A story of survival

In 2009, Susan and I were homeless for over two months, trying to find a place to live. Susan wrote about our experience. I wanted to expose this writing as a guide and a warning to those who want to find a house to buy or rent. I decided not to add anything; this writing is in her own words.

In 2009 because of a failing real estate market my partner and I found ourselves homeless. For two months we drove city streets and country roads in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee looking for a home. We had less than 50K cash total to purchase a home and no jobs to provide us with the possibility of a mortgage. The resulting adventure was one of the most educational experiences of my life and is the reason for me starting this blog. Somewhere along the way I came to understand the meaning of what a home really is and I saw a terrible displacement of priorities within myself and among the people that we had to deal with to find a home. Those issues are listed here to become a catalyst for discussion.

We eventually found our home for less than 50K. It’s a single wide manufactured home on one half acre in Tennessee. It was at one time the furthest thing I could imagine as my dream home but it has become truly the home of my dreams. It is gracious, cozy, comfy, a refuge and my place of relaxation from the modern world and it is all these things because I have made it not just a roof over my head but a home; a very special home indeed.

In 2009 my partner and I found ourselves homeless. As two working professionals, a teacher and an office assistant, both with over 30 years of work experience under our belts, we were both at a loss as to what to do to remedy the situation. Job application after job application left us with no prospects. And in order to avoid foreclosure we had put our home up for sale, with a hope also of making some cash to live on for awhile. We eventually had to lower the price of the house, so low that we ended up making only 40k on the sale, that after 3 years of renovation work from which we hoped to make at least 100K.

So we had to leave our home with nowhere to go and no hopes of employment. We decided our best course of action was to try to get a roof over our heads with the cash we had left and headed for Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina where we saw what looked to be livable lower priced real estate, many of them mobile homes, or more correctly manufactured housing, which I absolutely loathed and had no intention of ever living in. With little choice, we loaded up the car and went on a 3 month adventure that became one of the most educational experiences of my life. I have decided to chronicle as much of the experience as possible in the following pages, in part just to remember, and in part as a guide for others who might find themselves in a similar situation.

The real estate market left us with a lot of hard learned lessons that I have chronicled here. We got little help from anyone in our home search, including realtors who clearly were not interested in showing us properties listed for 50K or less. It didn’t seem to matter that we were homeless or that we had the cash ready and waiting. No one was willing to help us with the footwork or phone work. We figured out early on that we had to do everything ourselves or we would never find a home.

That said our criteria was fairly liberal. We didn’t care about the interior condition as long as it was livable and everything functioned. Everything being the bathroom, the kitchen and the electricity. Since we wouldn’t have much money left for repairs we had to be sure that nothing major was needing to be fixed before we moved in. We didn’t care what the outside looked like or if the inside was 75 years old, as long as it all functioned. We didn't even really care where the house was so we looked in cities and in the country, and in a very wide area. We decided we would search for employment after we got a roof over our heads. We felt and still do feel that there was a house out there just waiting for us, just as we feel that there is a home waiting out there for everyone who is homeless. Everybody, no matter what their financial status or education, should have an opportunity to own a home at some time in their lives. This is one of the principles that moved me forward in writing this book. That and the revelation that a house truly is just four walls and a roof and no matter how it looks on the inside or outside, making it a home is entirely up to you. We eventually found exactly what we were looking for.

The following chapters are a condensation of our time , which in reality ended up being a little more than two months, three months if you count sitting in hotels waiting for the closing. I chose to list here the most interesting and educational of our experiences. The hard lessons learned, which are at the end of each chapter, were difficult and exhausting and would have been to hard to overcome without a positive attitude and an incredible amount of determination, two things which I am not generally known for, but with the assistance of my ever supportive partner was able to bring forth. Of course the thought of living in a cardboard box under a bridge is bound to motivate most people in one direction or another. And a little hot chocolate every morning didn’t hurt either.

I have included definitions in the back of the book and other documents which will be referred to during the course of reading. Above all I have tried to keep everything as simple as possible. This book is for the average person and is not meant to educate you to become a realtor. But instead someone who can navigate the real estate market with a lot of education.

Happy house hunting and remember, you deserve to own the house of your dreams, no matter how much money you have.

Chapter 1 The Day of the Cats

Well off we go for our first day of house hunting armed with a healthy breakfast and a whole lot of even healthier optimism. We were hoping to have a house by the end of the week. It was a very hot, humid July day so I dressed in the coolest most comfortable skirt and walking sandals, a decision which I would discover later was a big mistake. Knowing we would be riding around in a realtor’s car all day I grabbed my big tote bag and filled it to the top with paper, pencils, maps, drinks, food bars, and a long sleeve shirt to keep me warm in a cold air conditioned car. We drove to the realtors office just a few blocks away and piled into her SUV. We had met the realtor before and had prearranged our time. We were to look at three houses this morning.

