My house-hunting continues. At this point, I've basically looked at everything in my price range that I'd even consider living in (and a lot of stuff I wouldn't consider living in - as my Realtor cheerfully puts it, "You're looking for the top of the bottom!"), and now I'm just waiting for new stuff to come on the market.
Amazingly, some of the shitholes that I've looked at and laughed at have already sold. I mean, really! I wish I could somehow call up the buyers and ask, "What are you thinking?! Do you have ANY IDEA how much it's going to cost to replace that foundation?!" Everybody's gotta live someplace, I guess.
There was one property I had my eye on that was out in the country, but still close enough to work. It had two acres (yessssss) of land, a great big garage, beautiful views, and ....... a single-wide mobile home. At first I was all, like, "ahhahahahaNO. I've lived in a trailer before, and I'm not gonna do it again." But the price was so damn low that I started thinking, well, maybe I could buy it, and put up a stick-built (traditional, non-TRAILER) home in a few years. This property had been on the market before, had had one contract fall through, and was now on the market again. I called my mortgage broker, who informed me that I would not be able to get a reasonable-interest-rate mortgage on a single-wide. (I have no idea why; maybe because trailers tend to, well, blow over and catch fire and stuff?) That's okay, I thought, it was probably a bone-headed idea anyway, and put it out of my mind.
I subscribe to an automated-listing thingie that notifies me whenever new stuff in my price range comes on the market. It also lets me know when a listing has changed. And yesterday morning, it let me know that the listing on the trailer property had changed. Hmmm, I wondered, maybe they've dropped the price even lower? Or maybe it sold .............. I clicked on the listing, and the seller had RAISED the price. By almost TWENTY PERCENT.
Whaaaaa? You've got a property that hasn't sold, that no one can even get a MORTGAGE on, for Pete's sake, and now you're raising the price?
I would love to know the story behind this, because it's gotta be a good one. The only thing that I can possibly think of is that gas companies have been doing a lot of prospecting and buying up of gas rights in this area over the past couple of years; maybe the seller found out the gas rights to his land were worth something. I can't think of another reason to raise the price .....
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2 comments:
That is a bit weird about the price going up. It must be the gas thing, or else the property's been on the market for so long that its value has gone up! Of course, things are only worth what people will pay for them. Maybe they figured if they raised the price, they would attract people who are looking in a higher price range or something. Doesn't make much sense.
Well, I hope something good comes long. You just reminded me of an O magazine I read while in a waiting room. It had an article about a couple who built their own house--like, literally, they bought some kit and put it together. They live somewhere in the boonies in Florida. I suppose they don't need things like heat down there...
I think they bumped it up so that it would appear on the radar of people who were looking for land at a higher price, with the intention of doing what you thought about doing. Maybe they figure that unless you can get an "I'm going to build a house" mortgage, they aren't going to unload it because no one can afford to buy their crappy trailer right now.
Crazy.
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