Tuesday, March 4, 2008

The issues and a resolution

So, we reached an agreement so now I feel like I can talk specifics without jinxing things. Well, without jinxing this portion of the deal.

The buyer requested a list of items following the home inspection. Three are of note.

1. Loose chimney bricks. As a result of the home inspection, he requested we break down and rebuild our chimney.
2. We have a pipe that sticks up out of the ground behind our parking pad. It sticks up about a foot and has a threaded cap on the top of it. Our buyer felt that it could possibly be a fuel tank. Mr Home Inspector suggested, and buyer requested, we hire a company to come out and investigate if this pole is a fuel tank.
3. Our plumbing flow and pressure drops off if you turn two fixtures on at the same time. Buyer requested we replace the incoming water service to the house.

So, we took a different approach for each. Our responses were:

1. We will repoint the brick at the chimney as necessary.
2. No. This was the ridiculous, laughable request in our opinions. A railroad used to run above where this pipe is, it is as far away as possible from the house on our property, and the pipe does not look like a fuel oil tank pipe. Where they got fuel tank from, I'll never know. We've decided it was probably a support pole for a clothes drying rack.
3. No. We've dealt with this for 5 years and replacing the water service has never crossed our minds. We just don't shower if we are doing the laundry. If he wants to replace it after buying the house, fine. We don't want to deal with it.

The response that was emailed to my realtor around 10:30 last night was:

1. No, buyers wants the chimney rebuilt because that is what home inspector said.
2. No issue.
3. Give buyer half the money of the water service replacement so that he could replace.

Fast forward to this morning. My realtor is getting annoyed with these people. The contract doesn't really include negotiating of home inspection terms. Plus they took forever to respond in the first place. Our patience was wearing very thin. Especially since we had a chimney company come out yesterday and were told that all we needed for our chimney was a new chimney crown, minor repointing, and sealant at the flashing. Certainly not a complete rebuild that the genius and slow home inspector said.

So we decided enough was enough. Realtor called buyer's realtor and told her either he signs the addendum stating the terms we sent Saturday evening and were willing to take care of or we put the house back on the market. Then she gave them until noon today for an answer.

Realtor had the signed addendum in her email inbox at 11:36 am.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

YEAH!!!!!

kick ass seabass!!!!!

thats hilarious.

globalclarkes said...

Yeah home buyers are completely ridiculous. I had one try to tell me that they refused to buy my NJ condo because there was deadly "black mold" growing in it. There was no such substance. Where do they get this stuff? I told them where they could stick it... but unfortunately they walked. Glad it worked out for you.