The first house was in a small historic town. We liked the idea of being able to walk to the downtown area with small shops and a library. But as we drove into this particular neighborhood my heart sank. Some of the homes were very run down, even boarded up. But when we pulled up in front of the house I was encouraged. A very cute cottage of sorts with a front porch. Perched on one of the porch rails was one of the cutest cats I have ever seen. The house was surrounded by newly planted blooming flowers. Very cozy. The closest neighbor's house was in good condition. This place definitely has possibilities. As we approached the front porch the cat made a run for it under the crawl space. My fantasies of setting cooling apple pies on the front porch next to my blooming daffodils quickly disappeared when the realtor opened the front door. The smell that emanated out the door was enough to make me lose my breakfast. It was an effort to enter the house. I tried not to breathe.

Maybe the tenants were cooking up something strange or simply didn’t take out their garbage. The tenants were strange ones indeed. All the windows were covered with heavy blankets making the interior so pitch black that even with the lights on we could barely see anything. When my eyes adjusted I saw that the interior was filthy. As I walked across the living room my foot sank into a hole in the middle of the floor. The floor was rotting right through to the crawl space. A crawl space that was totally inaccessible for repairs because it was only about a foot high. The bedrooms on the back of the house have no windows at all. It looks like they enclosed the back porch and didn’t bother to put any windows in it. In order to get to the tiny bathroom you have to walk through both bedrooms, neither of which was big enough to put a bed in. There is a back exit out of one of the bedrooms which is an old interior door that doesn’t fit properly, leaving a huge gap all around the door to the outside and a nice place for the entrance of every kind of rodent imaginable. The kitchen at the front of the house and the bedrooms at the back were ad-ons to the original house and were only built with 6 foot high ceilings. My partner has to walk hunched over since he is over 6 feet tall.

The MKS sheets say that this house is supposed to be 750 sf, but 250 feet of it is an attic that can only be accessed from a pull down ladder. Not really usable space except for storage, and should never have been listed as part of the total square footage.

Outside there’s a small backyard with an old falling down shed that we decide is not salvageable. There is a new metal roof but as I walk around the outside of the house I notice it appears that the vinyl siding is melting off the house. The neighbor who lives in the nice house next door comes outside to chat and feels compelled to tell me that the current tenants throw their bacon grease out the window. Just about the same moment that she finishes her sentence I look down and realize that my comfy flat sandals are sliding around in a huge mound of bacon grease, that has now oozed up over my sandals and around my toes. I decide to take a moment to ask some neighborly questions.

“Have you been inside the house? Do you know what the strange smell is inside? It smells familiar. Do they cook strange foods? Spices?

“No” She says. “It’s the cats. They live under the house and use it as a litter box.” Must be about ten of ‘em.”

Yep, that’s it. A litter box smell. I slowly put two and two together. A rotting floor, ten cats, nasty smell, an inaccessible crawl space. I don’t even want to think about what else is under there. Even if we get rid of the cats will we ever get rid of the smell! We’d have to raise the ceilings inside to be able to stand up straight. To much for our $2000 budget for repairs. I motion to the realtor that I’m ready to move on, as I try to get some of the bacon grease off my feet by walking around in the high grass. When we got in the car I told myself that this was only the first house, not to get discouraged. They won’t all be enormous litter boxes.

After quite a long drive on many winding, narrow country roads past more cows than I ever knew existed on this planet, we approached the driveway to house number two. The house stood just at the top of a rolling hillside overlooking a pastoral farm with a pond and beautiful little white ducks floating around in it. I could definitely get used to the view. From the top of the driveway you could see the mountains in the distance. Nice. Maybe I’ll just stand here and take in the view for a minute. I was jolted out of my paradise found fantasy as soon as I started walking around the side of the house and I was greeted by a half rabid, convulsively barking dog trying to get at me over an 8 foot fence that had been installed along one side of the property. Clearly to keep the dog from eating anyone who happened to wander into the back yard. Well that wouldn’t really make for a nice quiet afternoon in the garden. We ended up standing outside for at least 15 minutes while the realtor made 6 phone calls to try and get into the house. Evidently the lock box was not working properly. The entire time the dog barked convulsively and almost hung himself by his chain trying to jump over the fence and get at us. But we knew we couldn’t let a dog make a decision about our house choice. We couldn’t afford to be that picky. So we resisted the urge to move on quickly. So finally the door is open and as we walk into the house we are hit with another obnoxious smell, but this time we knew immediately what it was. Walking through the door of that house was like walking into one of those restrooms on the side of a truck stop gas station. The kind where they just let the door stand open all day because the odor is so strong that lighting a match might blow the place up. Except this house odor was even worse because it did not come from human pee but puppy pee, evident by the yellow stains on every square inch of floor and on every wall in every corner of the entire house. The carpeting had been removed but the OSB board underneath had been soaked and had to be replaced. There was no getting away from the smell anywhere in the house. We didn’t think anything would get that smell out and since our $2000 repair budget would not allow for the replacement of all the walls and floors, we moved on quickly. We waved goodbye to the rabid dog and watched the beautiful view of the mountains disappear as we drove down the hill to continue our search.

