About Real Estate: Savvy buyers know when to walk away from a stubborn seller
Trying to negotiate a purchase from an obstinate seller usually is a waste of time, especially now that there are so many good homes offered by more reasonable owners.Q. My husband and I have found a terrific house that we would like to purchase, but negotiations with the stubborn seller have dragged on for almost two months. She has come down only $2,500 from her original asking price and refuses to make any of the estimated $15,000 in repairs the house needs. Our agent says we should just give up and look for a different home, but we feel we have spent too much time negotiating to walk away now. What do you think we should do?
A. I wouldn#146;t walk away from the proposed deal. I#146;d run.
There simply are too many good homes on the market offered by eager and flexible sellers to justify spending more than a week or two trying to reach a purchase agreement. You already have spent nearly two months trying to hammer out a deal with the obstinate seller of the property you have targeted, but you#146;re really no closer to reaching a compromise than you were when you started.
I know from personal experience how hard it can be to abandon a proposed purchase you have spent so much time trying to cobble together. But even if you were able to sign a deal after several more weeks of dickering, my guess is the stubborn seller would become an even bigger pain in the neck when it comes to negotiating all the bumps that typically arise on the road to a successful closing.
You might consider making a final, take-it-or-leave-it offer to the seller and see if she#146;ll become more realistic about her demands. If she won#146;t, it#146;s time to start looking for a different home that#146;s offered by a seller who is more reasonable.
Q. My father is elderly and looking for a new tenant to lease one of the three rental houses he owns. Dad speaks only English, and he wants a tenant who speaks the same language so they can solve any problems that might come up. However, when I called the newspaper to place a rental advertisement for Dad#146;s vacant property, the salesman said I could not include the phrase #147;Must speak English,#148; because it would violate Fair Housing laws. Is this true?
A. Yes, it#146;s true.
The federal Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to print a rental-housing advertisement that may indicate a preference for one particular type of tenant, such as an applicant#146;s race or national origin. It also prohibits landlords from making rules that could discourage anyone to apply for a vacant unit, and also bans ads by home sellers or developers that may suggest some buyers who make an offer may be favored over others.
Including a line in your dad#146;s ad that says #147;Must speak English#148; likely would discourage some people from applying for the rental, especially if the home is in a community where there is a rich mix of cultures and languages.
By refusing to include the English-only reference, the ad salesman may have prevented both your father and his own newspaper from being sued.
Q. I saw a little blurb on the Internet about a house that supposedly is #147;unsellable#148; because it is overrun with wild snakes. Is there any truth to this story?
A. Yes. The recently remodeled but foreclosed home near Rexburg, Idaho, is overrun with hundreds or even thousands of harmless but creepy garter snakes, according to a representative for the bank that now owns it.
The striped serpents are in the walls, the ceiling and the crawl space under the house and routinely slither across the yard and interior floors. The problem is the home has somehow become a #147;hibernacula,#148; a place where snakes gather in huge numbers to wait out the winter but then often stay and breed when the warm weather comes.
Previous efforts to exterminate or remove the snakes have been unsuccessful: There are just too many of them, and two or three snakes seem to appear for each one that is caught.
At wits#146; end, the bank that now owns the five-bedroom property recently hired a contractor to remove the snakes, seal the foundation and install a barrier to help prevent any more unwanted visitors from arriving. It then plans to put the home back up for sale, probably hoping that a potential buyer won#146;t try to slither out of the deal after discovering the home#146;s history.
Remarkable videos of the infestation can be seen by going to google.com and searching for #147;Idaho snake house.#148; Be aware, though, that some of the clips have foul language.
Ÿ For the booklet #147;Straight Talk About Living Trusts,#148; send $4 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to David Myers/Trust, P.O. Box 2960, Culver City, CA 90231-2960.
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