I suppose, on the bright side, both Paul and I have purged a good quarter-to-third of our crap since moving in, so we won’t have nearly as much stuff to take with us, wherever we end up. I’m looking for locations, but being as we’re still five weeks out from our forced moving date, it’s hard to make a realistic choice as yet.
That said, we were toying with the idea of seeing if we could buy this place. Here’s the problem: as previously mentioned, the owner of this condo paid $650K four years ago (madness!), and has dropped the price even further to $325K. So he’s taking a serious bath. The only reason we can think that he wants to sell now – while the market is bottoming out or still in freefall, depending on which housing “expert” you talk to – is that he needs the money, pronto.
Trouble is, I wouldn’t pay more than $200K for this place. Yes, the river view and being next to downtown is awesome. However, this place needs work. A lot of work. Just off the top of my head:
- The deck needs to be sanded and stained
- The carpeting needs to be replaced
- The weirdo lighting needs to be redone – there are five lights in the kitchen on four different switches, and it’s still pitch-dark
- The bathrooms need to be redone; rip out the carpets and put in tile.
- The kitchen needs to be remodeled from the ground up, at the very least, get rid of the 25-year-old appliances.
Now, as an owner, I would have no problems whatsoever doing all this work myself. But here’s the other side of the conundrum:
- Property taxes on this unit are around $5500. It’s possible to maybe get it reappraised based on a lower sale price, but not by a tremendous amount.
- Since all our neighbors are elderly retirees, they have people come in to do the windows and gardening as part of the Home Owner’s Association, which is a whopping $300 a month(!)
So, taking that into account and adding in what it would cost to get a loan, and even if the owner accepted our low-low-lowball offer…it still wouldn’t make financial sense in this current climate.
I have come to the conclusion that we were simply very very lucky to rent this place for as long as we did, and there’s nothing else we can do about it.
I’m going to miss my river-view “office,” but now it’s back to searching the For Rent ads. And hoping I get an interview with that COCC job. I’m not beyond groveling at this point.