After a few more winding country roads we end up at a very nice corner lot even further out in the country surrounded by farmland. There was a nicely maintained brick home across the street. The house we are looking at appears to be a beautiful 1920’s Craftsman cottage with a cat lying on the front porch. A big, fat orange tabby. Not being a good day for dogs and cats in general I went into panic mode but realized very quickly that this house did not have a crawl space but was sitting on an enclosed basement. So no worry of the cats living under the house. My panic completely dissipated when the cat got up and slowly lumbered across the street to the nice brick house as we approached. Clearly he was just visiting.

So why was this beautiful house in a nice area selling for only 50K? Well to begin with the lawn had been let go terribly. We had to wade through waist deep weeds and grass to get to the house. A stroll which left me with an enormous amount of mosquito bites all the way up to my backside and taught me a hard lesson about proper clothing. Alongside the house there was a mess which appeared to be landscaping gone bad. They had dug an enormous hole and left it there. A pond maybe? Large piles of rocks. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. The 50K answer came when we went inside the house. The previous owners had tried to do some renovations and never completed them. Much like what they had done in the yard except this was worse. It appeared they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. The ceilings were left mostly unfinished with bare insulation hanging down from them. Parts of the walls were ripped out in some rooms and doors put in their place, except the doors didn’t go anywhere. Doors to the outside were covered up on the inside but still visible on the outside. Some of the walls were covered with what appeared to be flooring. But we kept looking because the bones of a beautiful home were still there. Hardwood floors throughout. A gorgeous brick fireplace. A large eat in kitchen was in need of serious repairs but we could probably handle it with our budget.

After walking around for about 10 minutes we decided the place had possibilities. Our biggest concern was another strange odor which we could not identify. Not exactly a cat litter smell but a cross between old garbage and a dirty bathroom. Strange because the house was pretty clean, including the bathroom, except for muddy cat paw marks all over the toilet, sink, and tub. We decided the odor was just old cat litter and headed up to look at the second floor. My partner got to the top of the stairs, stopped in his tracks and motioned for me to turn around and go back down the stairs. I assumed the stairs were dangerous, which is what they appeared to be, but instead the source of the strange smell had been discovered at the top of the stairs. It seems the odor was not old cat litter but the actual old dead cat that we found out later through the realtor had gotten trapped in the house by mistake. The listing realtor had searched for him but never found him. He had probably been trapped in there for a while. And the muddy paw marks! The poor thing trying to get water out of the toilet and dripping sink. We pretty much were just stopped in our tracks and couldn’t wait to get out of that house and lock the door. I definitely felt sorry for the cat but I also couldn’t begin to think about starting a new life in my first home where a lovely creature had just suffered a horrible death. The memory of the home was tainted and could not be repaired, even though the house probably could be. It might work for someone else, but for us being animal lovers it couldn’t be a consideration. We never discussed that house again even though it did occur to me as we drove away that the poor kitty had a final resting place but I had to continue searching for mine.

Chapter 1 Hard lessons learned

1. Learn to dress appropriately.

OK this is one I should have learned when I was ten but never did somehow. After watching too many house hunting shows where prospective buyers are strolling through 300K homes in their business suits, I thought it was important to look good, even though we were on a really low budget. The truth is lower priced houses usually have unmowed lawns and debris lying around. And you might have to crawl around in moldy basements and attics. Covered shoes, long pants and long sleeve shirts are the most appropriate attire for men and women doing this kind of house hunting. We got to the point eventually where we were wearing our old work clothes and taking along extras to change into after getting into a mess. This is not house hunting for the squeamish. So go prepared.

2. Seriously nasty smells should not be occurring in a livable house.

I have a good nose. If you don’t have one, take someone along who does when you go house hunting. Nasty smells need to be searched out and identified, especially if no one is living there when you are looking around. Some smells, such as dampness, mold, and rot can have serious health consequences. Seeking out smells means crawling under the crawl space and into the attic and walking down rotting steps into an old moldy basement, but it’s important. A dead cat can be removed, but black mold can ruin your whole home. If you really like a place but there was a strange unexplained odor, you can go back a second time to see if the smell is still there, or hire an inspector or clean up company to have a look before you make an offer.

3. First impressions and experiences are important.

You’re going to spend a lot of time living and working in this house. You need to have a good feeling about it, even though you are searching for really cheap real estate. A dead cat as a first impression will ruin your feelings about the rest of the house. Realtors will have the attitude that beggars can’t be choosers, but we did not settle for something we did not feel good about. The home we finally purchased gave us a good impression as we drove up to it, and when we entered it we felt cozy and at home. We still love the feel of the house. It's bright, sunny and cheerful. Just because you're not spending 300K doesn’t mean you shouldn’t like what you buy. Don’t settle for something that will give you night mares.

4. Know your budget before you start looking.

House # 2 was on an awesome lot (except for the neighbor’s dog) but we knew we could not afford to rip out all those floors and walls and replace them. So we quickly moved on. Don’t waste your time looking at something that is obviously over your budget.

