the times of kryptoniteglows

I looked at a house today that was bought in 2005, the price wasn’t even a “bubble” price, but guy did 100% financing and got $3,000 cash at closing. Anyway, the place is a wreck today and being sold by the bank for $100k less. Comparing the comps, the price he paid in 2005 is about FMV today, give or take maybe $10k-20k (alot of the props are getting $10k at closing).

Well, that would be the case if the place wasn’t so neglected. They aren’t showing the place until Sunday, but I drove by to take a look today and they were pumping out 10inches of water from the basement, ewww… Peered though the windows and I could see some ceiling was missing? I should of asked the guy pumping out the water (they are a clean out company) if I could go inside, but I was to shy, worst he could of said was no… Guess I will have to wait to Sunday to take a look.

Anyhow, the former owner’s name sounded sorta familiar, so I look them up on Facebook, turns out they work at the college I went to for undergrad. I suppose I ran into the guy at one point or another and that is why it sounded sorta of familiar. Do a little Google sleuthing and find out the guy has a bunch of little side business for websites and computer repair, was an “example” alum at his college, had like a 3.8x GPA when he went there.

Long story short, seemed like an all around good guy, don’t know how he let the house get so bad and lose it. I thought the house was kinda ugly from the listing picture, but turns out looking at it in person was not bad. The only thing is that only cash or rehab loans are going to be accepted. I’m short on cash for the whole purchase price and don’t want to take out a rehab loan because they have greater interest.

We’ll get creative after viewing Sunday and actually like the place.

So I’ve been seeing this one property in my searches, over and over with what seemed like a great price. I was rather surprised it had not been sold or something so far, the seller was said to be “motivated”, but I just figured they were not as motivated as listed. The listing is probably 6 months old, the picture of the property still has snow on it…. Some listings don’t have dates, so that is the first bad sign. The lack of pictures or pictures that are obviously out of date.

Google map’s streetview showed the house to be next to a gas station. Given that, I’m not even sure why I bothered to look. The place was also off of RT 4, basically a 4 lane highway is front of the house, these should have all been obvious signs that this place was no good…

I decided to do some background search on it, found they basically hadn’t paid their property taxes since 2006! This kind of intrigued me that it would have to be sold at a sheriff’s sale for taxes or mortgage, so I decided to take a look. Took the short drive over, it was only really then that I noticed the how bad it would be to live in front of a 4 lane roadway. There is sort of a barrier between the row of houses that start the development and the roadway, but it’s mainly a little row of immature trees. The gas station also seems awfully close, in that you could walk over to it.

The “two car” garage was basically one super long garage, in theory you could fit two cars inside it, but would you? Against my better judgment, I get out of my car to look at the property. That’s when the stench hit me! I don’t know if someone died inside or a crazy cat lady lived there or some combination of both, it stunk!

First, let me admit I’m definitely abrasive, so maybe I scared the salespeople off…

My parents just bought a townhouse, likely just to resell it once they fix it up. One of them items the place needs are new windows as the current ones are leaking and/or the seals are broken. My brother gets P.J. Fitzpatrick to come out to the place for a quote. They send out two guys, they make small talk and make measurements of the windows. We are pretty upfront we are mostly concerned with price, but who isn’t in this economy? The guys are pretty upfront about how they aren’t going to be the cheapest because they make their own windows and are of the highest quality.. Then one of the guys, pulls out his laptop to start doing a power point presentation about their company. How 50% of their business come from repeat customers or referrals, which is nice I guess, but I’ve already asked you to come here, so I don’t exactly need all that much convincing. One of the freaking slides was of old Pete Fitzpatrick, like I care. At this point I’m kinda of annoyed because I really don’t care and just want my quote, my dad evens tells the guy he is talking too much. The guy is like I just started! I’m like omg… Seriously, I was

Anyways, working for the company that I do, in the industry I do, I understand why they may not be the cheapest because of the service they offer. However, I contacted them about getting a price and I would like to get that NOW. One of the things I say specifically is that I am interested in getting the price for comparison, even if you are not the cheapest, it maybe worth it to go with you guys if I see what the difference is, however if your price is something like DOUBLE then I likely would not use you. They say nothing to dispute that their company may cost DOUBLE what other companies cost. And apparently they take offense to what I’ve said because they decide to leave without giving me a proposal at all!

Well thanks for nothing P.J. Fitzpatrick! You’ve not only wasted your time, but my time as well. I’m definitely disappointed, especially since I wasn’t given the price after all that wasting of time. For some reason, I also imagine their customers being senior citizens who hire them at over DOUBLE cost because they would like to have someone to talk to, since their salespeople, LOVE to talk, talk , talk.

The salespeople were not even very good or perhaps P.J. Fitzpatrick windows are not very good. The more I was talking to the salesperson, the more I felt like I was getting ripped off, but he was just trying to make me feel good about getting ripped off. I think a lot of the big selling points for companies now is to promote the 30% tax credit you can get for making energy efficient home improvements, which we would have received here because of the likelihood we were going to sell the place soon. Anyway, the moronic salesmen doesn’t even mention that their windows would add resell value to the home, so I must assume they would not because they aren’t exactly “name brand”. I don’t know much about windows, but I know of Anderson and Pella, those seem like name brand windows to me and I would probably pay more for those. I’m slightly bias as I do currently have mostly Anderson windows…

I get to have another company come out tomorrow and do the same thing over again! Maybe I’ll feign interest in living there, so I can actually receive a freaking estimate!

In summary to P.J. Fitzpatrick: I want new windows, I will pay for new windows, you give me estimate and I will compare with other estimates. There is no need for me to see slides with old white men! While price is a concern and I can’t imagine where it wouldn’t be, I certainly would pay more for quality, reliability, and getting the home sold faster. Your salesman showing me old white men, do not help with that at all.