someone's gonna get a bargain

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

  Gee, you guys are all about my Mom's age!

[apaknad]

thanx alot HG, what a bummer.

[MountainDon]

...and you're about our son's age HGT. 27 

[glenn kangiser]

We'll still let you hang out with us though, Homey...

You do seem to be exceptionally bright for your age...

[StinkerBell]

I decided you are all old and any one of you could be my dad...

Class of....I mean BORN 1966

[glenn kangiser]

Awww -- you're just a baby....

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

...and you're about our son's age HGT. 27 

Not quite that young, Don!

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

thanx alot HG, what a bummer.

Hey, she's single fellas....

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

yes HT, except for a 2 yr. stint in the marine corps(california, vietnam, n. carolina). it's true, you do get used to the winters and there is a certain beauty to seeing everything clean and white on a cold frosty morn. it's the sloppy transitional periods that are a PITA. taxes and cost of living are pretty high here also but you balance that out with all the lakes(including the great lakes) and nature away from the cesspool cities(detroit,flint) and there are some plusses. that being said, i don't know if i'll stay here when i deal with mom's estate(she's 93 and has terminal cancer) but if i can't sell her house i may have to. all depends on the economy and i may be in a situation like yours. i would sell at a loss to build my own place in the country.

I admit that there were times when our place up north was beautiful with a thick blanket of clean white snow on everything.  It was the fact that it STAYED like that until it all finally melted off sometime in mid-late May that bothered me.   That's what I love about OK, though.  Here it snows, and sometimes we even get a fairly deep snow, and the next day it'll be gorgeous and sunny and nearly 70 degrees and as the big snowdrifts in the Wal-Mart parking lot are melting, you'll see folks walking into the store wearing flip-flops.  My "heavy coat" when we moved to WI was just a little hooded fleece thing.  Sure, if it got really cold, I'd wear this old down-filled heavy coat of DH's (he actually rescued it from a dumpster in college) to go feed the animals and do chores, but I didn't own one that was decent enough looking to go anywhere in it until we moved up there.  After we moved up there, I can remember walking around inside the house with a heavy coat and stocking hat on a few times.  Once I get cold, it is so hard to get warmed back up....Heck, we had a cool front come through the other day here and it was down in the 50s and I was cold all day long.

We had two more showings of the house up there over the weekend.  Hope something comes out of them.

[muldoon]

sounds good HGT, people interested enough to go see it is a good sign.  It sounds like your new realtor is at least trying. 

I guess I am one of the younger ones as well on the forum, I graduated high school class of 94, only 32 now myself. 

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Once again, the folks who looked at the house this weekend complained that various rooms were too small, the stairs were too narrow, etc.  I called the WEBUYUGLYHOUSES folks tonight and they said they weren't even sure that someone would be willing to drive down from Milwaukee (45minutes) to look at it, let alone consider making an offer.  If they would only bellyache about something we could change or fix, then possibly we could do something about it, but can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, I guess.  **sigh**  So depressing.  Trying not to get too stressed out about it, but it is getting to me.
Oh, and to top it off, we got a bill for the city sewer and the trash pickup from that house.  First one we've gotten since we moved, in spite of leaving a forwarding address.  The bill for the sewer that hasn't been used in 8 months and for the trash that hasn't been picked up in 8 months was $283.  I called the city offices to see why their late notice had gotten to us but the regular quarterly bills had not.  (DH, who is doing bills these days, assumed that since we weren't using those services that they just weren't billing us for them...yeah right!)  Anyway, I wasn't trying to argue our way out of paying, though I think it is crazy expensive, but I did ask them to remove the late charges and so forth because we hadn't received any bills since January.  The gal on the phone got rude and irate even though I never said or did anything impolite.  She actually started yelling when i asked why if they'd sent the bills they hadn't been forwarded even though the junkiest of junk mail has made its way 900 miles south.  She said, "Well, I can't control the postal system and you're still responsible for the bill, and now there's an additional $10 late fee!!!  You know good and well that the bills are every quarter and it's your fault and your bill and you'll **** well pay it."  I told her I had every intention of paying it, but I also thought it was strange that we never got a bill.  She started ranting about our street address being the billing address, and I reminded her that the street address was also the address we left the forwarding notice for, and it was for all of our names, not just mine, and that we'd called the city(with a date) before moving to give them the  correct address.  She was threatening to add it to our property taxes and have our house auctioned for back taxes (which we don't owe!)  Anyway, I finally just got sick of trying to talk calmly and reasonably with the woman, and I hung up.  When DH came home, I told him about the call and said I thought I'd write a letter to the city government and tell them that people like their workers are the reason I couldn't wait to move out of WI, and DH just said dryly, "Yeah, a letter; that'll show 'em."   