Chapter 2 PODS, Pollution, Posturing

Well I probably mentioned this before, but my partner and I were living in hotels while we were doing the house hunting. We made a decision to do our house hunting this way because we didn’t have jobs and therefore could not rent an apartment. We also felt it was the easiest way to search a large area, which we knew we would have to do with a limited number of homes listed under 50K. Since this might be the only option for other folks in the same situation I’ll take some time to mention some tips and tricks here.

First of all we put all our belongings except what fit into the car into a POD. They are reasonably priced and they bring the container to your house and give you time to fill it. No rushing to get the truck back at the end of the day. We made sure that the pod storage place was within a few hours drive of wherever we might be, which did come in handy because we forgot to keep out some things we needed. And here’s a tip on that. Put things you might need and necessities at the back of the pod so when you open the door you can find them. I’m talking about personal papers, pots and pans. These you don’t want to drag around with you or leave in a hotel room to get stolen either. I also bought two air mattresses and packed them with sheets, etc., at the back of the pod for us to use in our new home until we could have the POD delivered.

With their delivery schedule you might have to wait a week or so, which we did. This worked out nicely for us. We only had to move our stuff once. Into the POD and out of the POD. And we could do it at our own pace. You could also do it the old fashioned way and rent a truck and a storage space. But I would only do that if you are going to have help. Of course the cheapest way to store your things is to find a relative with a big garage and if you are lucky enough to have one, go for it.

As far as hotels go, we kind of figured that out as we went along. In whatever area we wanted to search we looked on the internet for specials or coupons. We tried to get hotels with computer use and refrigerators and microwaves, which saved us on buying prepared food. If we thought we wanted to spend a week in a particular town we looked for a place that offered weekly rates. These were the most economical by far. And the less you have to move around the less stressful your house hunting will be. Once we purchased our home we still had to wait 3 weeks for the closing. At that point our realtor got us a great deal, almost half price, on a nice hotel room with a full breakfast and conveniences nearby. Most realtors should be able to help out with some kind of hotel discount. All told we never paid more than $65 a night for a room and weekly rates were around $300. Cheaper than renting an apartment in most cases and much more convenient.

A final word on hotels. A lot of people feel that if you pay any less than $100 a night you will be battling bed bugs. We were on he road for 2 months and didn’t find that to be the case. We only had one incident with fleas and some problems with moldy smelling air conditioners. The best thing to do is to have a look at the room before you pay. Any hotel will give you the keys to a few rooms to pick one. Open the door, sniff, turn the ac/heater on and make sure it works and doesn’t stink. Examine the bathroom. It should look and smell clean. Look in the corners for dead bugs of any kind. Pull up the sheets and mattress covers and look in the corners for dead bugs or blood stains. Look on the ceilings for roaches. If there are any problems move on to the next hotel. We found most places were OK. If after one night we were uncomfortable, for instance the non smoking section really wasn’t, we moved on in the morning.

So we’re back on the road again with the same realtor. It’s day two with three properties to look at today. The first is a double wide listed at 50K, a foreclosure. It looks nice on the outside, and is on a permanent foundation which supposedly makes it more valuable than one that has skirting around the bottom. It’s in a nice rural development with about 20 other homes that look to be in nice condition. It has a large front yard, a long concrete driveway, and farmland behind. Looks great to me so far. There are tenants, so we have to knock. We discover there are three children and a mother living in this small 3 bedroom home. One of the children has a baby of her own. The rooms are piled so high with stuff that we can’t see the walls. The shower in the master bathroom had fallen through the floor, literally. You could see underneath the house. All the people were using one bathroom, and that one looked like it wasn’t in much better shape. The floors in the kitchen and living room were bare OSB board and they were rotting through. They felt soft when you walked on them. It looked like the refrigerator was ready to fall through the floor too. What is going on? Why is the landlord not making repairs? We left in despair, not so much about the house but about the conditions this family was living in. Where would they go if we would buy this house? Can I afford to be concerned about this? Anyone with a heart would be. But the larger problem was that we didn’t have enough money to fix the floors and bathrooms. So for now we are the ones who will remain homeless.

Home #2 was listed for 35,900. It was quite a drive, past some beautiful recreational lakes; very, very rural. Back a dirt road with beautiful pastoral scenes, sheep grazing on hillsides. It reminded me of a scene from Pride and Prejudice. We pull up to a sign that says, “No trespassing, Herb Sanctuary.” Is this the place? Are you kidding? The realtor knew what she was doing. I love herbs, flowers. This place had herbs, flowers, trickling streams, a greenhouse, a chicken pen and a view of horses grazing in a field. It is an older single wide, but in good shape, it appeared, with two outdoor decks, a hammock in the backyard, and walking trails. The surroundings were really beautiful. Things had been let go though, for quite a while it seemed. Lots of weeds, grown up paths. Someone died maybe? We are trying to get inside but there’s no key for the realtor. She makes some calls. We have to drive back to the small town twenty minutes each direction to get the key. Do we still want to look inside the house? We have another house to look at today. We might run out of time. Well, we decide that we can’t make an offer if we haven’t seen the whole thing. And we like it enough to do that. So back in the car to the real estate office, everyone uses the toilet. And back at the house 40 minutes later. We finally see inside. Lots of antiques. Very well kept. Looks to be in decent shape. No weird smells. It looks like they have a setup to dry herbs. It looks like someone just walked away and left everything. Lots of cobwebs. Dirty dishes in the sink, crusted over. The beds look like they were slept in. Does someone still live here? The realtor doesn’t know. She thinks they’re part-time residents. Well, I guess that would explain it. Still, it seems strange that someone would just abandon a house like this after all the work they clearly did on it. And why are their belongings still here? We both got a strange feeling about the whole situation. Even though we like it well enough to make an offer on it we decide to have a look at the 3^rd house before dark and discuss this house later.

