I have not had a chance to update a post about the school system here, other than a brief blip about the entitlement and the elementary school. So, I will go into a bit more detail here.
The curriculum:
The kids learn basically nothing at school. They are all sat in front of computers in a round robin scenario, and the teachers barely teach them. The programs they learn from on the computers are home schooled programs, that home schooled kids use. There is still "No Child Left Behind", and thus the kids are basically stuck in front of computers while little Johnny gets all of the teachers and teachers' helpers' attention.
The kids come home with over 8 hours of homework a day (a lot still), as they are still learning next to nothing in the school system and the teachers know they are "behind" in teaching the kids....so it gets shoved onto the parents instead. The ironic part about the home work, is that the school recently enacted a "no homework" policy. However, the teachers get around this by calling it "bus work". Right. Uh huh.
Mrs. Bennett:
This teacher is the reading teacher for 5th grade, currently. She is BLM, modern day Feminist, Hillary supporter, and has an extreme agenda this year. I'm all for people believing in whatever they want to believe, as long as they do not force their opinions onto others. Meaning, I don't care if this bitch shows up to protests as long as she doesn't try to get my kid to go to one too. Which she has tried to do, numerous times.
She picked out all of the books this year. My oldest read a book this year that had the term "dirty redneck cracker" in it no less than 50 times. None of the parents were informed about this book being read. Doing my due diligence as a parent, I ordered a copy and read the book too. It's supposed to be about bridging the divide between races, but it comes across as extremely racist against white people. It really is. I tried to let it go, because it was the beginning of the school year.
Due to this book, however, a downfall occurred. There has always been an extreme problem with racial divide in this town. I know, my husband tells me all about growing up here. There is one still now. If you are even volunteering on a field trip...you cannot "correct" the black students without being labeled a racist. Black kids here can and do get away with basically murder, with zero repercussions because the school system does not want to be "racist". Black kids act crazy in the classroom (not all but most), and the teacher cannot tell them to stop without being accused of hate "black people". Mrs. Bennett is a strong believer in yelling at the white kids, when a black kid is trying to stab someone. She blames the white students, instead of the perpetrator. For the record, she's white. We have no idea why she acts this way...but we think it's due to her "old school correction" mentality (meaning, she is over tip toeing in trying to correct the original racial issues).
Anyways, the black kids were going to school and screaming racist terms towards the white kids, this caused basically constant fist fighting in the school. My daughter was punched in the face once, accidentally (she was trying to diffuse a fight). Kids were going home and calling their parents these terms, who were then calling me or the school about it....
The school did nothing to stop any of this, and it continues to this day...all because of a book. No one has been punished thus far, and any parent that has tried to discuss this with the principal has been deemed a "racist". He also claims that the book is a "classic" (first printed in 1997, hardly a classic). I have been trying to stay out of it all.
For the record, the other 3 books this year are not much better. One teaches the kids how to lie constantly to get what they want, and another one is about murdering people. So, yeah, not impressed with the book selection. I've been having my daughter read the real classics on the side, even if the first book ruined the ending of Jane Eyr.
Not only do we have questionable books being picked out for the older kids, but we also have a die hard Hillary supporter. This woman is in her 60s, and she has been following the election like no one's business. (I voted Trump, but whatever...to each their own) She would give out tests about the election, which my kid barely understands, and on the tests it would have some insane questions/answers. For instance, one such test had a question that said: "Do you think Trump is a racist" (exact words) The answers were: "Yes" "No" "I don't know." My daughter selected "I don't know", because she does not know. It was marked wrong and several of the kids failed the test because of this...which was when the principal then had them "retake" the test (for higher test scores for the school, y'all) and made sure they selected the "correct" answer.
They were also being forced to write and read "good" reports about Hillary the entire time. If anything nice was said about Trump, instant fail. Thus, my daughter and I paid a lot of attention to the election this year. Through our own research, I became a Trump supporter (I usually do not even vote) and she is a middle leaning-Trump supporter, though concerned about the wall.
Add on, since this woman is a modern day feminist, she has been lecturing the kids about the "pink tax" this past week. Awesome. I gave my daughter permission to google this the other day. Basically, it was explained to the kids like this: "If you buy a pink scooter you have to pay $59.99 for the scooter. If you buy a blue scooter you have to pay $29.99 for it. This is because today, our systems are very anti-woman and this is called the pink tax. Women pay more for things that are for women, because our society is unfair to women."
This is basically in reference to the "gender tax". I'm extremely pissed off that once a week, my daughter and I are having to scour the internet and help her find information she is looking for. This teacher has a serious agenda, and she needs to just fucking stop. These are kids, let them make their own minds. Instead of spouting your hateful bullshit, give them a project to do like "Do the gender tax exist?" and then let them come to their own conclusions. Don't just brainwash the fuck out of them.
For the record, even congress has spoken on this topic (here's an interesting video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhfqhjedzKM). It does not exist, and as consumers we have a choice in what we buy. This is called personal responsibility, which I'm sure most people nowadays have zero of. Sadly, this is very common in the south. Instead of blaming yourself for accidentally buying a $5 deordorant instead of a $1 stick of deordorant, they are now blaming the government for it's perceived "bias". Seriously, grow the fuck up and spend money where you want/when you want. The less people that buy the expensive shit, the less the company makes and will soon go under. This is simple math.
Yes, some plus size women clothes cost more...but that's because as a woman, you want something with frills or looking better than a straight up polo shirt that is easy to make. Or for instance, women pay more for razors...why are they not using the dollar shave club? (I have personally not bought a razor in over 3 years, and still have an older one I resharpen on my jeans...so...not sure the complaint there) Add on, things like deodorant do NOT cost more. My husband's deodorant costs 3 times as much as my dollar deodorant that works just fine (though even the expensive kids are still not as much as a dude's, go to your grocery store and check).
But, you know, this is the South and this is considered "just fine" to be teaching about. Anywhere else, this woman would have been fucking fired.
The Teachers:
Thus far, I haven't minded most of the teacher's in the school system. Most of them are fantastic. However, some of the "helpers" are assholes. For instance, my oldest has a helper in her classroom. The helper was covering for the teacher this week during the Valentine's Day party, and she was actively screaming "shut up" to the kids. Total bitch. They weren't even being super loud and it was a fucking party.
The students to teacher ratio is actually really good. I think this is due to being a small town. Thus, while there is more room for students to be learning...the curriculum itself and the way the students are being teached, is sub par.
Room Parent:
I am still room parent, though this will be my last year. I am room parent for 6 (!) classes this year, 2 of which my kids are actually in. So, basically I am doing things for these kids x6 and getting zero reward from it all. I'm not even thanked properly.
In fact, for example, for the Halloween (non)party (not allowed to have a party, but we did goody bags)...parents actively counted candy out into zip lock bags and sent them home to me to divide up. This is very stupid, and I have never seen this before. So, say the class had 22 people in the class..the parent then counted out Hershey Kisses out to sent to me to divide into the goody bags. That's fucking pathetic, as this is a rich as fuck area. In fact, their kids ate half the candy before the candy even arrived to me...and I was forced to buy bags of random candy to "replace" the missing candy.
