Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash
Every day, a new house goes on the market. It’s exciting to look at the photos of new homes and imagine myself living there, hosting family members at holidays, complaining about snow removal…ya know, just the usual neighborly conversation starters as you pick up your mail from the mailbox after work.
This latest house that I saw was amazing on the inside. Things looked so pretty. I mean dollhouse cute. “This house is a complete flip,” my realtor said as we walked through. “It looks like they did a great job!” I said. I guess we’ll see.
I’ve placed offers on numerous homes in my price range and have been outbid. It’s been months since one of my offers has been accepted (If you want to read about what happened with that home and all the work needed, click here). Then, finallyyyy, my offer was accepted! I was ecstatic, to put it mildly! Now for the home inspection…this wasn’t my first rodeo; let’s see how this goes.
My home inspector began finding all sorts of issues that would need to be addressed within the first year. As a former math major, I did some quick mental math in order to calculate his estimates: “This is looking like it will cost at least $20,000 to resolve these issues within my first year in the house!”
Then, we walked outside and made it onto the roof. The inspector immediately recognized that the roof would need to be replaced. I later called my insurance agent, and my realtor called for a roofer to come out. The insurance agent took one look at the photos of the house and immediately had concerns. The roofer came out and confirmed that the roof would need to be replaced. Since the house and the roof weren’t very large, his quote was less than $10,000. #moremoney
“Welp, guess we better get out of this one,” I decided.
How many prospective homebuyers have to walk away from a house because of issues like this? Let’s join the fight for more affordable housing and access to home ownership for anyone with this dream in their hearts.