House #3 is a double wide foreclosure listed for 50K in a nice rural area closer to town and near a beautiful state park where we can go hiking. It’s also on a large acre lot which we really like because we want a large garden. The driveway is completely grown over and the grass appears as though it hasn’t been mowed for a year. It is waist deep with weeds, mosquitoes and I’m sure lots of ticks. But I’m prepared this time with long pants which make for an easier trudge through the debris. We are very pleasantly surprised when we get inside. There are no strange odors and everything looks perfectly intact. It’s even clean! We notice a few holes in the walls but easily repairable. And we have to buy all our appliances, but we can easily do that. There’s a back deck in decent shape. We meet in the center of the house with smiles on both our faces. This is definitely a doable house. And only on our second day of looking! I feel happy and very lucky. I grab a copy of the MLS sheet and start taking notes. I make a quick list of any potential problems based on my self inspection education. We will go back to the realtor’s office and make an offer based on what we see here now and leaving ourselves enough money to do any necessary repairs. We will add a contingency to the offer for a full inspection which we will do ourselves after the water and electric are turned on. My partner inspects the outside of the house and we head back to the realtor’s office exhausted but happy. Our happiness did not last long when after a few minutes on the phone the realtor comes out of her office and informs us that there are already three offers on the house and the listing realtor feels there would be no point in making another offer. All the offers are higher then the offer we were going to make. And now I’m angry, exhausted and confused. Why are we looking at homes that already have offers on them? The realtor says she didn’t know. Why didn’t she know? Isn’t that her job? Is it up to us to find this out? Why are we wasting our precious time like this? Every day in a hotel is costing us more money. The realtor seems unconcerned with the situation.

I’m grabbing my things to head back to the hotel when the realtor says she can show us an almost identical house nearby with no offers if we leave immediately. She is not sure of the condition of the house. We decide to follow her in our car so that we can head right out to dinner afterward. I am skeptical and feel that the realtor is just doing it to make amends. Can’t she see we’re exhausted?

So we drive about 10 minutes to an industrial area of town, not a very nice location but the neighborhood looks OK. The front porch is in very bad condition. We step lightly for fear of falling through. The inside is a nice surprise. Even nicer than the last one. It looks almost like no one has lived in it. It actually smells clean. Even the carpets look unworn. The appliances are included and look brand new. There is some minor wall damage. Easily fixable. There is a sliding glass door in the dining room. I open it to a twelve foot drop down to the lawn. No deck, no porch. Dangerous. There is another back entrance off the house with stairs but it is literally falling off the house and unusable. So the one front entrance must be repaired before even moving in. I’ll try to get an estimate for that on the internet later, probably a couple hundred dollars. The lot for this house is a pretty steep hill with a small shed at the bottom. About a half acre lot with a nice mountain view. We decide to take inspection notes, and go back to the office and make an offer. Everyone is happy, us, the realtor. So why do I feel skeptical about the whole situation? Why does this nice house not have any offers on it? While the other one in worse condition has three when they are offered for the same price?

Nevertheless we decide to move forward. Since this is our first experience with offering on a foreclosure we decide to start at a low amount. We assume that the bank is just jumping to unload to unload this place. We start in the high 30’s. We wait in the office while the offer is drawn up. There is a whole stack of pages we have to sign, almost like buying a house. My partner gets out the check book to write the earnest money check and the realtor says she doesn’t need a check. Why the heck doesn’t she need a check? It says right on the offer that we just signed that an earnest money check is included. How will the bank know that we are serious? My skeptical feeling increased and I leave the realtor office with that feeling but, also a feeling of happiness and contentment that at last we are finding some properties that are livable in our price range.

Before we left the realtor told us she would be gone for the weekend and unable to show us any homes. So we asked her to print out a list of some more homes that we can drive by ourselves. That way we can be ready if our offer is turned down. She prints out the customer MLS with the directions so we can drive around.

So back at the hotel with Chinese food in our stomachs we sit down to review the day, and plan the next day. We did this every night just so we are always on the same page and also so we know what our schedule is for the next day. It keeps you from sitting in the hotel watching HBO all day.

So here’s how the conversation went:

Him-”So do you think that sag at the roof line on the house we made an offer on is a serious issue?”

Me-”What sag in the roof? What are you talking about?”

