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After renting in Salins for 10 years, I finally decided it was time to just buy a place instead of pouring money into rentals, year after year. I’d begun the search in mid 2019 (and actually located this place as a potential) but the property was mysterious. The house was situated on a street corner, cross from a city park and a community college, was duplex, and had nice little Victorian charm. It was listed one week and then wasn’t the next. I’d stopped by and there was always a number of people milling about like you’d expect at a frat house, only the beer wasn’t as freely flowing and the crowd was much older and less boisterous. No one really seemed to know the owner’s location most of the time. 399 did not seem to be an option.
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While we were looking at other options, I called an agent and she put some propspective properties in front of us as well. I was looking for a duplex, or something that could go multi-family, so that we could derive some income while living here. We dabbled around town for about 6 months in late 2019, looking at overpriced houses in a hot market. Rates are low, everybody’s buying, inventory is low. Although we put in a bunch of work looking at places, we didn’t really put in any offers.
I’d found this house before I’d taken up with a realtor, but seeing as how I couldn’t get in touch with the owner in any sort of meaningful way, it’d occurred to me to have the realtor make a pass. Turns out, she was friends with the owner from back in high school. Sweet! She set up a meeting, and things started moving forward. We agreed on a price, drew up some paperwork, and. . . phantom. After a month of the owner dodging me, I finally got from him in a meeting that he just couldn’t bring himself to having to pay the agent commissions. Insert expletives here.
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Then COVID hit. Early 2020 was fraught with staring out the window, worrying about pandemics and wondering what is floating around in the air. By mid 2020 we were ready to take the lull after that first wave and get back out there. We’d looked at other Victorians, Tudors, etc, all in an array of states of disrepair. Some of them were duplexes of various configurations, main house/carriage house, upper/lower, side-by-side, all kinds of options, all within a limited inventory. The low inventory made the search feel like a scarcity play. Late one night I was poking around the internet nursing the homebuyer wounds and was on CraigsList after yet another offer of ours was beat out. I was mainly processing the grief of the latest loss by trolling the internet, somehow landing on Craigslist homes of all places looking at homes listed for sale. I’d nearly fallen out of my chair when I realized this house was posted! I was shocked! Also admittedly a little hurt given it seemed that my conversation with the owner back in June was more or less completely disregarded.
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Either way, I’d resolved to head over and make tracks fisrt thing to talk with him. I didn’t sleep much that night. Got over there first thing and milled around with the yard riff-raff. Picked up some trash for a couple hours while I waited for the owner to get his day started. After I’d made contact, the conversation began.
“Hey Buddy! how come you didn’t call me?”, I’d said.
“Uhhh, oh yeah, hey! I lost your number. Sorry. . .”
“Well? Can I buy the place? I’m still interested.”, I continued
“Ahh, um, ok, well, it’s time. Let’s do it.”
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After a few other talking points, we’d had an accord over a handshake. I wasn’t about to let that verbal agreement set for long, I immediately went back to my rental and started drawing up some paperwork. But that’s another post 😉