For Christmas, we did candy sleighs again. They came out looking fantastic, however my son got into them and destroyed most of them the DAY OF the party. Fuck. So, my husband and I banged out 250 more (seriously) and I sped the entire way the parties. I was only about 10 minutes late, but people were pissed. The kids complained that some of them were "slightly crooked" and refused to eat them. What the fuck. Entitled little shits, parents and kids alike.
I have two more examples from this past party (Valentine's Day). One parent contacted kid #2's teacher behind my back, and was gossiping about wanting to do a game for the kids (they are way too old for this shit). Teacher told her to contact me, because what the fuck. Parent then comes to me and claims that the teacher said that they do a game every year (teacher never said this, as I confirmed later). The parent wanted me to CREATE a game to play, 2 days before the party, and bring the materials in the play. Yeah, no. I kindly informed her all Southern-style, that if she wanted to do that she was free to do it on her own...as I was not going to do one. (Most of these kids only care about Pokemon, by the way)
Update: The game that was created was putting a straw in your mouth and a sweetheart candy on the other end. You had to go around the room in a sort of race. Only 4? straws were providing and only a few candies. Thus, all of the kids suddenly had the flew afterwards. Awesome game this bitch created.
For kid #1's class, another parent contacted me about wanting to order pizza. I was all for this idea, and this is not uncommon. However, this parent wanted to order the pizza from Athens (over 45 minutes away) and have me drive to pick it up from there, drive back to the school with it, and hand it out. I am not a fucking slave. I kindly informed the woman she could order from the local pizza place, and I could pick it up or she could have it delivered to the school the day off and left at the office. I received zero word back from her. (She also claimed that she was attending a funeral that day, which I found fucking hysterical. My mother just passed last Sunday and she knew this. She was trying to manipulate me into going and doing it for her, due to my own circumstances. Fuck that. I have an obituary, funeral and a slew of other shit to plan.)
Generally, being a room parent this year has been a fucking hassle. I am treated like a slave, with zero thanks and a lot of gripes from kids. They also like to hang out in groups and giving me cold bitch face if I try to speak to them. Meanwhile, I am one of the ones doing the most for their little shit stains. Needless to say, I will NOT be a room parent in future years...not even after we move. We might send some things in, but we won't go out of our way anymore.
Inclusion:
Because of the school system supposedly being amazing, I am constantly ask how I feel about the schools. My husband has taught me how to be Southern nice, and I try to tell people exactly how this school is without coming across as a spiteful bitch. However, let's be real here...these people are cliquey assholes. This place is all about "who you know" and not about "what you have done in the past". Meaning, no matter what I or my kids do, we will never be accepted into their little circle of fuckery.
The worst of this is, I'm not even a hugely judgmental asshole. I tend to include anyone into a conversation with me and joke around equally with people. The only time I have an issue with someone is if they fuck with me/mine. Otherwise, I don't care if the person is dirt poor or rich. Just as long as they do not act like fucking assholes.
Let's not excuse the fact that there was a parent who demanded a parking spot end of last year. Most parents would drive and arrive at the school 2 hours early to get a better spot in line, so they could get home sooner. This was not uncommon, and I was one of them. Sometimes, I was even first in line. However, the PTA president decided she was more special than everyone else and demanded that we allow her to show up 30 minutes before school ends and demanded a spot be left open for her. Her excuse? Her kid is in speech language (IPE), not horrifically, and needed use of the sidewalk for his "disability". Total bullshit. She never asked me or anyone else to back up, she went immediately to the principal with her demands...who caved. (Meanwhile, I am legit handicapped and cannot park in the handicapped spot because other parents block it in. But, nope, that's another "me problem".)
Our first week of school here, when we first moved, the school called CPS on us because "they didn't know me". They made mention of not having a Southern accent, later when confronted. Once they met my Southern husband and interrogated us about who we were related to, they stopped their bullshit. However, this is just one of the many ways that these assholes treated me.
I am constantly judged for having 4 kids, like I am some sort of redneck trailer park trash. People here treat me like I am a scourge of the Earth. We get terrible service, nasty looks, and nasty comments constantly. All because I do not have a GA license plate, have 4 kids, and do not have a Southern accent.
In conclusion, this place is not accepting of new people at all. I tried really hard to "get along" and "let things go". I was doing everything, and I mean everything, for this school. The PTA scheduled things like book fairs or running a horrifically overpriced school store (example: shoe strings cost $5). We were making huge goody bags and treats for the kids, over my original price point ($3.00 per kid in some cases) and we were still being shit on by all of the parents and the kids. I've never received a thank you for anything that I do. In fact, I was constantly treated like shit (even more than in Utah).
This town is filled with rich assholes, that are super entitled. They all get bored and the housewives gossip a ton about each other. This is like being stuck in high school, where no one ever grew up. It is exhausting living here, and the main reason we are looking to buy a home "sheltered" from society. Before, we just wanted to live on some land to homestead a bit...now we want to get the fuck away from people. The people in this town, pushed us to that.
Things happen all the time here, that will make your head spin. We already live on the very edge of town, and we still have to deal with all of the bullshit that this town entails. It is not enjoyable dealing with the locals. I am extremely happy we are moving away from the South, as I doubt I would have ever fit in. We've been here almost 3 years (in June) and we were never included in shit. If anything, we were treated worse for my daring to be from the North (a horrible offense here). I hate the South and we should never have moved here.
Saturday, February 11, 2017
1090 Commerce Street Madison, GA 30650
This will be a bit older of an update. When we moved to GA, we were trying to figure out a place to rent for the time being while we searched for houses. We wound up living in this location about a year, and the entire time we were extremely stressed out. This was because of a varying of issues with the home itself, and because the owner/landlord was trying to sell it while we lived there. He did not inform us of the impending sale until about 6 months into our rental agreement. If we had known all of the issues, we would have never moved in - no matter how desperate we were.
Needless to say, when we were informed that our lease would not be renewed ...we grew concerned and started rental hunting again. Which was extremely difficult to do. We were almost homeless because of all that had occurred.
Okay, onto the house itself. It's an extremely small 3 bedroom, 1 full bath home. It has a decent sized kitchen that will barely fit you cooking (on a falling apart stove) and a table. It has no dishwasher, which drove me insane and a falling apart fridge. We kept our good stainless steel fridge in the living room, and plugged it into a wall. Worked just fine, oddly enough, even if it looked odd to have a fridge in your living room. The counters were not attached to the walls correctly, and we were always concerned that they would just "slide off" the top of the bottom cabinets. Likewise, the upper cabinets were not secured correctly in the middle of the shelves. So, the upper shelves in the upper cabinets drooped a lot.
The foundation is total garbage. We couldn't walk around the house without the floor bouncing. We had many dishes fall out of the cabinets and break on the floor, due to the foundation issues. Add on, things like the vents that are supposed to be for the AC go directly to the ground underneath the house. So, we'd have all kinds of critters running into the house from the vents - which we eventually sealed off the one in the bathroom, because of this.