Him-”Oh come on now, how could you miss it? It was pretty obvious.”

Me-”You mean we made an offer on a house with a sagging roof. Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

Him-”It’s right here in my notes.”

Me-”Your notes. I didn’t see your notes.” We just looked at each other, ate our fortune cookies and went to bed. Tomorrow we start all over again.

Chapter 2 Lessons

1. Homes must be properly ventilated underneath.

We found a problem with this in many homes we looked at. Whether it’s a crawl space or basement doesn’t matter. If there isn’t sufficient air circulation under the house you will get rotting floors and mold. We found basements where the windows had been boarded over and crawl spaces that had been completely sealed shut for aesthetic reasons, or just because the cats were crawling underneath. Any inspection book will explain proper ventilation. There should be screens over those holes so no rodents or cats can crawl under. And cross ventilation. The results of doing it improperly I can tell you will ruin a home. In the first house in this chapter there was a permanent foundation and not enough vents. We also couldn’t find a spot to get under the house to have a look. This is necessary for repairs, etc. Usually they are in the form of a hinged door that you can crawl into, hence the name crawl space. So the floors were rotting out from under the house. And the remedy is expensive. Redoing the foundation and all new floors. Not worth the expense in most cases. So make sure you look under the house.

2. Research the area for toxins, Superfund sites, well contamination.

Remember the single wide with the beautiful herb gardens that looked like it had been abandoned? Well here’s the story. We both had a strange feeling about that house, but we both liked it also. So I did a general internet search on the town itself. Nothing scandalous there. Something that really bothered me was that it was a hot day in July and when we drove by those beautiful recreational lakes there wasn’t one person on them or near them. So I googled the lakes and what I found was shocking. Hepatitis contamination in all surrounding wells. Raw sewage had been dumped by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the lakes years before and leached into local wells. Lots of very, very sick people. Homes unlivable. You have to be able to connect to municipal water to live in the house, otherwise you take the risk of getting sick. You can’t wash your food with it, water your animals or irrigate your garden. They have a map showing the areas that are contaminated and this house was in that area. No wonder they abandoned the place! We almost made an offer on this house!! Chances are they would have accepted it because their chances of selling it are slim. Closer research showed many, many homes in the area for sale. Most with a notation behind it saying, “can be connected to municipal water supply.” That’s an indication that the water is bad. The hard lesson here is that you have to research the area you are looking in. And if you notice anything strange in the community, dig deeper. Start by doing just a general internet search. Then go to EPA.gov. Or ask someone you met on the street. Generally boarded up or abandoned homes indicate a community wide problem and someone local can fill you in. There are a lot of toxins you might be able to deal with such as a local paper mill with a nasty smell, but you must have clean water to live safely. Make sure you know what you are getting into.

3. Don’t rely on the realtor to give you information about the area.

We called the realtor and asked her to fill us in on the contaminated lake situation. Shouldn’t she have let us know what we were getting into? She told us she didn’t know anything about it. An impossibility for anyone living in the area. It was a big scandal. All over the newspapers. All those homes for sale. Anyone living in the area, especially a realtor, would have to know something about it. More than likely she just didn’t want to discuss the problem. It’s your job as the buyer to get all the facts. Don’t expect anyone else to do it for you. The burden is on you. So do your research.

4. Most banks do not accept contingencies on foreclosures.

This sounds complicated but it’s actually really simple. A contingency means that you are making a monetary offer in the house, lets say 30K, but before you are going to buy it something else has to happen. For instance, you have to get the money inheritance, you have to sell the house you are currently living in to get the cash, or, in our case, we needed to turn on the electricity and water to inspect the house. Most people and banks are OK with contingencies during normal economic times. But when the market is glutted with homes that could take years to sell, a contingency means that the seller could be waiting a long time for the transaction to occur. So in hard economic times, most people, and banks, don’t allow contingencies. They want to get the deal over with as quickly as possible. Who can blame them really? What happened in our case was an investor feeding frenzy on homes. It cost the bank a lot less money to write up a deal for 8 houses at one time with no contingencies than one house with contingencies. So the investors were making great deals buying up a lot of homes to renovate, resell, and make some cash. On these smaller houses maybe about 30K per house. But what is happening is there are a lot of people out there that desperately need a cheap home that are being left out of the real estate market. And there are a lot of empty houses sitting around. The investors need some time to do repairs and relist (at a higher unreachable price). In the meantime the house is empty. This particular house we made an offer on is still on the market by the investor, over a year since we would’ve bought it. And probably was empty for years before that going through the bank foreclosure process. It’s my opinion that these homes should be made available to people living on the streets. With a little “homeowner repair” education they would become great places to live.

