Gosh, dern! I hope you can re-negotiate or find the perfect house within this short time! I don't envy you.
It's a nail-biter to be sure. My friend has given up trying to find a property before they have to move (huge kerfuffle with an insane landlord, so they need to be moved out by the date or risk giving him way too much power over them - they found their next rental by pleading with an estate agent for tips on who was about to put their place on the market.) This friend has explained the word 'bottleneck' in the real estate context to me. Our town currently has one and they benefit no one but estate agents and landlords. Essentially, it is so hard to get a house here that would-be buyers are doing everything they can to make themselves as attractive as possible. This means that they want to make an offer with 'no chain' (they want to be able to say that they don't need to sell anything first in order to complete the purchase of the next property). Sooooo, a fair number of individuals are selling their current property, moving in to rental accommodation for 6-12 months, and using that time to make a no-chain offer on a house. It is housing madness the likes of which I've never seen, and I've lived in San Francisco, LA, and Manhattan.
The house across the street just listed this week. I enjoy seeing what properties are going for in the neighborhood. They have done some extensive renovating and it shows. But then I wonder whether it is better to save the major renovating for the buyers so they can do exactly what they want. We will not be selling for a few years, but it IS something to think about. Carl had said that we would rip out the carpeting when he was no longer doing dialysis and put in hardwood flooring throughout. Well, it has been two and a half years and THAT hasn't happened! Who knows if we will EVER do that. The owners across the street did and OH! It looks fantastic!
Living vicariously through you, dear Cariad! Keep us posted.
Aleta
I could give you a laundry list of renovation and remodeling we swore we were going to do, only to sell the house with everything in basically the same state as when we bought it.
As for buyers wanting to choose their own style, there was a house we really liked in town but it is nearly double the cost of the property we hope to purchase. It is still on the market. Builders bought it and renovated it, and made some truly puzzling design choices: purple for the kitchen cupboards? Who would think this is the wisest choice when attempting to go for broad appeal? Cost aside, we did tell the estate agent that the house was worth well under the asking price
to us because we would have to pay to undo what we didn't like about the property. That would have been such a waste, too, because everything is completely new in there. If we had purchased it, I know that we would have more than likely spoken at length about remodeling the kitchen, probably even drawn up plans and priced new cabinetry, and in the end.... we would have just lived with the purple.
Thanks for following our housing saga!
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