note of “old termite damage and repaired wood,” which we’d asked him to clarify meant there were no longer any pests and received the answer that it’s all in the report (that said only “old termite damage and repaired wood”), probably meant there were termites in the house we were planning to buy, and we were clueless enough to let them continue to eat our home until over five years later when we found out they existed and were–quoting the termite treatment guy–“fighting the carpenter ants.”
A New Thing Every Day 