So we ended up eventually talking to the listing agent for this particular house and he said there were no contingencies allowed from day one. The realtor who took our offers and wasted our time waiting on these offers didn’t bother to tell us that. We’re not sure why. Maybe she didn’t take the time to find out herself. So before making a foreclosure offer, make sure the bank is taking contingencies. We would have not made the offer had we known that we could not afford to buy a house without inspecting it first. If the pipes were broken under the house we would not have had enough money to fix them. The investor probably didn’t care because he wasn’t going to live in it and had enough money to make any repairs necessary. We also would have had to pay the connection fees, a few hundred dollars, just to have the water and electric turned on. A big investment for us at the time. And a big risk because while we were inspecting the house, someone else could have bought it out from under us. So if the house is a foreclosure you have to take all these things into consideration, keep our budget in mind, and have a lot of patience.

5. If there are two people looking at a house, walk around and take notes together.

I can’t stress enough to take a lot of notes. Every detail is important because when you leave you will not remember what you were looking at. Especially if you look at more than one house in a day. I don’t care how good your memory is. Have the realtor print out an MLS sheet and take your notes on that. Walk around together and point out everything that you see that should be discussed. Two heads are better than one in this case, and I would highly recommend taking someone along who can give you a second opinion. Studying an inspection book is helpful but on the first visit to the house pay particular attention to the following:

What is the neighborhood like (better observed at night). Is it clean, are there boarded up homes nearby?

What is next door, business, house, empty lot? Across the street How far is it to the nearest amenities (ask the realtor)? Where do you have to park?

Observe the house from a distance:

Are there large trees leaning over the house that need to be removed? Does the roof ridge look level? Are there any obvious sags in the roof, holes, etc.

Walk around the house:

Where does the yard begin and end if there is one?

Is the yard private, is there a fence?

Are you near a highway? Is there a lot of noise? What is at the end of the lot, an alley? Another entrance? Is there a storage shed, garage. What is it’s condition? Is there debris such as old oil tanks that need to be hauled away? Take a quick walk around the outside:

If there are porches, what kind of condition are they in? What kind of siding? How does it look?

What kind of foundation. How does it look? Is there standing water in the yard (bad drainage, full septic tank).

Are there any unusual smells in the yard (septic or old leaking kerosene tank)?

Look for erosion in the yard from poor drainage.

Inside the house:

Note any unusual smells such as mold.

What is on the floors. Carpet, wood, vinyl. What is the condition? Do the walls need to be repainted?

Are there any water leaks on the ceilings, mold? Are the kitchen and bathroom currently usable or will something have to be repaired/replaced before you can move in? What are the approximate sizes of the rooms? Will your stuff fit in the house? Are there any unfinished repairs such as torn out ceilings that must be completed before you can move in? Are all the appliances there ie. stove, dishwasher, refrigerator, water heater? Do they need to be replaced before moving in? How is the house laid out? Will it work for your family? Draw a small floor plan if you think it is unusual so you can discuss it later.

If there is a basement and attic have a quick look. Do they smell moldy? Are there water marks in the attic? Is there standing water in the basement?

If you review these points and have an MLS sheet you will have enough information to sit down and discuss the home and calculate approximate move in costs. Once you have done that you can make an offer at a price that is logical and practical.

6. Ask the realtor for a complete MLS sheet.

From our experience it seemed that the MLS system was not very efficient. Some of the MLS sheets have a lot of information on them. Some have no more than the address and how many bedrooms are in the house. The realtor will give you what is called the customer copy. We found that this varies greatly. Make sure the realtor knows that the more information you have the easier it will be for you to make a decision. We had to in many cases, demand a proper MLS sheet. They weren’t cheerfully supplied. The realtor wants you to call her with questions, which you can. But in our experience it took many days to get a simple question answered, like “how big is the lot?” You don’t want to waste time this way. The “customer copy” MLS sheet should contain the following:

Price, address, county, bedrooms/bathrooms, lot size, schools, zoning (residential/business), year built, square footage, exterior covering, roof covering, appliances included, heating, cooling, source of water supply (well, public), sewer (septic, public), type of water heater, city/county taxes, directions to the house in case you want to do a drive by after the fact or late in the evening. Less information than this is not useful in trying to make a decision.

When the realtor that you go to prints out your MLS sheets they will have their contact information at the bottom of the page, but that realtor may not be the listing agent for the property. The listing agent for the property is the one that met with the owner and helped them choose the price and has the most detailed information about the property. This, in our opinion, is the best person to show you the property. They know the story behind it (grandma has to sell to go into a nursing home) and can probably fill you in on the neighborhood better than a non listing agent who has never seen the house before. But if you’re going to look at a lot of homes you will have to do a lot of running around to different agencies to talk to the listing agent on each property. Not a possibility in most cases.

Also the listing agent is a little more motivated since they will get the full 6% commission if they sell the house whereas the non listing agent will only get 3%. So this is what we did. We asked a lot of questions about each property. You will have a lot of questions if you are really doing a serious buying spree. The non listing realtor then has to call the listing agent and get those questions answered. In many cases this never happened and we never got our answers. Remember, we only have 40K to spend. 3% of that is only $1200. Maybe not worth a lot of phone calls, etc, to a realtor who is use to making 20k on one sale. The listing agent however will make $2400. A nice paycheck for sharing information that you already know. So if we didn’t get the answers we needed we went to realtor.com. Put in the MlS# of the property and got the listing agent’s name so we could give them a call. In most cases this worked great. We got answers to all our questions quickly. Our feeling was this. We deserve as much time and effort as the guy with 300K. Realtors have to accept the fact that there will be lower priced sales that will require a lot of their time. That’s part of the job. Everyone deserves to find a home they love. Unfortunately we found realtors who understand this to be the exception, not the rule. We were homeless and got very little consideration. Do what you have to to get the information you need.

