If you've been reading my blog long enough, you will know that when we first started looking for a home here in the Waikato back in 2016, we finally signed up to buy a 'lovely' home in Harrowfield.
It was a plaster home, something we had vowed not to buy. But our so called FRIEND 'L' (Real Estate Agent), convinced us it was a TOTALLY SOUND HOME, not a leaky home ... hell no!
She knew the owners of the home, and had in fact been their NEIGHBOUR ! ... and as we were to find out... she was looking after their interests, NOT ours.
Anyway, long story short, we had the house inspected by a builder friend, who CONDEMNED it. Then, we had to try and get out of a contract that 'L' had stitched up so we couldn't back out!
Thank god for the bank listening to Stew and our lawyer, because they eventually declined our finance, so we had an escape clause, and didn't have to buy it after all.
Why am I telling you this story all over again?
Well... we were in Harrowfeild yesterday, looking at a house there, and drove by that leaky house out of curiosity.
If we'd bought it, we would have had to pay for this to be done... and that can cost up to, or over $100,000 !
It has renewed my vow to never, ever trust a real estate agent who is trying to sell you a 'suspect' house, and to get independent advice, always. And if in doubt.... DON'T EVEN THINK OF BUYING IT!
It is a timely reminder, now that we are looking for a new home. I won't even step foot on a property if it's a plaster house.
Now, today we are going to get the house ready then head off into Hamilton again. I've lined up a couple more houses to look at.
There isn't much to do today to get the house ready for the Open Home. I shall probably spend the next few hours playing on the computer! lol
ONWARD...
Today's Open Home here, we had 4 groups through. One very interested, but they have to sell a home first. Like us then *smiles*
Our trip into Hamilton went OK. We saw three houses.
The third house was just lovely, it was one we planned on looking at yesterday, but didn't get to. It goes to Auction this week... so we are bound to miss out on it.
Home now and we just had a very late lunch (it's 4.20 pm!).
Dinner is gunna be really late tonight that's for sure.
It's now 9.05 and Stew and I really don't feel like dinner at all. So probably grab a sandwich again. Or just some crackers.
Signing off... it's been a long day again.
Why not leave the batteries in and just turn the floor off? I don't understand why you'd leave a note. So glad you didn't buy that leaky home - it costs a lot more than $100,000 to fix. Our friends estimate was $500,000 so they sold as is just for the price of their land!
ReplyDeleteI left a note as that was way quicker than trying to figure out how to turn the damn things off. Those heaters controls are complicated... for me at least.
ReplyDeleteFair enough :) I've never seen the point of heated floors. How crazy that there isn't a simple 'off' switch.
DeleteOh i rember the head ache you had over that house phew you dodge the bullet with that one. I had the ubderfloor heating on in hall when mum washere last week just takes the chill out of the air she has respiratory probs and cold air makes her breathing bad but turned it off the minute she left lol
ReplyDeleteThe poor people that bought that house! :(
ReplyDeletewow, $500,000 to reclad a house, that must have been a huge house, or on a VERY difficult site. My brother has a company that specialies in doing reclads on residential homes, he is a builder based in Auckland and currently does around 15 reclads per year. His average cost to customer to reclad is around $100,000 - $200,000, depending on the size and product chosen to reclad with. Unfortunately its not just plaster homes that he has to reclad, poorly clad homes of any material can have problems, seems to be both a design and material problem. Flat roof homes (with any cladding) seem to be one of the worst, as they have internal gutters that can block and put rain water back into the home.
ReplyDeleteIt was a large house in Mission Bay. The section was worth around 2 million so they just lived in it for a few years then sold for the section. I think there was more to be done than the recladding perhaps, I'm really not sure?
DeleteI can't get over that house with the new cladding!!!!! PS: when we did our reno 2 years ago, our architect insisted we get underfloor heating in the bathroom and downstairs living. I just agreed to the bathroom...... can't see the point of it in Sydney, but of course, we've never used it.
ReplyDeleteI could never sell a house as lovely as you have made yours to buy one of those blah houses you saw today. Your house will sell very quickly.
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