12-6-17 Wherein Fred and Robyn sell Crooked Acres, part 3

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See part 1 here, and part 2 here.

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*Our realtor said that a couple had fallen in love with Crooked Acres on Zillow and were distraught when it went under contract. Then they had a feeling and asked their realtor to call and see if it might still be available. Our realtor got confused and thought they were the people who’d fallen in love with the house way back in the beginning, the people moving here from West Virginia, and as a result I had this very strong “meant to be” feeling. I pushed Fred into telling our realtor that we would “entertain a reasonable offer.” They made an appointment to come see the house the next day.

*Remember the cameras? Yeah, we could see that they’d only spent 20 minutes in the house, and we both shrugged and figured out that that was that. But Fred said he didn’t think they were the same people who’d been so enthusiastic back in the beginning, and as it turned out, the realtor had gotten confused because this couple and the couple from West Virginia were represented by the same realty group.

*The day after they’d come through the house, we got an offer. We countered, came to an agreement and everyone signed.

*HOLY CRAP WE WERE CLOSING ON DECEMBER 15TH AND HAD NOWHERE TO LIVE. (And then I went off to Myrtle Beach for the better part of a week.)

*When I got back from Myrtle Beach, we began another flurry of looking at houses. We looked at, I think, 6 or 7 houses in one day, ending up at a house in Northeast Huntsville (on Chapman Mountain) that we’d seen probably four or five times. The first time we saw it back in June (I think), we fell in love with it. We kept going back to see it, but ultimately it was more money than we wanted to spend, and the back yard was going to be really hard to fence – there’s a patio in the back yard that is only a few feet from the property line, and… well, just trust me. It was going to be hard. But the lady who lived right next door to the house was the president of the Homeowner’s Association, and when we’d discussed it with her way back in June, she’d given us the feeling that it wasn’t going to be much of a problem, that what we were hoping to do (privacy fence, raised a bit around the patio, with a cat fencing attached to the inside of the fence) would be acceptable to the HOA.

*But like I mentioned, it was more money than we wanted to spend. We’d had several discussions with our realtor and with the homeowner, and we just really LOVED that house. The current homeowner and his family had lived there since 1989, it was a wonderful, solid house, and it was big (way more house than we technically needed, but y’know.)

*We had a long and involved discussion about the Chapman Mountain house, we both absolutely loved the house, liked the location for the most part, and it’s a very quiet neighborhood. We went back after seeing all those other houses, and decided maybe we should talk to the owner and see if he could come down to a price we were willing to pay. In an email exchange they came to an agreement on the price, and so Fred made an informal offer. We decided to go back the next day to take yet another look at the house and determine how difficult the fencing would be.

The front of the house.

Behind the back yard. (I’d show y’all more pictures, but those are all I have.)

*We talked to the HOA president (who, again, lived right next door), and she called the head of the architectural committee who came and brought a copy of the neighborhood rules and covenants. We discussed it with them at length, and got a really positive vibe from them all.

*Side note: both the HOA president and the head of the architectural committee seemed to think that it was really odd that we’d attempt to contain our cats, because in that neighborhood they let their cats roam free. Fred explained that we have “several” cats and then went on to explain that we didn’t MEAN to have several cats, but that’s just how it turned out. He mentioned Frankie and Khal’s FIV positive status, he told me later.

*So we left feeling sure that we were about to make a formal offer on the house, though Fred wanted to have a fence guy come out and tell us how hard it would be to fence in the back yard before we did.

*The next day, our realtor forwarded us an email from the HOA president. Turns out there were suddenly “community concerns,” and they had a list of questions:
*Please confirm the dimensions of the enclosure the prospective buyer wants to build, the outer wood fence (L x W x H).
*How many cats does your prospective buyer have now?
*What is the largest number of cats your prospective buyer could potentially have?
*Is your prospective buyer affiliated with an organization, i.e. pet adoption?
*Does your prospective buyer have regular inspections by the health department? City?

*Were you trying to use your favorite profanities on October 26th? I’m so sorry I was using them all up.

*Fred emailed the seller, immediately withdrawing the offer. As much as I had been in love with that house, I was immediately out of love with it. Not because of the house (it’s a great house, and we really like the seller), but if I had to live next door to someone who thought I might need to have regular inspections by the health department and/or city because of my cats, well. And moving into a house knowing that we’d been the topic of (one assumes) gossipy judgmental conversation between at least a few of the people heading up the HOA? Newp.

*My blood is boiling just thinking about it again. Because it turned out that Fred’s mention of FIV made the HOA president worry that our cats would be bringing “disease” into the neighborhood. Did I mention that she lets her cat roam free? And we were going to be containing our cats? Her whole line of reasoning is a special kind of something, indeed.

*As a side note: In our first house, we lived in a neighborhood with an HOA. We put a pool in and did all the rigmarole the HOA required, getting permission beforehand for the type of pool and the type of fence. When the pool was in, we went swimming. We were in our swimming pool in our own back yard, swimming around, when the HOA president came strolling into our back yard to take a look-see at the pool. Didn’t bother to let us know he was coming, just walked right on through the closed gate. We were, as I think you can imagine, thrilled.

*If you’re Facebook friends with Fred, this was the cause of his second round (or third? Well, most recent, anyway) of ranting about HOAs.

*So we freaked out again because OMG WE’RE CLOSING ON DECEMBER 15TH AND HAVE NO PLACE TO LIVE.

*While we’d been looking at houses over the summer, one of the houses we’d looked at was located in Harvest. It is not on a street named Deep Cove (or Deep anything or anything Cove), but for some reason I’d gotten it into my head as “Deep Cove,” so that’s what we always called it. It was a nice size, it was on a great piece of land, and the price was within our budget. Fred liked it more than I did, but I was at the point where I was like “You know? I can live there, and I can be happy. The cats will love the back yard, the neighbors have no problem with us putting up a fence, I’ll learn to love it.” There were a lot of “buts” about this house, though – it was going to need to be entirely repainted inside, it had carpet that was going to need to be removed, it was a dark house, it had a full basement that had been renovated so that it could be a separate apartment from the upstairs, complete with a kitchen – but I was sure I’d adapt. We went back to look at it again, and I was still “Meh” about it, but was SO FRICKIN’ TIRED of looking at houses that I was okay with making an offer.

*We talked to the realtor at length, and then went home and discussed it at length also and decided we should make an offer.

Deep Cove.

*BUT.

*I really hated the kitchen. Like, really hated it. It was small, it was cramped, it was dark – I just hated it. And the way the house is configured, there was no way to expand the kitchen, and neither of us cared for the downstairs kitchen (and were concerned about the fact that there WAS a “downstairs kitchen”). I tried to suck it up, I tried to get over myself. We discussed the flaws of the house, we discussed the things we liked about the house.

*Then we decided to make an offer on another house entirely.

To be continued tomorrow.

Random picture of Mercury and her Missions.

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“To be honest, lady, if I could stop you from moving into my neighborhood, I’d jump at the chance.” (Dewey)

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Previously
2016: Iva, giving Stefan the sniffity-sniff.
2015: No entry.
2014: Trappin’ Grandma Poo.
2013: “I AM THE JAKE AND THIS IS MY SPOT AND YOU GO AWAY RIGHT NOW, YOU LITTLE WHIPPERSNAPPER,” yelled Jake.
2012: “PUT SNACK RIGHT HERE IN MY MOUTH RIGHT HERE!”
2011: For the Love of Cats review and giveaway.
2010: Bobby haz a complaint.
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: I might as well go ahead and buy another six beds so there’s room for him IN THE FRICKIN’ HOUSE.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.

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