This Can Happen if You Listen to a Realtor...

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My youngest son and his wife started looking for a house several months before they married in August 2023. They didn't have a realtor initially, and most of their searches were done online. That's when they got in the habit of texting my wife and me listings they were interested in, and some looked good. But after seeing the prices, my wife and I couldn’t believe how much the real estate market had changed since we bought our house in ‘87.  Back then, banks required home inspections, and if the house had a septic system, a Title Five inspection.

In today’s market, realtors advise buyers to waive the Home and Title 5 inspections if they’re serious about becoming homeowners. They're no longer required, and sellers don't want the hassle of negotiations. They give specific viewing times, and there's a deadline for bids. It's a total seller's market.  

As a result, buyers are forced to take incredible risks to buy a house. I couldn’t believe it. I’m a tradesman, and my opinion of realtors has always been that they're greedy know-nothings who play both sides against the middle. I've never trusted them. 

When my wife and I bought our house, offers always came in lower than the asking price. Our home was listed for $130,000, and my wife offered $93,000, which infuriated the seller. We ended up getting it for $110,000, $20,000 below asking.  

Today, eager buyers, on the advice of realtors, are overpaying, some by as much as $150,000, and sometimes with cash. A young working couple has little chance of competing in that inflated market.  

I looked at several houses with them, but at one point, my time became limited, and they started setting me up to look at houses before I headed to the hospital to be with my wife. That meant meeting directly with realtors…  

I spent 45 years working in houses, so I know a little somethin' about ‘em. After I did a walkthrough, I’d call my son on my way to the hospital and tell him what I thought, and in most cases, it wasn’t always what he and his wife wanted to hear.  They wanted to buy a particular house at one point, and I had to set ‘em straight. “If you buy that fuckin’ house, I’ll never set foot in it. It’s a piece of shit!” I wanted them to buy a house; I didn't want them to make a big mistake, one they'd regret for the rest of their lives. That house had two sump pumps and water stains a foot and a half up the foundation wall…

Greedy people flipping houses, in many cases, are just putting lipstick on a pig, and first-time home buyers can be easily fooled. Those houses have "curb appeal" but nothing else. I'm all about the bones. Show me a house with good bones; by that, I mean solid framing, structural integrity, and plumbing, heating, and electrical systems that work and are up to code.  My son asked me what I felt was a deal breaker. I told him, “A house with two sump pumps and water stains a foot and a half up the foundation walls, for starters!”    

Funny, when he called the realtor about the water problem, she said the two sump pumps were installed “just in case…” and that there “hadn’t been any issues that she knew of…”  

The all-too-familiar smell of mold and mildew permeated the entire basement of that house, and there was no denying the watermarks. I didn't need a realtor to tell me that the house had a water problem…   

I looked at one house that had undergone an oil-to-gas conversion, leaving large unfilled holes in the concrete foundation where the oil fill and vent once were. It had lots of other random holes, too. Not surprisingly, there were a dozen mouse traps scattered around the basement. You could hire an exterminator, but ridding the house of mice doesn’t remove all the mouse shit in the walls and ceilings. And mice always seem to crawl into inaccessible spots in walls and ceilings to die, and while they're decomposing, they stink to high heaven. That's also a deal breaker.  

I once had to walk away from a boiler job because the dead rodent smell was sickening, and the homeowners refused to do anything about it. One of my original proverbs is, "Some people stand knee-deep in shit for so long they don't even smell it…" Apparently, that was the case…  

Many things can be fixed, but not a house built on a high water table or one infiltrated with rodents. 

Another house we looked at had in-ground termite traps around the entire perimeter of the foundation. Wood strapping was nailed under the sill plate outdoors so the termites would chow down there before making their way into the structure, alerting the homeowners to the problem. Of course, the realtor said the previous owners "never had a termite problem; they just got a good deal, so they decided to take preventative measures." (Yeah, right!)  

I wasn’t buying it. At the very least, one of their neighbors must’ve had termites, and the flying insects can make their way through the neighborhood, so it makes good sense to protect your investment if one of your neighbors has a termite problem. It was either that or the house at one time had termites of its own, and without a home inspection, they'd be taking a big risk.

The one thing you can't choose is your neighbors. One house they were interested in had a politically spirited next-door neighbor who had a dozen flags and signs in his backyard facing the house for sale. The owners of that home were doing their best to intimidate their political adversaries from wanting to move in next door. I believe it was a very effective deterrent.

Another house had a life-size plastic horse and matching pony in its front yard facing the street. Strange yard ornaments, indeed! I'm sure the local high school kids jumped the chain-link fence when they got drunk for a chance to ride the horse, which would explain the large "No Trespassing" sign next to the plastic Palomino…

One realtor boldly suggested a certain neighborhood was safe because many local cops lived there. The realtor conveniently left out that Brian Albert's house was just around the corner from the one we were looking at. Can you say Karen Read?

You never really know who lives next door to you until you see them getting handcuffed and being forced into the backseat of a police cruiser on the evening news…  

I never candy-coated my observations, and at one point, I thought they were gonna send me packing. They may not have liked what I was saying, but they listened. 

Would I eventually look at a house and give them the okay to buy it, or would they decide to bench me and buy a home without asking my opinion? 

A song for all the fucking realtors lying through their teeth…

To be continued…