Major Buyer's Remorse!
Mrs. N
7 years ago
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buyer's remorse/ new collector duping
Comments (10)DH & I keep a maple work table that we earned our "degree" with. Virtually 100% of people first walking into our home spot that table & comment on how beautiful it is. We smile & tell our "story". It was purchased from a very reputable dealer in coastal Maine. We examined the table carefully, even taking some of it apart. We still made a costly mistake. We had a guarantee with our purchase so we could have returned the table for full refund. We decided not to. It's visually appealing & every day as we walk through that room we remember it's tale & lesson. When we moved a few years ago, it was necessary to downsize. We sold several antique furniture pieces. One couple was at our home looking at a Hoozier unit we had advertised. They spotted this table, looked at it, & offered to purchase it for 3x what we'd paid. DH refused their offer & told the "story". They purchased the Hoozier & went away more knowledgeable. We are serious collectors. Now, before we purchase a major piece...we have our most trusted broker pay a visit & give a "yea or nay" on the piece. If it's at a live auction, we bring this broker with us to the preview. He refuses to even offer a comment without personal inspection & I've learned to do the same. Our own knowledge has increased tremendously largely because of this broker. (He owns the most respected gallery in New England.) As far as Ebay goes...I've always been a little suspicious. That said, I've purchased a couple Mulberry ironstone pieces that were "as represented" so my worst fears didn't happen. In the course of looking for Mulberry though with Ebay, I've seen hundreds of listings that aren't even Mulberry, patterns misnamed, manufactuers incorrect, dating off by decades, and other asundry pitfalls for a novice collector. I would never buy on Ebay anything that I wasn't very experienced with. Congratulations on earning your degree! Most of us, if honest, have made a mistake. I recommend you keep those bottles...then, if you so desire...move forward & enjoy future collecting with a more experienced eye. Tricia...See MoreBuyers Remorse and a few questions
Comments (3)pilot first off, most people always have some buyer's regret over new HVAC. The Trane equipment you are considering is first rate. The only other HVAC I would look at would be Carrier Infinity two stg furnace with the Performance 15 or Infinity 16 HP. I am not a proponent of Trane's XL16i HP. several suggestions. 1.you need a load calculation for the XL15i-being undersized will hurt you on AC cooling as well as hurt you and defeat the purpose of HP heating in the winter. Get the load calc in writing and insist upon it.If your home is not the best insulated, I suspect you might require a 3 1/2 ton HP and yes they do make 3 1/2 ton mdl in the XL15i HP. The main purpose of dual fuel and HP heating is to leverage those inexpensive electric rates. 2.if you do elect the 3 1/2 ton, dealer will need to check size both supply and return of ductwork system and any modifications required. 3. if your area/climate has humidity issues in the summer, then I would substitute the HW VisionPro IAQ stat for the mdl dealer is providing. This stat has the "dehumidify on demand" feature that the others don't. 4.dealer will need to calculate your temp balance point-where the heat loss and heat gain is apprx equal. Yes, good dealers can make this calculation in writing. I have a Trane dual fuel and my changeover is set at 30 degrees-however it could go lower.That is my choice. 5.I am not a fan of EACs for two reasons. I suspect over 99% homes just require a good 4-5" pleated filter media cabinet MERV10 for good IAQ and protection of evap coil and blower motor. The filter usually lasts up to one yr and replacement is very simple. Plus many homeowners that elect EACs do not follow the maintenance/cleaning instructions and schedule and this will be problematic for the operation of EACs. In other words, they can be a PITA. I can not advise you on AprilAire EACs other than to say I don't want an EAC. That's just my opinion. 6.I will have to look up the best coil configuration and advise later. You do want a Trane coil-no 3rd party substitute! 7.regarding setbacks,I do not advise more than 3-4 degrees on HPs. ask dealer their recommendation. 8.run fan 24/7 except in summer mths where you might reintroduce humidity to your home following completion of the cooling call. IMO...See MoreBuyer remorse
Comments (10)Here is a real story. In the late 90s, I had a coworker whose parents moved to this country and signed a purchase contract for a house about $200K. Her mother felt unsettling, and decided the house had bad "Feng Shui". She then backed out of the contract and lost $20K deposit. Today the same house is worth more than half million dollars because the neighborhood is extremely popular. Not too shabby an investment for a house with bad Feng Shui. Here is another angle to see Feng Shui. For thousand years many people who live in places with best Feng Shui where everything is placed at right spot, and each structure faces right orentation. Do those people also experience death, illness and misfortunes in life like everyone else? Yes, they do too. It tells you how useful the idea of Feng Shui is. You now need to find a good home inspector to identify any issue of this house. It is one hundred times more important than reading Feng Shui books or hiring a Feng Shui master....See MoreHave you ever had buyer remorse?