All of the windows are very old and have zero to barrier from the outside elements. Think single-paned glass windows, some of which were already broken before move in, and could never be opened once we moved in.
Every single room in the house leaked, due to a very shoddy roof job. Every time it rained, we had to set pails/buckets/pots to catch the water. In. Every. Room. Even if you are just looking at the house itself, you can see that the roof is rather old and some of the shingles are coming off from the top of it.
There were exposed electrical wires hanging out in the car port, and half of the plugs in the rooms did not work. This was most likely due to terribly-done electrical work. We tried to complain about the car port light that just "hung" from the ceiling of the car port and wasn't properly attached (it never worked either), but nothing was ever fixed in that house while we lived there.
The car port used to flood even during small drizzles of rain. The owner/landlord claimed that this was a "city" issue. This is absolutely not true, as we spoke with the city. The carport is too far onto the property to have the city do anything about it. The property owner would need to do the demo, and fix the drainage issues. Thus, the laundry room (that was outside) would be flooded constantly, and so would the car port. We never parked the car there as it was constantly bogged down in nasty water.
The nasty water attracted the tree roaches, which lovvvveee wet areas. These roaches, are not your normal roaches (though we had those too). This is them for those wondering: https://www.doyourownpestcontrol.com/woods.htm
Basically, these tree roaches were not scared of humans and were actually attracted to light. So, they'd come in from god knows where (roof/ceiling/carport) and at any given time, we'd have 4-5 per day flying at us in the house. Oh, and they are fucking fast. No matter what we did, we couldn't get them to stop coming in and we were constantly finding them everywhere (they'd run to hide under things if we "missed" them). This terrified the shit out of me, and I was constantly screaming like a little girl. My cats were completely worthless against them.
On that note, my oldest cat ran away. He's still roaming the neighborhood to this day, with the other hoard of cats. Yes, there is a hoard of cats that roam the neighborhood. About 10 of them. It's kind of odd, but hey...whatever works. Most of them are nice, though there is one asshole orange and white cat that is a jerk.
As per the tree roaches, do you know what eats tree roaches? Brown recluses. Yup. Heard that right. We had an infestation of those, too. It started in the laundry room and carport. Naturally, this was because this is where the tree roaches originated from. Then, after a month or two they started coming into the house. We would see about 3 a day before I finally lost my shit and told my husband we needed to move the fuck out and I didn't care if we broke the lease or not. (Likewise, again, exterminator tried but failed in getting rid of them. If you do not fix the source of the problem - flooding carport - there is nothing you can do to stop others from coming constantly)
So for the real roaches, we had those too. They were german cockroaches. We had no idea there was even an infestation, though we had heard rumors about the area being really bad in this regard. We found out about them within the first week of moving in, and the landlord claimed that it was "our responsibility" not his. Thus, we tried to get the exterminator out several times. We treated a few times, but they kept coming back due to the neighbors. If your neighborhood is infested, well...you can't really do much about it all.
There is also an infestation of fleas, red ants, and black wasps in the yard. We are still combating the fleas (over a year later). It was so bad, that we were giving the animals nightly "baths" to try to contain them and bombing once every 2 weeks. It was a goddamn mess. The exterminator tried to treat, but this again...was to no avail.
The property itself is actually nice, if it could be updated and made more secluded. However, it backs up to the ghetto/slum area of town. Thus, these unsavory individuals would sneak through the "woods" (really small woods) and come onto the property to play with their kids, use our grill, and many other things. We would find evidence of people using it constantly, as there is a path leading to the other area. We made sure to try to lock everything of ours up, however a lot of our things were stolen.
The AC unit is actually broken. It worked maybe 2 days a week, and then would quit on us. Not because we were over working the system or it was out of Freon (we had someone come out to look at it, at our cost). It was just an old system and did not want to work properly anymore. Thus, we bought an above ground pool and played in that for most of the hot time. We boiled inside the house constantly, even at night and even during the "winter" months. Naturally, the landlord did nothing to fix this. (Our electricity bills were $450 a month, no matter how much living in the dark we did. This was because of the AC unit constantly fucking up. Mind you, this is an 800 sq ft home...there is absolutely no reason for bills to be that high. We'd go away for a week, turn everything off, come back and the usage for that week was still high as fuck. Here, we only pay $150 for twice the space)
The laundry room that is located in the car port, has a broken door. The door used to "stick" when we first moved in, and the spiders loved hiding in the molding. However, the major issue we had with it (aside from barely fitting room for a washer/drying in a T shape) was that one night a "ghetto" person was hiding from the police in it. They had locked down the neighborhood starting at our house (awesome), and the guy was "on the run". He wound up breaking the lock to get in, and the door never shut or locked properly after that. Thus, anyone that knew anything...knew we kept things of value in there (some of it), and stole it at their earliest convenience. Anything that was stored in there was either infested with the tree roaches, spiders, or molded over. Majority of it was stolen and only the "bad" stuff remained.
Basically, we lived in a slum rental home with a slumlord. We did legally try to tell prospective buyers what was going on, but there was only so much we could inform them of. Trust me, there were quite a few buyers interested. However, the property is still for sale today.
When it came to about two months before our rental agreement was up, the landlord contacted us and told us that he needed us out of the house immediately. He felt that he couldn't sell the property with us living in it. He originally did not want to give us ANY time to move out. However, the law in GA is that if you are required to give either 60 days move out notice. We used that law to push our side and tried to find a place on a short time frame. He wound up only giving us 30 days, not 60.
We were almost homeless, and had a serious issue finding another place. We even looked into how much it would cost to live in the local hotel, pricey by the way. Luckily, we found out about our current place through my MIL/GMIL before it was even on the market to be rented. After everything was said and done, we wound up only living in the town house for about 8 months out of our 12 month lease (we had a year lease). I knew we wouldn't be renewing our lease to begin with, and had been searching for a new place for about 2 months before the slumlord demanded us to get out. He gave us no reason other than he wanted to sell the place and "fix" some things - you know, the things we tried to complain about that he never fixed while we were living there. We were never late on our rent, and kept the place in a nice condition, as nice as we possibly could. Basically, Chad Roling is a dick.
To understand our position, this is a historic town (supposedly) and small. The school system is deigned the "best in the state". It's really not anything super special, and has it's own issues. (I'll expand on that later) Thus, rental properties have hundreds of people looking at them and are rented out for insane amounts of money. Add on, some places require as much as a $5,000 security deposit (that is the price of a down payment on a house of similar size, by the way).
We wound up moving out the last 2 weeks (30 days notice via text), and broom swept the apartment. We had originally scheduled a cleaning company to come in, but once they showed up...they said all they would do is mop the floors, which was not something required in our lease. Thus, we moved out in the stealth of the night (as people were constantly breaking into the place during our move out).
