My wife and I went househunting in Silver Spring, just outside DC, on Saturday. I can describe the market in one word, if "assrape" is one word.
The first place we saw was a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath end unit townhouse with a deck and a finished basement that walks out onto a damp mossy space under the deck. The oak floors made a nice impression when we entered, but the place had fit-and-finish issues. Like when someone had run a pipe, they'd just cut a raw hole in the drywall and leave it that way. Or they'd cut an "X" in the vinyl flooring, peel it up, drill a hole, run the pipe, and leave it that way. And there was a disconcertingly pronounced creak in the floor next to the bathtub ("Rhyme Time for $400, Alex: What is 'moist joists?'"). Call me picky, but for $220,000? I guess because it overlooked the woods.
The next one wasn't an end unit, and it had nasty brown carpet and a half-finished basement. It was, however, in excellent repair, and we saw why, as the owner's dad happened to be in the kitchen wearing a toolbelt and grumbling about having to do maintenance on all his kids' houses. This place could be ours for a mere $188,000.
Our next stop was an end unit townhouse of similar proportions and features, but substantially cheaper at $175,000. We soon learned why. As we walked up to the front steps, I immediately went "uh-oh," which sentiment I had occasion to repeat throughout the tour. The downspout had fallen off the side of the house, and so the cement stoop was crumbling and the iron rails rusty and the aluminum siding eaten up with mold or algae or something. It pretty much went from there, with doors hung crooked, banisters falling off, thermal windows unthermaled (you can tell by the condensation inside), and so on. And on. All for a mere 175 large!
Our last stop was a similar place available for a token fee of $200,000. It seemed OK at first-- no deck, just a sliding patio door with a safety rail overlooking a big backyard occupied by a huge German shepherd. No big deal: at this low price, we could afford to put in our own deck! Then I leaned on the safety rail to get a look up at the rain gutters and nearly fell to my death, as the wood to which the thing was nailed had completely rotted out. I envisioned my broken body being rent by the owner's dog as I thought my last thought, which would have been, "those gutters are in lousy shape."
None of these places even had garages!
I know we're in maybe the toughest real estate market outside California and New York, but damn, my parents recently sold the house I grew up in, which is about 50 times the house that any of these were, for $120,000. Of course, that was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a place I would consider living only while in the grip of sticker shock.
Where were we? Oh yes, Gabe is a colossal geek. Thanks for the rant space.
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