All Right Ch. 01

None of the appliances worked properly, but they seemed to be minor faults. I knew something about that sort of thing, but I had a buddy who knew that stuff backwards. I thought that with his help they might be salvageable, at least most of them. I wouldn't be averse to new appliances, anyway. What was there was basic landlord blah, anyway, near enough to antiques. We didn't need the cash flow problem having to replace everything at once would create so it would be nice if we could fix most of it. It would be pretty simple to share laundry facilities if the second washer was as dead as it looked.

Both sides did have separate electrical and water meters. We weren't worried about that, but it could be a useful feature on resale.

I grinned a little. Stacey looked flummoxed, but Barbara grinned back at me. She called a friend and he dropped over in five minutes while we were asking why the bathrooms hadn't been condemned. They were in terrible shape. The tenants hadn't minded where the water went or how long it stayed there. It makes you wonder, sometimes, how people can live in such conditions when it just takes a little care and a few extra minutes to avoid them.

Outside the yard was overgrown, but there were remnants of flower beds and roses. The back yard, which had once been divided by a fence along the line of the party wall, would give the girls lots of places to play. There were even a couple of trees. Parking for four vehicles, two for each side, was already in place. That would accommodate our three cars.

Barbara and her friend dropped out of our little group unbeknownst to the realtors while we were all agreeing that bad tenants could ruin a property. Good tenants could improve one beyond belief, too, though that wasn't the situation we faced. By the time we'd finished the tour and completed our list of defects, Barbara's friend had gone. She caught my eye and flashed me the okay sign, which probably meant that her friend thought the bones were good. We all knew the cosmetics were awful, but that was curable. If the house had a broken back, with the main bearing beam gone, rotten sills or a cracked foundation, the problems weren't curable in the same way, though I'd seen it done.

It looked like a good dose of tender loving care, paint and drywall might get us what we were looking for at an almost bargain price. It would involve a lot of sweat equity. Stacey and I had done that before, with excellent results. Barbara seemed willing to try.

I attached myself to the realtor with the papers and instructed her to draw up an offer to the estate for two thirds of the asking price. I knew from the listing cut that the property had been vacant, both units, for at least fifteen months. It was just sucking money out of the estate, and they hadn't made any effort to clean it up, let alone fix anything. If it had been pros managing the place I would have offered even less, but these people were such amateurs they'd probably reject any offer so far out of their asking zone, even if nobody had made any offer at all in the last six months. They wouldn't be aware that the only value to the property was what someone would pay for it, not some arbitrary value put on it by the real estate listing agent or the property tax assessor.

I made a note to have the property tax assessor inspect the place before we did any work, even cleaning up. That would probably have our taxes in the low to too low range for maybe ten years. The inspection cycle was almost non-existent.

While the agent filled in the paperwork, I checked with Barbara.

"My friend is a structural engineer specializing in residential real estate. He confirmed what we thought, that while it's ugly as sin, the bones are good. It'll take more than paint and paper, but not much more," she told me. "Can you do plasterboard repairs?"

"I didn't see too much that the three of us couldn't handle. If they accept the offer, we can bring it into shape within a month, at most two."

"I hadn't realized that a two-unit property like this one works better for us than a house cum apartment. It should be ideal once it's cleaned up."

We took the girls home. Later that evening the agent called in a tizzy.

"They've offered to drop their asking price by ten per cent! Isn't that marvellous! I'll bring you over an amendment tonight."

"Tell them I've dropped my offer to sixty per cent of list."

"You can't go lower!"

"Check with your boss. I just did. I'm not bound by my earlier offer once they counter. That's a rejection. Either offer them sixty per cent or just reject their counteroffer and we'll see what else is out there. That way we can forget about fixing that place up and go find something similar in top end shape, now we have some additional options. I'm not interested in spending the next three months renovating unless there's a financial benefit."

Stacey was horrified. She actually liked redoing a place, and was damned good at it. Barbara thought I was maybe pushing the envelope.

The realtor called back in twenty minutes to confirm that we had a deal, on my terms, subject to financing, insurability and the rest of it. We could sign the papers tomorrow. I dug out a bottle of wine and we toasted each other and our new home.

*****

To be continued.