The House We Didn't Buy

New House, originally uploaded by Melsky.

Don't get too attached to any house until you have closed on it and the keys are in your pocket.

If you are too attached it's easy to rationalize away any defects or problems. You can end up making a decision based on emotion instead of logic and financial sense.

Almost exactly three years ago, I was so excited about our new house. Our offer was just accepted and I was already planning what I would do to it.

In New York State most contracts have a home inspection contingency. That means you get to hire an inspector and they will give you a report on the condition of the house. If the house has problems, you can ask the sellers to fix them or to give you money off the price of the home.

So we had the home inspection. First we find out that the roof was bad. It had 5 layers of previous roofs on it, and they would all have to be removed and then a new roof put on.

But the real deal killer was the two story garage. The top floor of it was totally unstable, to the point where it shouldn't be walked on. It also needed a new roof.

We didn't think the sellers had been honest about the condition of the property. There were a lot of places where they had tried to cover up problems like water stains.

We were already suspicious of them because there was a city code problem with the sidewalk. You are not allowed to put asphalt over your sidewalk, though many people in Syracuse do. Somehow, these people had gotten tagged for that and the city was requiring them to put in a new sidewalk, which was several thousand dollars. They neglected to tell us this for the first week, though they had known for months. They did not intend on paying for it so basically it added the cost to the price for the home. This is something that should have been disclosed in the listing.

We opted not to buy the house and used the home inspection contingency to cancel the contract.

It's not that far from my current house and I always wonder what it would have been like if we bought it. I think not buying it was a good choice and I'm glad I wasn't too emotionally attached to it.