The one with a room dedicated to displaying over 100 pairs of Michael Jordan shoes.

This one cracked me up because I have a son who is well on his way to owning 100 pairs of athletic shoes - he only wishes they were all Jordans. At last count he had over 50 pairs. I just don't get it, especially when I pointed out that he has spent around $3000 on shoes!!

The one that refused a viewing because the lady of the house was "too busy canning".

I can completely understand this one. I also do canning & it takes over the entire kitchen, and it is hot & can be noisy. Plus it isn't something you can just put on hold. Once that rocker is going, you have to park yourself in front of the stove waiting for the pressure to get to a certain point, and then you start the timer. And you can't leave the kitchen.

That owner probably didn't want you seeing the kitchen with canning stuff all over, or knew she couldn't stop to make small talk or leave while you perused the kitchen.

It cracked us up too terriks. My husband had no idea that men could be shoes collectors, lol. There were a few houses that provided some much needed comic relief during this hectic week. My post was getting kind of long, but there was also a house that had been remodeled so that when you came in the front door you stepped down onto a white marble floor and looked up at two huge columns flanking the kitchen area. I almost felt like I was entering an ancient roman palace - except then the rest of the house was just like a normal boring two-story middle class home.

Oh, then there was the one with a huge and detailed CIRCUS mural painted on the main floor family room. And uh, the one with a, ahem...what looked like a black *sex* swing hanging from the ceiling of the rec room. I have no idea how I knew what that was! ;)

Totally understand about the canning marti8a. I've been known to put a few jars away now and then. The thing is though - when buyers are looking at 10-15 houses a day and your house isn't available for whatever reason then it just doesn't get seen. We never did see the 'canning lady' house or any of the other that made it difficult to schedule viewings - too many others to look at and sellers should remember that in this market. Just went through the whole selling thing myself so I do understand how hard it can be!

If you are selling, you sometimes have to give up certain things like canning, scrapbooking, making bratwurst and sauerkraut, etc.

Heck, when we were selling, we gave up cooking completely. The house needed to be "show ready" at all times.

I hope that lady likes what she canned. It may cost her selling her house.

Well I do understand the one(s) who couldn't show before 6 or whatever - people still need to keep their jobs, but you could have missed the perfect place by being inflexible yourself.

Congratulations! I am glad you found something.

I would guess from your list that you were looking at very similar houses in terms of age, sq ft, price, i.e. subdivision houses of same relative age etc, cookie cutter houses. Otherwise I can't imagine too many shoes being used to cut something from the list. What does that have to do with layout, size, location, condition, price?
I'm 180 out from your situation, looking for a needle in a haystack; shoes, spiders, wallpaper..bring it on.

Well I do understand the one(s) who couldn't show before 6 or whatever - people still need to keep their jobs

I don't see why someone's job would keep them from being able to show their house during the day, unless they worked graveyard and slept during the day.

Thanks for the congrats marys1000. Those shoes were just a funny that I was sharing, they weren't the reason we didn't buy that house - nor was paint, murals, spiders, dogs or some of that other stuff. Some were funny, and some amazed me by how little effort they made to make their home appealing to a buyer.

Lucy, we spent around 6 hours a day looking at homes, not counting driving time to get to locations - and we needed to see them in certain geographical order - no way we could drive another hour after 6pm just to see that house and then drive back another hour to the hotel.

Looking at homes in an area that spans a 3 hour drive this way or that way, + during the Democratic National Convention, is no easy task. But we found 3 homes with 100% of of need list and 95% of our wish list so I'm happy!

Well I do understand the one(s) who couldn't show before 6 or whatever - people still need to keep their jobs, but you could have missed the perfect place by being inflexible yourself.

People are using an agent to show during the day while sellers are at work.

I ran into difficult sellers as well and you know what? It looks like they were difficult with everyone because after 9 months they were still listed.

Just went through the whole selling thing myself so I do understand how hard it can be!

I don't recall seeing a post that you sold. Are you under contract? I know that I was scared to make a post & jinx it. lol

Our situation is a bit different in that we are buying a small triplex for rental income. Before viewing the units we had to make an offer on the property and put down $2500 as earnest money. We were the first people to see it and we were put off for a couple of days which was a little hard because we only had a week in Tucson to do this, but it has all worked out.

Yes Roselvr, we sold! :) Finalized it all a week ago Friday - and it's a done deal because the relo company took over. For us it was 6 weeks of prepping the house & around three months on the market - a good sellers market and it still took that long. Our neighbors got a good offer the 1st week for a comparable house, so a lot of it is still just 'luck' or finding that right buyer.

I think I posted about it in my question thread titled something like "Help me understand this - 6% to buyer" (or paid by seller, something like that, lol).

I enjoyed your post because we are showing our house right now. Just went on the market on Wednesday and we've had 4 showings with one due on Tuesday.

