"Do Want to Choose It. It’s a Salt Lick! Bacon Woogie, Woogie!"
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
And out of nowhere, it is spring. Yesterday's high was 73 and we've got three days in the 70s to follow it up. Matt gets it right:
I gotta admit: I am loving the prospect of being near parks in Bartlett. In Memphis, I don't want to be close to one, but now, all of those dog parks City Planner Plays plugs in don't sound so bad.
While everything is on standby in preparation for the exodus, I look forward to diving into my fitness regimen. It will NOT be something that only through a fist-clenched force of will do I knock it off my list. It's gonna be something that'll be a highlight of my day. That's the thing with diet and fitness: we seem to attach to this construct of "If I hate it, it must be awesome for me." I don't know why we do that. It explains kale, turnips, radishes, chards and celery. Totally explains burpees. Why do I need that skillset?
Plants Attempt to Murder Me: I've developed an onion allergy or at least a heightened response to my subconscious disgust for the ones from Gordon's. Now when I cut them up, the hand that held them will feel a bit numb for the rest of the day and as I breathe them in, the bottom of my lungs tighten up as if inflammation hits it. My eyes water like "normal" (why do we readily accept that), but I can plow through that. Maybe my younger self knew to find them disgusting!
I LOVE my diet. Daily bacon? I mean, come on! Creamy coffee? Liver and ground beef stepped in bacon fat? And to top it off, carbonated water in a can! Finding ways to elevate my physical fitness levels ought to be in that spirit. I'll be bringing something to the table that achieves that end.
"So Tonight, I Wanna Hearty Steak—It's Dine Scene Mighty Fine!"
Monday, February 27, 2023
Out With the Old...
Yesterday's post marks the end of a turbulent house negotiation where we ultimately made good on our walk. I confess, I don't like this approach of pulling out the nuclear button time and again, but we just couldn't get the seller to put on his big boy pants and keep them up! We first threatened to walk after he failed to open the pool after the contract's 5 days, but gave him a day pass over football.
On the 6th day, he showed us a suspiciously grainy video of "a pool guy" opening it up to dump some 20 lbs of shock—I'm sure he sent a professional like he said he did, a very busy professional with how fast he had to cast aside the pool cover.
We sent our guy and found the pool to be a lagoon. It may have been the summer getaway for the frogs in the nearby creek. The seller claimed to have turned the pool off immediately after his "opening." We would have to eat another pool inspection at a later date, which nearly didn't happen, because we did ANOTHER ultimatum, 7 days later, when he may or may not have burned up the motor and had to get another...allegedly.
He got it clear and boy howdy, that subsequent pool inspection saved us cash. Like I said yesterday, who knows where that water is? Admittedly, I never trusted that water hose next to the pool. What, it takes two minutes to pile a hose away? Cover your tracks, bruh!
I wanted to leave at that point because of the shenanigans, but I acquiesced. We went all up and down the place and got a good bead on it. I felt confident that without opening the walls, we knew what was going on, but even that might of been a problem, 'cause there were three light switches in the shower. That fuse box, yes an actual fuse box, looked like the spaghetti of a network closet. We were going to negotiate how much of the repairs we wanted him to set aside in that escrow account. This time, I wanted all of it: all $30K. When that final was countered, we pulled the ejection handle. Just a week from closing.
Sometimes, you gotta play U2's Walk On.
...in With the New.
And today's post is about...well...these characterizations:
Hours after yesterday's post, we put in an offer on another place through some Bill-aligned tactics from our buyer's agent: offer a few thousand above asking, then turn around and ask for all of closing. And somehow, we found a seller who thinks RATIONALLY 'cause he didn't put on his monkeypants and start dancing; he accepted the offer.
So, we're back in the game!
Pool's opening is tomorrow, the house inspection is on Wednesday and closing is on the 17th. Bada bing, bada boom.
"When It's Over, That's the Time I Maul and Shove Bacon."
Sunday, February 26, 2023
Walkin' in Hawkins
The mirage is over. The seller ran ramshod over our final offer—he ignored it just as he did for the contract requirement to open the pool in 5 days for inspection. He countered at $17.5 of $30K...$30K of line-by-line for 5 pages of repairs with thumbnails—not aesthetics like that kitchen that compels you to lose weight as your stomach churns—REPAIRS! He countered and rolled the dice on a place when if he just signed off on our offer, he would have doubled his money! Doubled it on a place where he walked into his ex-wife's pickup of a foreclosure and...umm....there was a lot of good TV on over the years?
Could have doubled his money in a low-turnover, local market. I gotta pull this one out again for yet ANOTHER seller:
Yeah, his $17.5 offer would not have even covered the house repairs, much less touched that leaking pool with the holes he tried to weld together between our first and *ahem* second pool inspections. If we fixed it ourselves, it would set us back $10K. Sure, he featured that pool in his listing since October, but it was no more than a hole in the ground where one HOPES its "lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea" don't involve me or my house. He could have just walked away with a wheelbarrow of cash without worrying about the fixes.
I can never understand sellers. Much less want a place of one Upside Down or another.
Another Place...as a “Temporary” Landlord?
We were going to throw in an offer on another place, but we discovered that the sellers don't want to move out. I mean, sure, they EVENTUALLY want to leave (right?), but they just wanted to know what it was like to be a tenant for a bit or something. The thing is, I kinda want to move out of my current place—that's also sorta my incentive to city planning all of this cardboard cityscape in my living room. Shifting a mortgage payment AND monthly rent from the seller to the buyer just ain't my bag. Introduces all sorts of risk and...well, what do I gain? I'm not getting that choice windfall at the end.