Leonard's Adventure

We had an inspector out to evaluate the house, best money we ever spent. The house is infested with rats. They've chewn through an unkown amount of electrical wiring and torn up the air ducts in the attic. The roof needs replacement down to the undersized rafters. The HVAC system is on the verge of failing completely or blowing up spectacularly and there is an asbestos lining the HVAC closet. The kitchen appliances don't work properly, water is creeping up the exterior walls. . . it goes on. The interior and yard were clean and in good condition but when you looked under the hood it was a completely different story. Needless to say, we're exercising the option to not buy the home based on the result of the inspection and we start looking again!

We've found another house, made an offer and had our inspector out. Everything is going swimmingly until the bank's appraiser comes out. The list price was 120k, we offered 115k and it was accepted. We thought this a good deal for us compared to the other houses we had looked at in the neighborhood and the good condition of this home. The appraiser came out and said the home was worth 108k tops. He is out of his mind. I did a search for similarly sized homes in the same zip and found ONE listed under 110k (just barely) and its blurb read as follows:

GOVERNMENT OWNED!!!! For sale in AS-IS and WHERE-IS condition!

Anybody know what "where-is condition" means? Anyway, it didn't sound like a real winner. The owners of our future house had it appraised last year for $125k and all the appraiser had to say was "well, things change" what a chump! The seller's realtor wound up contacting him and showing 4 homes that recently sold in the area and what they sold for, then he was reluctantly willing to change. I have no respect for this guy. When he first refused to change his appraisal I thought "what an ass, but at least he's a principled ass!" When he changed the appraisal later I realized that this guy just didn't do his job. The worst part is, we paid him for the privelege, almost as much as we paid our kick-ass inspector. Anyway, the realtor says things are ironed out now and we'll get the final numbers today.