While moving, that was a shit show all of itself. People were casing the place. We made the mistake of doing our first car trip during the day, and by the time we came back (~45? minutes) there were a lot of hoodlums standing in the street in front of the house actively staring and making loud comments about "stealing" this or that. So, we swapped to doing our move at night. We waited to move the beds until the very last load, but the kids/I were constantly doing trips back and forth between the places to get moved. We did about 15 car loads of things before we were basically done. Even though all of our security measures taken, we could not be in two places at once. My husband had to do the bigger trips solo and I had to go to the kids' school for something. This left the house empty for all of maybe 2 hours. The "ghetto" people still managed to take a few fishing poles, half a package of hot dogs (from the fridge!), some kids' clothes, and a few other things like decorations. Mind you, we had locked the fucking doors. They broke in and stole shit from the living room/kitchen area.
After moving into our new place, we started trying to get our rental deposit back (about $1k). We will never see that rental deposit ever again. According to him, we smoked in the house and ruined the walls. We don't smoke, and the walls weren't even painted when we moved in - which we think he expected us to do? We aren't sure. In the end, because of just the walls, he kept the entire rental deposit. He tried to claim all of the other issues, like car port flooding and electrical issues on us as well...but that is a landlord's duty and we had properly informed him of such, numerous times. We did not petition a court to order the money back, as we figured it would take too much time and effort. (Plus small town, so we didn't want to piss anyone off)
He is still selling the place, to this day, and has dropped the price from the original $110k, to $90k, to now $75k. It has been almost a year since moving out, and we have thrown out majority of our things from the old place. Most of it was either infested with roaches, fleas, spiders, or molded over (due to the water issues). Thus, we started from scratch basically in the new place....which we are still trying to fix.
However, since we are buying a forever home..we are not trying to replace too much. So, we subsist with the bare minimum we need, and will most likely be throwing out even more upon our final move. From there, I have been given the go-ahead to buy whatever the fuck I want to buy.
As a side note: I want to say fuck you to our original slum lord. Just fuck you. I hope you never sell that place.
PS: Living in that house, in town, was horrible. We constantly had people either asking us to sign up for things/buy things, people randomly harassing us when we were outside trying to "chat" (unsavory types), or people staring at us while we played. We also had a lot of people stop by to ask about the house itself, once the "for sale" sign was put out (against our knowledge, we woke up to it being there one day). Oh, and at one point the across the street house lose their recycling bin and tried to convince me for 2 hours that it was a conspiracy against her (where the sex offender lives). Too many times we were interrupted by people, and we are extremely happy we do not live in town anymore because of it. Add on, it being a shady area....well...you get shady folk trying to annoy you constantly.
Needless to say, when we were informed that our lease would not be renewed ...we grew concerned and started rental hunting again. Which was extremely difficult to do. We were almost homeless because of all that had occurred.
Okay, onto the house itself. It's an extremely small 3 bedroom, 1 full bath home. It has a decent sized kitchen that will barely fit you cooking (on a falling apart stove) and a table. It has no dishwasher, which drove me insane and a falling apart fridge. We kept our good stainless steel fridge in the living room, and plugged it into a wall. Worked just fine, oddly enough, even if it looked odd to have a fridge in your living room. The counters were not attached to the walls correctly, and we were always concerned that they would just "slide off" the top of the bottom cabinets. Likewise, the upper cabinets were not secured correctly in the middle of the shelves. So, the upper shelves in the upper cabinets drooped a lot.
The foundation is total garbage. We couldn't walk around the house without the floor bouncing. We had many dishes fall out of the cabinets and break on the floor, due to the foundation issues. Add on, things like the vents that are supposed to be for the AC go directly to the ground underneath the house. So, we'd have all kinds of critters running into the house from the vents - which we eventually sealed off the one in the bathroom, because of this.
All of the windows are very old and have zero to barrier from the outside elements. Think single-paned glass windows, some of which were already broken before move in, and could never be opened once we moved in.
Every single room in the house leaked, due to a very shoddy roof job. Every time it rained, we had to set pails/buckets/pots to catch the water. In. Every. Room. Even if you are just looking at the house itself, you can see that the roof is rather old and some of the shingles are coming off from the top of it.
There were exposed electrical wires hanging out in the car port, and half of the plugs in the rooms did not work. This was most likely due to terribly-done electrical work. We tried to complain about the car port light that just "hung" from the ceiling of the car port and wasn't properly attached (it never worked either), but nothing was ever fixed in that house while we lived there.
The car port used to flood even during small drizzles of rain. The owner/landlord claimed that this was a "city" issue. This is absolutely not true, as we spoke with the city. The carport is too far onto the property to have the city do anything about it. The property owner would need to do the demo, and fix the drainage issues. Thus, the laundry room (that was outside) would be flooded constantly, and so would the car port. We never parked the car there as it was constantly bogged down in nasty water.
The nasty water attracted the tree roaches, which lovvvveee wet areas. These roaches, are not your normal roaches (though we had those too). This is them for those wondering: https://www.doyourownpestcontrol.com/woods.htm
Basically, these tree roaches were not scared of humans and were actually attracted to light. So, they'd come in from god knows where (roof/ceiling/carport) and at any given time, we'd have 4-5 per day flying at us in the house. Oh, and they are fucking fast. No matter what we did, we couldn't get them to stop coming in and we were constantly finding them everywhere (they'd run to hide under things if we "missed" them). This terrified the shit out of me, and I was constantly screaming like a little girl. My cats were completely worthless against them.
On that note, my oldest cat ran away. He's still roaming the neighborhood to this day, with the other hoard of cats. Yes, there is a hoard of cats that roam the neighborhood. About 10 of them. It's kind of odd, but hey...whatever works. Most of them are nice, though there is one asshole orange and white cat that is a jerk.
As per the tree roaches, do you know what eats tree roaches? Brown recluses. Yup. Heard that right. We had an infestation of those, too. It started in the laundry room and carport. Naturally, this was because this is where the tree roaches originated from. Then, after a month or two they started coming into the house. We would see about 3 a day before I finally lost my shit and told my husband we needed to move the fuck out and I didn't care if we broke the lease or not. (Likewise, again, exterminator tried but failed in getting rid of them. If you do not fix the source of the problem - flooding carport - there is nothing you can do to stop others from coming constantly)
So for the real roaches, we had those too. They were german cockroaches. We had no idea there was even an infestation, though we had heard rumors about the area being really bad in this regard. We found out about them within the first week of moving in, and the landlord claimed that it was "our responsibility" not his. Thus, we tried to get the exterminator out several times. We treated a few times, but they kept coming back due to the neighbors. If your neighborhood is infested, well...you can't really do much about it all.
There is also an infestation of fleas, red ants, and black wasps in the yard. We are still combating the fleas (over a year later). It was so bad, that we were giving the animals nightly "baths" to try to contain them and bombing once every 2 weeks. It was a goddamn mess. The exterminator tried to treat, but this again...was to no avail.
The property itself is actually nice, if it could be updated and made more secluded. However, it backs up to the ghetto/slum area of town. Thus, these unsavory individuals would sneak through the "woods" (really small woods) and come onto the property to play with their kids, use our grill, and many other things. We would find evidence of people using it constantly, as there is a path leading to the other area. We made sure to try to lock everything of ours up, however a lot of our things were stolen.
