STORY 3 The stories are endless. I recently met a lady at a café with an incredible first-time buyer story. I happened to overhear her conversation, so I decided to step in and ask about it, and this is what she told me. Sue and her fiancé were searching for their first home with the intention of buying one before their wedding. They had been told about a great real estate agent in the very city that they wanted to call home, and so they looked him up to ask for his help in finding the right home. The problem was that the only praise that they heard about him was from clients who had hired him to sell homes, not from buyers. He 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 to take a look. Sue and her fiancé knew what good quality was, and so they were able to see right away 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, the house didn’t fool them. When confronted with these concerns, the agent replied that they could always fix problems 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 that they had noticed went much deeper. The weak basement doorway turned out to be a side effect of 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 The flickering light switches were warning symptoms of an outdated wiring system which had to be completely replaced. In the end, their $10,000 savings only helped to give them a bit of consolation when they paid a $27,000 bill for all of the remodeling!
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