You Down With O.P.P.?
Other People's Property can be...weird.
House hunting ain’t easy. I’m talking about IRL house hunting, not the sanitized versions like an open house in a nice neighborhood or a heavily produced, tastefully staged social media reel. And not one of those staged cable channel house search shows either. (How do I know they are staged? Because we were finalists to be ON one!) None of these show the CRAZY that’s out there on the market. We’ve been looking for a couple of months and let me tell you—we have seen some things.
Most real estate photographers have lenses that distort reality. They also get creative with hiding “issues” by curating angles, lighting, and what to NOT have in the frame. Sometimes they outright photoshop those “issues” as if we were not going to notice the 5-story apartment building on the other side of the privacy fence? One house that looked lovely in photos was an utter shitshow—from the garage door that had about a foot of damp, spongy wood at the bottom, to the sagging skylights held in place by a single, determined, ancient bead of moldy caulk. After wrestling open the front door from its dry-rotted seals, we were greeted by stale air that was colder than the temperature outside. Witch’s tit cold. Out of curiosity, we twisted the sink faucet handle and indeed the house pipes were frozen solid. Even the pool had a layer of leaf-filled icebergs like a gross, gigantic version of the decorative fruit filled ones in a party punchbowl. Gag me. Fresh paint, the listing said. Yes indeed, fresh paint everywhere. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that someone took a spray gun and raw-dog painted the trim. Every floor (hardwood, tile, or carpet) and every wall and every ceiling had dark greige hazy ombre “design elements.” All for the bargain price of $1.1M.
The cruelest tease is the house where you think…ok it’s dated, but I’m a badass and we can move in and I’ll renovate.
No.
Time and time again, it’s just a heap of deferred maintenance and faded dreams. You walk in and you can see—no you can actually feel the family drama. Perhaps a distant sibling doggedly pushing from afar for the most money from the sale. Month after month, the mom or dad had lingered in medical care while the house sat empty until it became a dark, dated time capsule priced to reflect the loveliness it once had instead of reflecting the distressed state of its current condition. One such $900K place we visited was filled with overpriced leftovers of a long past estate sale—a 1972 Farmer’s Almanac on a mildewed ping-pong table with boxes of puzzles and Reader’s Digests from the 80’s…an avocado rotary phone with an extra-long cord silently on the kitchen wall where dirty and lidless “$10 each” pyrex dishes cluttered the peeling laminate counters…grungy generic prints in K-mart frames marked $20 hung on walls with shadows from missing photos……a small, discolored plastic jewelry box of random, dated costume jewelry for $50 on a tasteless midcentury maple $75 side table. The heavy sadness grew as we walked through the place until it was no longer interesting to see what outrageously priced item that time forgot was in the next room. Remember how Harry Potter needed a piece of chocolate to recover from having hope and happiness sucked out by a Dementor? Yeah, it was kinda like that as we ran away headed out for comfort food and a stiff drink.
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Possibly the grossest thing I never dreamed I would see was a floor covered in dog excrement—basement poop. My agent and I (hubs was out of town) pulled up to a cute enough house in a great neighborhood. We were greeted at the door by an aggressively barking dog, so needless to say we didn’t go in. While we were discussing the options, the owner was heard wrestling the dog away from the door. A moment or two later, we were nearly hit by her brand new Audi sedan speeding down the driveway with Cujo barking furiously from the back window.
A harbinger of things to come.
By the front door was a large pile of dirt from an overturned houseplant and curiously, almost all the doors and cabinet fronts were missing in this entire house along with the odd hole in the ceiling. No mention in the listing of its “untidy” or “unkempt” condition. I kept reminding myself, look past this person’s shit, and I was doing ok until we got to the basement…the dark, windowless basement which looked like it was decorated by her wake-and-bake son who moved home from college to refocus, so to speak. I opened the door to the storage room and could no longer look past her shit. We were hit by a wave of eau-de-fresh-dog-mess. Correction—messes. Multiple piles of dog doodie. Pounds of poop. The diameter of this dog’s butthole was shocking. We hightailed it out of there like the people in the pool of Bushwood Country Club.
Now, I no longer have expectations for what 1.2 million dollars will buy you in a trendy or prestigious ITP-ATL zip code. (ITP=Inside The Perimeter) One house we had to wait a week to see because the sellers’ agent said “the owners are decluttering.” She lied. I guess we should have known what we were in for when she texted our agent when opening the lockbox.
“Sellers request that you accompany your clients as they view the home because the sellers have extensive and valuable collections.”
We opened the door to be greeted by an enormous, gilded frame, larger than life portrait of the owner. Far from the most handsome dude, this guy’s photo was in every room, and every room was stuffed to the gills with stuff. You couldn't even determine the dimensions of the dining room because of the stacked boxes and large plastic totes full of God-knows-what. Family photos covered almost every square inch of the place, and every single horizontal surface was piled with random items. Each room had at least one wall-sized, floor-to-ceiling, glass-front curio cabinet filled with bizarre dolls, glass animals, Disney-themed collectibles, and tourist tchotchkes. It was mental illness in tangible, real-life form.
This past weekend’s open houses:
one with multiple items pertaining to a politically polarizing figure—a hard no
a somewhat distressed place with a hovering, annoying, pushy agent—also, no
a lovely house that was too big for us—and received 15 offers in 48 hours
the absolutely perfect house that we scrambled to put an offer in by a 6pm deadline only to lose out for some unknown reason…apparently offering full asking price and attractive terms is sometimes not enough
I suppose every house visit is one visit closer to the house that we are happy to purchase? Y’all, none of this is for the faint of heart.
I like that the awkward family photo you chose is also in an album on my phone of favorite AFPs. #KindredSpirits
great description of what you have gone through this past month! One never knows what is behind a front door! How about a nice apartment? Good luck! Joy