The AC unit is actually broken. It worked maybe 2 days a week, and then would quit on us. Not because we were over working the system or it was out of Freon (we had someone come out to look at it, at our cost). It was just an old system and did not want to work properly anymore. Thus, we bought an above ground pool and played in that for most of the hot time. We boiled inside the house constantly, even at night and even during the "winter" months. Naturally, the landlord did nothing to fix this. (Our electricity bills were $450 a month, no matter how much living in the dark we did. This was because of the AC unit constantly fucking up. Mind you, this is an 800 sq ft home...there is absolutely no reason for bills to be that high. We'd go away for a week, turn everything off, come back and the usage for that week was still high as fuck. Here, we only pay $150 for twice the space)
The laundry room that is located in the car port, has a broken door. The door used to "stick" when we first moved in, and the spiders loved hiding in the molding. However, the major issue we had with it (aside from barely fitting room for a washer/drying in a T shape) was that one night a "ghetto" person was hiding from the police in it. They had locked down the neighborhood starting at our house (awesome), and the guy was "on the run". He wound up breaking the lock to get in, and the door never shut or locked properly after that. Thus, anyone that knew anything...knew we kept things of value in there (some of it), and stole it at their earliest convenience. Anything that was stored in there was either infested with the tree roaches, spiders, or molded over. Majority of it was stolen and only the "bad" stuff remained.
Basically, we lived in a slum rental home with a slumlord. We did legally try to tell prospective buyers what was going on, but there was only so much we could inform them of. Trust me, there were quite a few buyers interested. However, the property is still for sale today.
When it came to about two months before our rental agreement was up, the landlord contacted us and told us that he needed us out of the house immediately. He felt that he couldn't sell the property with us living in it. He originally did not want to give us ANY time to move out. However, the law in GA is that if you are required to give either 60 days move out notice. We used that law to push our side and tried to find a place on a short time frame. He wound up only giving us 30 days, not 60.
We were almost homeless, and had a serious issue finding another place. We even looked into how much it would cost to live in the local hotel, pricey by the way. Luckily, we found out about our current place through my MIL/GMIL before it was even on the market to be rented. After everything was said and done, we wound up only living in the town house for about 8 months out of our 12 month lease (we had a year lease). I knew we wouldn't be renewing our lease to begin with, and had been searching for a new place for about 2 months before the slumlord demanded us to get out. He gave us no reason other than he wanted to sell the place and "fix" some things - you know, the things we tried to complain about that he never fixed while we were living there. We were never late on our rent, and kept the place in a nice condition, as nice as we possibly could. Basically, Chad Roling is a dick.
To understand our position, this is a historic town (supposedly) and small. The school system is deigned the "best in the state". It's really not anything super special, and has it's own issues. (I'll expand on that later) Thus, rental properties have hundreds of people looking at them and are rented out for insane amounts of money. Add on, some places require as much as a $5,000 security deposit (that is the price of a down payment on a house of similar size, by the way).
We wound up moving out the last 2 weeks (30 days notice via text), and broom swept the apartment. We had originally scheduled a cleaning company to come in, but once they showed up...they said all they would do is mop the floors, which was not something required in our lease. Thus, we moved out in the stealth of the night (as people were constantly breaking into the place during our move out).
While moving, that was a shit show all of itself. People were casing the place. We made the mistake of doing our first car trip during the day, and by the time we came back (~45? minutes) there were a lot of hoodlums standing in the street in front of the house actively staring and making loud comments about "stealing" this or that. So, we swapped to doing our move at night. We waited to move the beds until the very last load, but the kids/I were constantly doing trips back and forth between the places to get moved. We did about 15 car loads of things before we were basically done. Even though all of our security measures taken, we could not be in two places at once. My husband had to do the bigger trips solo and I had to go to the kids' school for something. This left the house empty for all of maybe 2 hours. The "ghetto" people still managed to take a few fishing poles, half a package of hot dogs (from the fridge!), some kids' clothes, and a few other things like decorations. Mind you, we had locked the fucking doors. They broke in and stole shit from the living room/kitchen area.
After moving into our new place, we started trying to get our rental deposit back (about $1k). We will never see that rental deposit ever again. According to him, we smoked in the house and ruined the walls. We don't smoke, and the walls weren't even painted when we moved in - which we think he expected us to do? We aren't sure. In the end, because of just the walls, he kept the entire rental deposit. He tried to claim all of the other issues, like car port flooding and electrical issues on us as well...but that is a landlord's duty and we had properly informed him of such, numerous times. We did not petition a court to order the money back, as we figured it would take too much time and effort. (Plus small town, so we didn't want to piss anyone off)
He is still selling the place, to this day, and has dropped the price from the original $110k, to $90k, to now $75k. It has been almost a year since moving out, and we have thrown out majority of our things from the old place. Most of it was either infested with roaches, fleas, spiders, or molded over (due to the water issues). Thus, we started from scratch basically in the new place....which we are still trying to fix.
However, since we are buying a forever home..we are not trying to replace too much. So, we subsist with the bare minimum we need, and will most likely be throwing out even more upon our final move. From there, I have been given the go-ahead to buy whatever the fuck I want to buy.
As a side note: I want to say fuck you to our original slum lord. Just fuck you. I hope you never sell that place.
PS: Living in that house, in town, was horrible. We constantly had people either asking us to sign up for things/buy things, people randomly harassing us when we were outside trying to "chat" (unsavory types), or people staring at us while we played. We also had a lot of people stop by to ask about the house itself, once the "for sale" sign was put out (against our knowledge, we woke up to it being there one day). Oh, and at one point the across the street house lose their recycling bin and tried to convince me for 2 hours that it was a conspiracy against her (where the sex offender lives). Too many times we were interrupted by people, and we are extremely happy we do not live in town anymore because of it. Add on, it being a shady area....well...you get shady folk trying to annoy you constantly.
434 Fullterton Rd Monticello, Maine 04760
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/434-Fullerton-Rd-Monticello-ME-04760/2134719973_zpid/
The property/listing agent:
We recently sold our Utah house and were back in the market to buy a new home. We searched high and low, as we are both remote workers and have a gaggle of kids (4). We found this house and fell in love with it.
We did notice that there had been another bid previously on it. We called the listing agent and inquired. The listing agent said the previous buyer was "insane". "One in every three people are insane, so it is not a big leap to think she was insane too". Exact words. It was a major red flag.
We tried to email the listing agent for the plat information, and he absolutely was a pain in the ass to work with. It took close to 4 weeks to get it from him, and he kept trying to say that "it was never documented in Maine". Total bullshit, but we did get it and we did get our own real estate agent. Here's the plat by the way: http://i.imgur.com/JvGScH7.jpg
Turns out, no one wants to work with the listing agent. They all fucking hate him, and for good reason (not because he is a baller agent but because he's a total douche). It was a complete pain in the ass to find someone to represent us against him. However, we pushed through and found a nice woman to help us.
