Random thought; bad house, no donut

[unixronin]

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.

Comments

[kayre]

There's a realtor up here whose photographer is an absolute genius; I am in awe of his or her ability to make any shack look like a dream home.

Ultimately it backfired; I reached the point of being very suspicious of any Bill Beck property, and asking my realtor what the catch was before even visiting the property.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yup ... this comes into play with the Newmarket house cymrullewes wants to look at. There are only three interior photos, and they all show the same room. My immediate question is, what does the rest of the house look like? Does it mean they think that room (which is probably the lightest room in the house) is the house's best feature?

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

I don't think the front parlor is the brightest room in the house. I think the brightest has got to be the back room facing the garage.

Also I think the best feature of the house is the back which they did have two photos of. I'm sort of unhappy they don't have room sizes listed like the other listings did. But it does have square footage listed. Also the colour of the house and the backyard.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I don't think the front parlor is the brightest room in the house. I think the brightest has got to be the back room facing the garage.

I'm pretty certain that's the room in the photos -- the one facing the garage.

I didn't see any photos of the back of the house. One from the front looking towards the back, sure....

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

No... because the front photos show a bay window and that's in the room shots.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

....Oh, wait a minute. The shape of the house fooled me. I thought that WAS the room with the bay window.

This house has all kinds of after-the-fact additions bolted on, doesn't it....? I still say its best feature is the fieldstone retaining wall.