Possibly because I'm exhausted and punchy ... can Linux geekiness be measured and expressed in millitorvalds?
We just got back from looking at a very promising-looking house listing in Salem. Note the listing was promising ... the house itself turned out not to be. The house was described as circa 2800 square feet with full unfinished basement, had nice interior photos including a gorgeous kitchen, for only $254,000. The obvious speculation was that it was either an impending foreclosure, or a bank-owned property post-foreclosure.
The truth of the matter appears to be that the owners ran out of money halfway through a total interior remodelling, and either got foreclosed on, or just signed it over to the bank and walked away from it, leaving a boat in the garage. The kitchen is the only room in the house that's close to completely finished. The "full unfinished basement" would be better described as a "dank, dark, wet cellar". "Fixer-upper" doesn't adequately cover it; this house isn't a fixer-upper, it's a basket case. In its present form, it's not inhabitable. (It's also only set back about 20 feet from a noisy, very heavily travelled main road. And at some point someone apparently tried to break in through the garage ... it's unclear whether the inside garage door stopped them, or they got inside and found nothing to steal except the granite kitchen counters, which are probably worth a good $1000 but are a little difficult to carry away.)
Oh well. That which looks too good to be true, usually is. This house listing was no exception. Someone had to have been very careful with the angles when taking those interior photos.