We asked about the unfinished garage and photos of it, never received any photos...because they did not exist. This is where they hid their illegal heating system that supposedly was not used to heat the house. That fancy wood pellet stove was a total lie, as the wood pellet stove was/had been broken for an extreme length of time and this additional "stove" did not have any chimney flashing (etc). Basically, a total fire hazard and to top it all off...this was a hoarder's room. So, once a mini-fire starts, the entire house is basically going up in smoke. That is the reason why no photos. Add on, zero smoke or CO detectors in the house...so you could be trapped in a fiery blaze of death, with zero warning to get out.
My own real estate agent got into several heated arguments with him over the legality of what he was doing. I recorded several conversations between the two, he called her a bitch and stated numerous times that "he had been in business over 50 years". Lots of talking down to both of us and lots of arguing over total bullshit items. The agent was a red flag, but we were handling it all with the patience of Job.
Here's a copy of said 3 way call between the two, it is the tail end of a conversation: http://vocaroo.com/i/s19WdmeEhyyP Ignore the 10s of silence, he had just called her a bitch and had been talking down to her for a long time before I hit record. There are several more conversations like this... We just wanted paperwork, after he was LATE turning it in again. No request for an extension or anything.
Bidding:
We'd put in a bid and would never receive word back from the sellers or the listing agent until well past the due date, and zero extension requested. That started in on the slew of excuses from the listing agent that the sellers being "sick"/on vacation/out of cell service. All of these were excused off in the same breath and the story kept changing. None of this was true and it turned out the sellers were living in the house (not supposed to be living there at all), and we are still unsure if these counter-offers/bids were going to the sellers or it was the agent all along.
We put in a bid, and everything was going fine with the financing (we were way ahead of the game on that, and basically "approved" all the way through to closing - even had the mortgage insurance quotes done). Not only were the sellers unwilling to sign any paperwork, but they were unwilling to negotiate. We figured this was not a big deal, because we really liked the house...and would pay full price if we needed to do so.
Inspection:
Then the inspection came. Not only did they reschedule the inspection twice, but the wife was in the house at the time of inspection (remember: not supposed to be living there at the time). So, we were barely within the 10 day time frame to get someone out there.
When he showed up, they found what we call the "hidden rape room" and the seller's wife tried to hide the fact that they have a DIY "sand filtration system" (they were boiling water from the kitchen tap). She also fake called her "handyman" the day of, and after over 10 hours (normal inspection is 3 hours), no one showed up to fix things.
As per the rape room...basically, it was a trap door hidden underneath a throw carpet that could be lifted up. This rape room hid the entire systems of the house and was filled with water. It had a slew of problems from illegal wiring, to bad well pump, to bad water heater on an appliance timer plugged into an incorrect type of socket, etc. It was so bad that the inspector did not even go down all the way inside of the room for fear of being electrocuted. (The seller husband would later claim he's been down there several times in rubber soled tennis shoes and never had an issue. Total bullshit.)
Here is the inspection snippets that we forwarded to the sellers.
Framing inside:
The property/listing agent:
We recently sold our Utah house and were back in the market to buy a new home. We searched high and low, as we are both remote workers and have a gaggle of kids (4). We found this house and fell in love with it.
We did notice that there had been another bid previously on it. We called the listing agent and inquired. The listing agent said the previous buyer was "insane". "One in every three people are insane, so it is not a big leap to think she was insane too". Exact words. It was a major red flag.
We tried to email the listing agent for the plat information, and he absolutely was a pain in the ass to work with. It took close to 4 weeks to get it from him, and he kept trying to say that "it was never documented in Maine". Total bullshit, but we did get it and we did get our own real estate agent. Here's the plat by the way: http://i.imgur.com/JvGScH7.jpg
Turns out, no one wants to work with the listing agent. They all fucking hate him, and for good reason (not because he is a baller agent but because he's a total douche). It was a complete pain in the ass to find someone to represent us against him. However, we pushed through and found a nice woman to help us.
We asked about the unfinished garage and photos of it, never received any photos...because they did not exist. This is where they hid their illegal heating system that supposedly was not used to heat the house. That fancy wood pellet stove was a total lie, as the wood pellet stove was/had been broken for an extreme length of time and this additional "stove" did not have any chimney flashing (etc). Basically, a total fire hazard and to top it all off...this was a hoarder's room. So, once a mini-fire starts, the entire house is basically going up in smoke. That is the reason why no photos. Add on, zero smoke or CO detectors in the house...so you could be trapped in a fiery blaze of death, with zero warning to get out.
My own real estate agent got into several heated arguments with him over the legality of what he was doing. I recorded several conversations between the two, he called her a bitch and stated numerous times that "he had been in business over 50 years". Lots of talking down to both of us and lots of arguing over total bullshit items. The agent was a red flag, but we were handling it all with the patience of Job.
Here's a copy of said 3 way call between the two, it is the tail end of a conversation: http://vocaroo.com/i/s19WdmeEhyyP Ignore the 10s of silence, he had just called her a bitch and had been talking down to her for a long time before I hit record. There are several more conversations like this... We just wanted paperwork, after he was LATE turning it in again. No request for an extension or anything.
Bidding:
We'd put in a bid and would never receive word back from the sellers or the listing agent until well past the due date, and zero extension requested. That started in on the slew of excuses from the listing agent that the sellers being "sick"/on vacation/out of cell service. All of these were excused off in the same breath and the story kept changing. None of this was true and it turned out the sellers were living in the house (not supposed to be living there at all), and we are still unsure if these counter-offers/bids were going to the sellers or it was the agent all along.
We put in a bid, and everything was going fine with the financing (we were way ahead of the game on that, and basically "approved" all the way through to closing - even had the mortgage insurance quotes done). Not only were the sellers unwilling to sign any paperwork, but they were unwilling to negotiate. We figured this was not a big deal, because we really liked the house...and would pay full price if we needed to do so.
Inspection:
Then the inspection came. Not only did they reschedule the inspection twice, but the wife was in the house at the time of inspection (remember: not supposed to be living there at the time). So, we were barely within the 10 day time frame to get someone out there.
When he showed up, they found what we call the "hidden rape room" and the seller's wife tried to hide the fact that they have a DIY "sand filtration system" (they were boiling water from the kitchen tap). She also fake called her "handyman" the day of, and after over 10 hours (normal inspection is 3 hours), no one showed up to fix things.
As per the rape room...basically, it was a trap door hidden underneath a throw carpet that could be lifted up. This rape room hid the entire systems of the house and was filled with water. It had a slew of problems from illegal wiring, to bad well pump, to bad water heater on an appliance timer plugged into an incorrect type of socket, etc. It was so bad that the inspector did not even go down all the way inside of the room for fear of being electrocuted. (The seller husband would later claim he's been down there several times in rubber soled tennis shoes and never had an issue. Total bullshit.)
Here is the inspection snippets that we forwarded to the sellers.
Foundation:
Improvement will require altering the foundation so that it is supported below the frost line or protecting the ground from freezing. This will be an expensive project.
Interior support of the first floor framing below the left section (within the basement) consists of a combination of adjustable steel columns and wood posts. Several of the wood posts are exhibiting evidence of structural rot and moisture related deterioration, and the adjustable columns are corroding and in some cases the top plates have been over-stressed.
