The story starts sometime in November. After looking through houses for three months my real estate agent Peter sends me this listing in Santa Clara.
I've been looking for houses mainly in Milpitas. In Milpitas the houses are less expensive, the neighborhoods are getting better, and it's close to the hills and large parks. Milpitas would take a little longer commute but that's fine. We had been living in Alviso so there would not be much of a difference.
I had asked for Peter to look in Santa Clara as well. We see very few houses in Santa Clara. The houses are overpriced, the neighborhoods can be similar to Milpitas. But it's in the heart of Silicon Valley. Property value is higher, school system is valued more. Chances are in Santa Clara, you would be centrally located to work and all that's hip in Silicon Valley.
So Peter sends the listing for the Money Pit and there are no pictures with the listing. It's priced out at $400k. It's listed at 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1300 square feet interior, 6500 square feet of yard. Sounds a little too good to be true, but that's typical. Sellers have a habit of pricing their houses lower so they get people to look at it. In my short three month experience, it seems customary to bid almost 10% higher than the given price, even in this terrible 10% unemployment economy.
I take a look on maps.google.com to see what the satellite imaging looks like. My first problem, is that the house fairly close to a major thoroughfair. From the street view, the first thing I see is this:
Who wants to see trash in front of their prospective new home? But this image could have been taken quite some time ago so I didn't sweat it too much. Also, there was some weird motel complex across the street.
So a few of things already going against it, it almost did not make the 'see list' of houses to take a look at that weekend.
So the weekend comes, we take a look at a few houses in Milpitas. We find a few we like. Then there are three houses in Santa Clara we want to see next, including the Money Pit. The first two houses remind me how much smaller the houses are in Santa Clara for the same priced house in Milpitas. For $460k you would expect to get under 900 square feet of house in Santa Clara. At times you'd see that in Milpitas, so I was looking forward to what 1300 square feet looked like.
We had been trailing the same couple of people through Santa Clara. It looks like they saw all the new home listings for Santa Clara and had the same attack plan. We were one step behind. The would go in a house, we'd wait, they'd leave, we go in, we leave, and then see them at the next house. When we got to the Money Pit, we had actually arrived almost at the same time. I think they had gotten lost trying to find the place. They went in, and not five minutes later they came running out.
I should have known something was wrong then, but I figure I have some courage (or stubbornness). We walk in and the first thing you notice is the amount of people walking through the place. There must have been something like 5 adults 4 kids running around. They seemed to be primarily Spanish speaking. The first thing you notice walking in the house is tiny living room that a few people are sitting and watching TV in. The second thing you notice is the Catholic iconography everywhere, it was a little eerie seeing so many pictures and statues of Jesus and Mary in each room. Perhaps this is what scared those people.
As we were walking through the house, I was thinking wow, this is a nice solid house. None of the weakness that we see in new modern homes: tiny bathrooms, tiny kitchens, soft walls, soft floors, no wood, stucco everywhere, no character. This was a house with character. As I was admiring the ancient method of home building, Celle had gone outside to checkout the yard. First thing when I see the yard is, there's a whole lot of concrete, but that sure is a nice spacious, two car garage. As I approach Celle who has been taking it in for a while, she says, "look at the size of this yard." Then I noticed a pathway leading to a door beneath the house. I call over Peter and he leads the way through. We pass a couple more people into what is a basement. There's a bed that people have been sleeping in. I've never seen a house with a basement so that was a plus.
It seemed we had found a great house, but even then we could see that it needed a little work, like putting in a modern bathroom, getting rid of that dated kitchen and the terrible wall color. I just never realized what else was lurking to be fixed.
As a prospective new home buyer it can be hard to spot all the things that are wrong with a house. It's so much easier just thinking of the potential.
(to be continued ...)
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