[MountainDon]

I keep denoting them as spam and ask to be removed.. but they keep coming....

Peter, unless the email is from someplace where you actually signed up for something, you are best advised to never use an unsubscribe link. Just delete the email or mark it as spam in your email program. Frequently, most of the time  , using an unsubscribe will only verify that your email address is valid and bring on more spam.

Marking an email as spam in your email program is no guarantee of the filter working either, as spammers have their methods to keep one step ahead.

[MountainDon]

I decided you are all old and any one of you could be my dad...

But would we want to be...   

[StinkerBell]

I decided you are all old and any one of you could be my dad...

But would we want to be...   

Hmmmm, probably. I not afraid of work and adventure. Plus I can fight!

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

I would not let webuyugly houses look at my house...they will offer you 50% below market value... those home buying services operate on the assumption that you are about to foreclose... My wife filled out a survey where she indicated we were buying a second home...they shared our information somehow because we started to get calls to sell our first house from a home buying service...I told the lady on the phone that the house was appraised at $160,000 before we put 10 new windows in it and finished renovating the upstairs...(central Heat and air refinished the hardwood floors...etc....And the person told me that they could not even consider buying my home unless it was under $100,000...

I said no way it would ever be sold for that kind of money...And then she replied that she could pay cash instantly and keep me from foreclosure which would hurt my credit... I assured her that was not possible...But that was one of her big sales kicks to get people to consider selling their houses for roughly half of what they are really worth.

Since that time I have gotten a dozen e-mails from another one of those home buying services..I keep denoting them as spam and ask to be removed.. but they keep coming....We decided to rent our house out as opposed to taking half of what it is really worth.

Yeah, I know you are right on that, but if they do make an offer, it might be that DH's company would say to go ahead and sell it for that.  They've price protected us up to $150,000.  The house appraised last year for $189,000.  We paid about $150K and put another $25K or so into it.  So we're still losing no matter what, but we are so ready to be done with it.  It should sell for the list price right now ($139K) in a heartbeat, but it just isn't happening.   

[apaknad]

another good reason to live in the country HGT. it doesn't cure everything but it lessons dealing with the bureaucRATS! Good luck.

[apaknad]

Who's your daddy Stink? WE ARE!!!

[apaknad]

HGT,

if you have a price lock from your company i would seriously consider letting the house go to the UGLY business rip offs. the economy is Not going to get better other than a few temp props to stabilize it for short term, and you could easily get stuck w/a worse offer or no offers ever. don't do anything on my rec. but consider it for your long term strategy.

[apaknad]

good idea Ben. give someone a break plus the garuantee is something to consider.

[desdawg]

Real Estate is a difficult market. Something looks like a good deal right now but will it in 6 more months. We are pricing based on our memories. Where will the decline finally come to rest. Where does it all stabilize. There are now three market factors. Supply Demand and Desperation. When we become desperate enough we will take what we can salvage to move forward in another area.

[StinkerBell]

Who's your daddy Stink? WE ARE!!!

I think this is how Freddy Krueger came about.....

[glenn kangiser]

Your brother, Stink? hmm

[StinkerBell]

Oh glenn if you didn't watch  Nightmare on Elm Street slasher movies, the comment might be lost on you.

[glenn kangiser]

Too scary....

Guess I missed out...

[ScottA]

*Chokes on Halloween candy.*