We recommend that the wood posts in the basement area be replaced with concrete filled steel columns on proper bases. We observed evidence of rot and moisture related deterioration in many of the wood posts in the basement area. The adjustable steel columns should also be upgraded. Several of the top plates have curled downward indicating overstress of the top plates, and many of these columns have corroded heavily. We recommend that they also be replaced with concrete-filled permanent steel columns on proper concrete footings.
We found evidence of rot damage in the basement. The affected members include many floor beams, particularly at the front of the basement and repairs will be required within the next year or so to protect the first and second floors from settlement related damage. Approximately 40 % of the first floor joists have been affected. Light duty wood braces have been attached to the foundation wall to provide support, but they have weathered and cannot be depended upon for continued support.
Framing inside:
Original bearing walls have been removed. Additionally, throughout the home there are several large expanses where the type and condition of support beams and framing could not be observed. Based on visible evidence, the structural condition of this building is below average. To accomplish most of the work we have recommended, a considerable investment of money and time will be required.
Basement:
The basement floor was covered with several inches of water at the time of inspection. There was what appears to be a relatively new sump pump in the basement that was not functional. Although the power cord was energized and the float switch was “on”, the pump was not operating. The owner was advised of this condition.
The basement floor is covered with a layer of peastone and some polyethylene vapor barrier. While this is recommended practice, the presence of water above the floor surface and the extent of debris on the floor suggest that improvements to the vapor barrier system are needed. Basement or crawl space ventilation is needed to remove ground moisture.
Roofing:
The ventilation in the attic and roof framing appears to be inadequate. Frost was observed on the underside of the metal roofing in the attic, and the wood purlins were damp and moisture/mildew stained. There are no soffit vents and ridge ventilation appears to be limited to what is provided by the metal ridge cap. In addition, we observed that there is no sheathing on the roof system; the roof deck consists of board strapping, 16-24” on center, perpendicular to the rafters, over which the metal roofing has been installed.
The metal roofing has been installed in an unprofessional manner. Overhangs at the eaves and some rakes extend well beyond the wood framing, subjecting this roofing to possible damage from future snow and wind loads. The roof configuration above the inside corner of the right wall of the left section and the front wall of the back section is unusual, and this area will be susceptible to future leakage.
Ventilation:
The ventilation in the basement of this home is inadequate. The basement windows have been closed off. Insufficient ventilation has been provided for the crawl space. Indoor air quality is a growing concern. The outlet for the kitchen fan is unknown.
Heating:
The pipes that were visible do not appear to be labeled, and we cannot attest to the integrity of this system. Some of the observed pipe to hydronic baseboard connections appear to be somewhat casual in nature. Further, many of the baseboard units are not equipped with endcap trim.
The wood stove was the only heating unit that was functional at the time of inspection. The chimney appears to consist of a single walled stovepipe passing through the roof with an elbow at the top. This is a very dangerous situation, which could result in a fire at any time. Further, the clearances to adjacent combustible materials is substandard. Most codes and manufacturers recommend a minimum of 36 inches clearance to combustible materials. Adequate shields are required wherever this minimum is not satisfied. There is a pellet stove installed in the living room. This stove was not in operation. The chimney had failed prior to the inspection. It was found to be leaning above the roof and slanted within the living room with a joint above the stove separated.
Plumbing:
The current owner advised that she filters her water prior to drinking or cooking through a do-it-yourself sand filtering system. Water samples for a water quality test were taken during the inspection. The visible equipment (tank, controls, etc.) was in fair to poor condition. The well pump control switch is lying on the wet basement floor and the cover has been removed. This presents an exposure to persons in this area to electric shock and also could result in short-circuiting of the electrical supply for the well system.
Domestic hot water is provided by an electric water heater. It was not in operation at the time of the inspection. The owner advised that the water heater is on a timer and was not functional during the inspection. It appears that the water heater is powered by a 120 volt circuit instead of a 220 volt circuit. We observed several 120 volt cords extending from this water heater, one of which was to a receptacle mounted time, the other to a light duty lamp cord that appears to energize some form of circulation pump. Based on our observations, the wiring to this heater is not safe.
Where visible, the plumbing distribution piping in this home consists of CPVC tubing. This system was in operating condition at the time of the inspection.The second floor toilet is loose and requires repair. The first floor toilet is loose and requires repair.
Given the age of the left section of the home, this septic system may be more than twenty years old. Since these systems often do not last much more than twenty to thirty years, it is possible that replacement will be required within the next five to ten years.
**Side note: It would later turn out the well had plenty of hard water (over 112, when it should not go above 10) and it had all forms of bacteria in the well. So, the well would need to be disinfected and a hard water filtration system would need to be installed**
**Side note: It would later turn out the well had plenty of hard water (over 112, when it should not go above 10) and it had all forms of bacteria in the well. So, the well would need to be disinfected and a hard water filtration system would need to be installed**
Electrical:
The electrical system in this house consists of a three wire service with 120/240 voltage. There does not appear to be a main service disconnect. The service entrance cable is loose, and it should be properly secured to the side of the house. Further, the incoming main service wiring insulation above the meter is frayed. The service cable has been spliced within the basement in an “open” manner, in that the splice is not located within a junction box, panel or raceway. Further, there are several additional smaller, Romex cables with flying splices in the same vicinity. There is some switchgear in the basement, some of which appears to be active. Given the wet conditions in the basement, this presents an exposure to persons in this area to electric shock. There are several openings in the parlor panel cover. All knockouts in the circuit breaker panel box in the parlor should be properly covered.
The covers were removed from the parlor and pantry subpanels, and it was found that few, if any cable connectors were installed in the panel sidewalls. As such the cables are subject to chafing. Further, many of the Romex cables have been routed through just one large panel opening, again without adequate protection from chafing. Additionally, few of the circuits are identified. Conditions observed at the service entrance and in the distribution panels suggest a casual, do-it-yourself level of workmanship.
Siding:
There are numerous areas about the house where the shingles have not yet been completely installed. There is missing corner trim at various locations. Wood trim has not been installed around most of the exterior doors. The eaves and rakes are unfinished. Expanding urethane foam insulation has been used instead of caulking (expanding foam insulation is not rated for exterior service). There are large open gaps around the kitchen sink fixed window frame. The exterior of this home is in need of a greater amount of repair than many homes we inspect. Of particular concern is the inside corner formed by the right side of the left section and the front wall of the center section. There is no corner trim here, and roof discharge from the valley above has created an ice formation against the lower portion of the wall in this area. Some of the siding around this house is close to the ground. As a result, splashback (during rainstorms) and upward migration of water from the adjacent ground can lead to rot and deterioration in this area.
Flooring:
The sheet vinyl and carpet in many of the rooms is loose and wrinkled.
Stairs/General Safety:
The guardrail at the top of this staircase is very loose and there are no balusters. The left section stairway is not equipped with handrails. There were no smoke alarms in this home.