Chapter 3 If you want something done right, do it yourself

Well as I said, the realtor said she would be busy over the weekend and unable to show us any homes. We had made an offer on the double wide that we eventually found out would never be accepted because there were no contingencies allowed, so we wanted to keep ourselves busy by driving around looking at some other available properties. We decided to be loyal to this realtor since she had already put in a lot of time for us. So we had her print out complete listings for about 8 other possibilities with directions for drive-bys. Some of the homes were empty (indicated on the MLS sheets) so we could also inspect the exterior of the homes. Never, ever invade a person’s privacy who is selling a home,even if you think they are not at home. It’s frightening to have strangers walking around in your yard!

So Saturday morning we piled in the car with a cooler full of snacks, maps, MLS sheets, and a lot of optimism. It was a nice weekend and we planned on a picnic at the local park. We also planned to stop by the local college and use the computers to do more internet searches. A laptop is a useful thing when searching for a house. Most hotel rooms have free high speed these days. Some hotels even have public access computers which are nice. But we found the most economic way, without purchasing a laptop, was to make use of libraries and colleges. We could each get a computer and so do twice as much research.

Most libraries allow you an hour at a time and will give you a visitors pass. Most colleges had unlimited time and just asked for some basic information to give you a temporary card. Of course students get first priority so if you’re there during the school year you might not get access. We were looking during the summer sessions when fewer students are around, and so had unlimited access.

So we’re headed out for a drive by day, which we found to be a very important part of our searching as time went on. As a matter of fact, by the time we got to the end of our two month spree we were doing all the drivebys by ourselves before we even considered going there with a realtor. We found that we had wasted a lot of time driving around with realtors who probably had nothing better to do and in many cases were showing us things we just weren’t interested in, couldn’t afford, or didn’t have the money to fix. Even though we let them know exactly what we needed. In many cases we knew as soon as we drove up to the house that we weren’t interested. Many were in horrible neighborhoods and weren’t even easily accessible with our little Toyota Tercel. Many of the realtors showed us listings that we didn’t even agree to see. They just drove us to the houses while we were out looking at other homes. I guess the thinking is “you never know.” But here we were wasting our time and money on hotels, which the realtors all knew. Frustrating, to say the least. And we are not rude people, so we went along with the game and didn’t complain. A big mistake on our part.

So eventually we did it this way. We chose a real estate office in a particular town by looking in the free real estate publications to see who was listing lower priced home. These real estate offices seemed to have the most knowledgeable realtors concerning the cheap real estate. Then we went to their office during office hours and asked them to print us MLS sheets on the lower priced homes (the complete ones with directions). In most cases someone was more than happy to do it because it saved them the time of driving us around. The realtor that gave us the MLS sheets would give us her business card and if we saw anything we wanted to look at we would call her. Sometimes they would drive out and meet us there, which was the most convenient of all.

We were able to save a lot of time and eliminate a lot of houses this way. Many were in very bad neighborhoods, at least for my taste, or were clearly beyond repair. Some had streams running through the backyard and could easily flood. Others had train tracks 8 feet from the back door which definitely wouldn’t make for that “zen” feeling.

Plus you can take the time to drive all around the neighborhood and have a look. If the home was in a small town we parked the car and walked the streets. You notice a lot more on foot than in a car.

You can tell if a home that is for sale is unoccupied by looking at the bottom left of the mls sheet where it says “showing instructions.” It will say “lock box vacant.” Which means that no one lives there and there is a lock box on the door which the realtor has to have the key for to let you in. Or you can ask the realtor that prints the sheets for you, although they might not know unless they happen to be the listing agent. As I said before, never walk into the yard of a home that is for sale unless it is vacant. Sometimes it’s obvious that the house is empty, but other times it is not. If it is, you can do a thorough outside inspection of the yard and the house without the realtor and even peer in the windows. This will help you eliminate any homes that clearly have very serious exterior problems.

With the direction on the MLS sheet you should be able to find the house, although many times we got thoroughly lost. We found that in most cases the directions started at a clear cross street or from the realtor office itself. But other times it was not clear whether we should go east or west. So it’s useful to have a map of the area handy at all times. If you are lucky enough to have a GPS your problem is solved, or maybe you can borrow one for your drive-bys.

Also when you do the drive-bys yourself you get to see more of the area, since you have to look for landmarks, street signs, etc. We found that we were much more aware of how far away the grocery store and other conveniences were when we were doing the driving. When the realtor is doing the driving you don’t need to pay attention, although a good one will point out all the conveniences if they know you are not familiar with the area.