their home, so they looked him up to ask for help in finding the right house. The problem was that the only praise they heard about him came from clients who had hired him to sell homes, not from homebuyers. The agent met up with Sue and her fiancé to go over different homes he had on his list, and then it was time to take a trip around town to see them. There was one home that he talked profusely about, and so they went in person to take a look. Sue and her fiancé knew what good quality was, so they could immediately see that there were problems. The basement doorway was weak. The upstairs bathroom floor bounced, and the light switches in the hallway seemed to pop and flicker. Although very nicely painted, this house didn’t fool them. When confronted with these concerns, the agent replied that they could fix them later. Although their gut told them not to move forward with making a purchase, they agreed to a $10,000 price reduction and took the house. Big mistake! The problems they had noticed went much deeper. The weak basement doorway translated into unfortified walls leading downstairs. The bouncy bathroom floor had been wet under the linoleum and about three inches up two of the walls. The flickering light switches warned them of the outdated wiring that had to be replaced. Ultimately, their $10,000 savings only provided a bit of consolation when they paid $27,000 for all the remodeling. The five-bedroom house sat on pastoral acreage in the Canadian countryside. At less than $380,000, it seemed like a steal. But it wasn’t a bargain. Ben and Amber soon realized the dream home they had purchased for their growing family was infested with hundreds of garter snakes. Throngs of reptiles crawled beneath the outer walls. The young couple said they would lie awake and listen to slithering inside the walls at night. It was like living in a horror movie.
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