Decks:
The deck to house connections should be augmented with lag bolts, at least one bolt at each joist connection. Chronic dampness at house/deck joint, rot in the deck, carpenter ant activity, bulges developing in the wall near the deck are all indications of more serious hidden problems. As part of the repair, we also recommend that you provide for suitable drainage and ventilation along the house/deck joint. Also, there needs to be adequate flashing to protect the house framing installed. There is no railing at the exterior decks.
Summary:
In summary, we consider this home to be in below average condition when compared to others of similar age and construction type.
Aftermath:
After seeing the entire report (over 40 pages worth), we called the inspector and questioned him about it all. He was extremely concerned for our safety if we were to buy this house. Mind you, he couldn't even get into the area of the house that had a crawl space. It was completely closed off. So, we also had no idea if the rest of the home also had foundation issues or not. (Hint: It did) He stated that this was a DIYer house from hell, and I decided we would *not* request the seller to fix any of these issues (can't trust him to fuck that all up, too).
We dropped the bid, a lot. This was based off of what was "salvageable", and what we thought/knew the property was worth after everything was said and done. Basically, all of the major systems in the house would need to be replaced. The property itself was worth a good chunk, but the rest of the house was basically what people call a "tear down".
They didn't take the bid. Instead they countered with only 2k off of their asking price, wrote AS IS (all nasty-like), demanded even more earnest money from us, and upped the move in date. They also bitched about the inspector and called him unprofessional. Guys, they attacked the inspector. The one that saved our lives. To make matters worse, the wife tried to claim she had the handyman come out to fix the issues and to this day, none of the glaring issues have been fixed (some were outside and can be seen while driving past, like the pellet stove's chimney being broken). They also offered up insane excuses for things like the chimney on the pellet stove, being broken while "cleaning it". Total bullshit. They also admitted to frost damage in the crawl space near the loft area, which if you noticed, we never mentioned exactly where we found the frost damage (it was actually in the pantry/laundry area). So, we knew immediately that they had frost damage everywhere.
Yeah, no. We walked the fuck away. We are out our inspection money from last time (a huge amount) and we are extremely lucky that my real estate agent sent back the earnest money (this was a struggle to get the paperwork signed and her to actually send it back to us). This was basically some DIY husband who destroyed a house, made it look nice inside, and was trying to push tons of problems onto other people. I think the worst part of all of it was the inspection, as none of this was disclosed on the property disclosure (and should have been, since they *knew* about it all). Hell, even on the listing, it didn't mention shit about a basement existing. We had no fucking idea.
That inspector, is the only one in that area. So now, not only is word getting out again about the listing agent but word is getting out that the sellers are total assholes. The inspector will never go out to that property again, and that means they will most likely never sell this house.
That inspector, is the only one in that area. So now, not only is word getting out again about the listing agent but word is getting out that the sellers are total assholes. The inspector will never go out to that property again, and that means they will most likely never sell this house.
Oh, and the reason we called it the rape room? The husband is a listed sex offender and the wife has a warrant out for her arrest in her home state of Alabama for solicitation of a minor. Don't worry, we reported all 3 involved on that side of the many shady things they were doing to numerous various agencies. However, the house is still listed for sale...
We are extremely lucky that we found out about all of these issues. In the end, we were praying they would NOT accept our low as hell bid. They were trying to push their illegal doings and problems onto someone else, and now it has cost them. A lot.
We are extremely lucky that we found out about all of these issues. In the end, we were praying they would NOT accept our low as hell bid. They were trying to push their illegal doings and problems onto someone else, and now it has cost them. A lot.
To this day, we are terrified of coming into a similar situation. We do have a bid on another house, but we are being extremely cautious with it all and are not truly in "love" with the house. We know that we are "out of staters" and people take that as an opportunity to try to screw us over. I have 4 kids. My husband and I are extremely pissed off that this happened in the first place, and put their lives in jeopardy. It is truly disgusting that the seller (mainly the husband) was such a prick to basically negate all the safety issues and putting the kids' lives on the line for the sake of...money.
Update Feb 2017:
Just wanted to let everyone know that the listing agent attempted to blame the failing of the sale on "buyer financing" to the real estate commission board. Exactly like he tried to blame the original buyers dropping out on them being "insane". Don't worry, I debunked the fuck out of that. We are obviously in a good place financially, and it is quite frankly none of his damn business anything about my finances.
He also cut off email chains in an attempt to make himself look better, which is funny because I sent the ENTIRE chains where he was being an asshole and causing issues. H left out some interesting items, and tried to claim that he was having issues with the sellers being in contact with him...which is not our responsibility as the buyers. If he needed more time to wait on his sellers, then he needed to file extensions - which he never did.
I basically tore apart his "response", which was basically a bunch of excuses (over 12) of why the sellers did not hand in paperwork on time/at all. The excuses ranged from bad cell service, seller husband's mom dying, them receiving medical care, them being on vacation, etc. The list in his 3-4 page response was actually laughable. He contradicted himself numerous times, just like he did with my agent and us.
It took about 3 weeks to receive our earnest money back, and the house was relisted before the deal was even fully cancelled out all of the way. Thus, this house is back on the market. While I cannot link the exact inspection report due to copyright issues, I can keep the summarized information above (as the sellers have seen this, and I wrote it myself).
When all was said and done, the house is worth maybe $85k due to the estimated over $80k in repairs needed.
We are currently in the process of closing on a different house, which is worth more money than this house. We have 2 weeks until move in date, and everything is good as gold. Only minor repairs needed (~$800). Obviously, this was an issue with the sellers/listing agent and not us (the buyers). We are very happy we walked away from it all.
Update Feb 2017:
Just wanted to let everyone know that the listing agent attempted to blame the failing of the sale on "buyer financing" to the real estate commission board. Exactly like he tried to blame the original buyers dropping out on them being "insane". Don't worry, I debunked the fuck out of that. We are obviously in a good place financially, and it is quite frankly none of his damn business anything about my finances.
He also cut off email chains in an attempt to make himself look better, which is funny because I sent the ENTIRE chains where he was being an asshole and causing issues. H left out some interesting items, and tried to claim that he was having issues with the sellers being in contact with him...which is not our responsibility as the buyers. If he needed more time to wait on his sellers, then he needed to file extensions - which he never did.
I basically tore apart his "response", which was basically a bunch of excuses (over 12) of why the sellers did not hand in paperwork on time/at all. The excuses ranged from bad cell service, seller husband's mom dying, them receiving medical care, them being on vacation, etc. The list in his 3-4 page response was actually laughable. He contradicted himself numerous times, just like he did with my agent and us.
It took about 3 weeks to receive our earnest money back, and the house was relisted before the deal was even fully cancelled out all of the way. Thus, this house is back on the market. While I cannot link the exact inspection report due to copyright issues, I can keep the summarized information above (as the sellers have seen this, and I wrote it myself).
When all was said and done, the house is worth maybe $85k due to the estimated over $80k in repairs needed.
We are currently in the process of closing on a different house, which is worth more money than this house. We have 2 weeks until move in date, and everything is good as gold. Only minor repairs needed (~$800). Obviously, this was an issue with the sellers/listing agent and not us (the buyers). We are very happy we walked away from it all.
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