I also was trying to figure out how I would be able to make tomato sauce at this time, because tomatoes don't wait and I have a basketful. Maybe tomorrow. LOL

So far, we've agreed to all the people who wanted to view it at whatever time they chose. They were all within reason, all daytimes so far, and we're retired, so all we had to do was disappear for about 45 min. After all, if we want to sell the house, we have to make it available for viewings. There is one next Tuesday from 5 to 6. We'll just go out to dinner. LOL

I have heard of people showing dirty or messy houses and I don't understand why their agents didn't put a bug in their ear. Maybe they were afraid the owners would take offense if they did. Anyway, I hope we get some nibbles.

Oh, good to hear:)!
It is sort of fun I think anyway to see the strange things people do when house hunting. My recent experiences include an older lady with a generator hooked up in her basement (cant even imagine how loud that is not to mention the fumes and sort of points out that there is some problems with the power), she also had a Doberman who circled us in the yard growling while she went into the garage. Today I called a FSBO number I got from a yard sign and got a guy who was clearly clueless. After having to ask very pointed questions to get any info and him stumbling through the answers I asked if the house was on a website. It will be he responded, when I asked which one he said "the one" (twice) finally he said well I don't really know anything about it the sister in law is going to do it. It looks like a decent place on a busy road so they'll probably sell in spite of themselves LOL!

I remember looking at one place in Newport Beach with a realtor. Dresser drawers and cupboards everywhere were open with things falling out of them. I suggested that the place perhaps had been robbed, and the realtor assured us that the condition was how the homeowner kept her house.

I remember selling a home a number of years ago just as the strawberries in my garden were ripe and ready for jam making. I waited til 8 p.m. and stayed up a good portion of the night making the jam so that the house could be spotless and available for showing during the day. Fruits and veggies may not wait, but neither do buyers.

We looked at some houses yesterday....and the one that made me "sick" was the "dog house"....oh my the smell was so terrible that I went back out and sat in the car while DH looked at the condition.

The owner was home....and had to take the dogs to one part of the house while we looked, and then took them to another..... Maybe the house could have been fixed up to look great...but I was definately NOT interested. This is one that might have showed better empty~~

Ladynimu, we are at the tail end of our process (closing on our purchase next Thursday!) and also had a whirlwind period of looking every night. We were buying locally, though, so one night we'd do our drive-bys and the next we'd have showings scheduled to look inside the ones that interested us. A few we did not make offers on:

The one with the "fun house" door frames... obvious cosmetic fixing could not disguise the fact that the door frames were crooked - closer to the ceiling on one end than the other!

ANY of the ones where the neighboring homes were less than 20 feet from the structure we were looking at. We own motorcycles, and try to be good neighbors with regard to the noise generated by warming up the bikes.

The lovely family home with the 18-inch-wide hallway that led to the basement door, and the disturbingly tiny winding staircase that led to a finished attic space (no kidding - four-inch deep step, four-inch riser... for CHILDREN ONLY? (Too bad, too - we both LOVED the location of this one.)

The one with the weird labyrinth of rooms that was a foreclosure and had been vacant for three years.

Generally, everything we looked at was tidy and presented as best it could be, with only a couple exceptions. The home we purchased has been a rental for a few years so it needs some TLC but we are happy to do that work and it will be a great home for us.

Glad you found something, hope your favorite comes through!

Janet

"The one with the teenager slouching in the filthy kitchen."

Other people's teenagers are unattractive, aren't they? Especially when they aren't helping out their parents by cleaning a dirty kitchen!

I think that people tend to see their teenagers as children whose messes should be excused, whereas outsiders see these same people as almost adults who should be contributing to the family's efforts to sell.

LOL, that's so true solie :) There's something almost ugly and a little scary about facing *someone else's* scowling, arm-crossing, eye-rolling teenager.

Janetqia, don't you just really wonder what in the world some owners and/or builders were thinking? A 4-inch stairway? Uhmm.... scratching my head. The fun house door frames - couldn't you have just added mirrors and bright paint? Kind of picky aren't you? LOL

The houses we've picked out also need a little work. For us it's a great bargain for little effort. We submitted an offer on our favorite last Friday and still haven't heard anything. It's bank owned, well-priced, and by Tuesday they had two more offers! Waaahhh!! We expect they'll return the offers for "Best & Final", but they'd better hurry because we don't have much time to play games!

i say show the house while doing the canning, make that strawberry jam let the viewers come anyway, some of us want to see a nice kitchen functioning

who cares if it smells like bratwurst-somebody actually lives there

we once bought a house we viewed one time --while the owners were having a lovely smelling dinner
we went on and they went on and we owned their home in less than 4 weeks!!
forget the ones smelling like dog pee don't even go there