Comments (25)We got impulsive in the fall of 2005 when we realized that my good-paying job was not just for the year that had just ended, but was going on indefinitely. DH's dad had moved in with us in June, when his wife died. We loved having him with us, but he had to go to the basement to do laundry and down 6 steps to let our three dogs in and out, and at a very independent 86 years old, there was no getting him to NOT do those things. Plus, there was the only having one bathroom issue and the fact that we were using every square inch of that house before he moved in. So we got impulsive and went house hunting and within 8 weeks closed on a much more practical house that was 225 sq ft bigger (1450 to 1675) and had an extra half bath and a first floor laundry. Talk about minimum requirements! [We were very happy in the long run that we did not "win" the two-buyer bidding war on the slightly larger house with the finished basement, huge lot, and in-ground, heated swimming pool. It was 25% more expensive than the house we bought, and with what happened next, we needed the smaller mortgage.] With all of our stuff squashed into the old house, with peeling wallpaper I had lived with for 14 years because it was pulling off the skim coat of plaster and meant getting the room replastered, with a bathroom ceiling that needed replacement, with original oak floors that needed refinishing, and no room to put everything to do this work, we knew that we would need to move first, then do repairs and put the house on the market. We did this and got the house on the market March 1, 2006. I tried For Sale By Owner with a Realtor/broker back-up who would get a small fee and who got the house into the MLS. I offered selling Realtors a 3% commission. I had printed "Open House" signs with arrows that I posted around the neighborhood each Sunday, I had strings of colored flags like you used to see at used car lots and grand openings going from trees to the front porch and a big For Sale sign with info about the house on the front lawn. I baked cookies. Lots of lookers, no offers. I had the house assessed and he said we should UP our price! In June we hired a full-service Realtor. Over the months we lowered the price regularly. A year and a quarter later, I brought him a nurse I had met who wanted to do a rent-to-own with my house. We agreed to a price that was 84% of our original asking price. The nurse had recently gone through bankruptcy because of a husband with a drug problem and business debt that fell on her. So she needed a two-year rent-to-own. It didn't matter to us, her rent paid our mortgage! Since we had not sold the old house first, we had no down payment for the new house. Originally, we were going to do 100% financing with an 80% first mortgage and a 20% second mortgage on the new house. Then our mortgage guy came up with the idea of putting a second mortgage on the old house, instead. We would pay it off when we sold the house. It was a good idea, we thought, because it brought the mortgages on that house up to $25,000 less than it was appraised for, a good cushion, we thought in October 2005. When we got into the rent-to-own agreement, however, it was low enough that it meant bringing money to the table for the closing costs. In 2007 housing prices began to fall. In 2008, we all know that the entire economy fell. In late 2008, my DH was downsized into "early retirement" and it took him 7 months to get another job. No sooner were we comfortably back on track from that, when the nurse in our old house figured out that it was cheaper for her to buy a foreclosed house and lose her down payment on our house! That left us hanging in the winter of 2009 with an empty house in a housing market in which the empty house was now worth about $69,000 - precisely what I had paid for it in 1994 before replacing the furnace and ducts, kitchen, electrical service, water heater, concrete driveway, windows and doors, siding, trim, garage door, fence, porch, and adding central air and lots of insulation. Not to mention refinishing the wood floors throughout. Meanwhile, Dad had gone suddenly blind at the age of 91, then had prostate cancer, then skin cancer, and was bed-bound with daytime caregivers at our house. His favorite aide had left his employ and returned to her home state the summer of 2009. Her replacement was NOT comparable. Dad missed his Jenny so much, because Jen would go with the flow when it was okay and let him sleep, but force him to wake up and get food and drink in a gentle way that did not bother him, when it was necessary. She read to him and knew what he liked to hear. She read his moods well and could tell if he wanted to listen to a ball game on or wanted to rest. She kept a positive attitude even when cleaning up horrible messes from his hospital-acquired C-Dif. We could all see that he was declining without her. I heard through the grapevine that Jenny had her car and purse stolen and that neither she nor her husband had managed to get good jobs in the several months that she had been back home. After consulting with DH, I called and gave them an offer they could not refuse: a car to drive their menagerie of mammals and reptiles back to Mich and to use when they got here, shipping for their household goods, low rent in our old house. That way, we got Jenny back for Dad and had renters we knew, liked, and trusted in our house. Dad passed away several months later. Because he paid for unemployment insurance for his homecare staff, Jenny got to have free training and ended up with five health care certificates during our economic depression. She is working now, but her DH was hurt at work and is fighting for disability benefits and worker's compensation. They are still in our old house, so we have nothing to worry about as far as renters trashing our house, but they can't currently pay much. Okay, they can't pay anything, I'll admit it. It has been about three years that we have carried them. The husband has had multiple back surgeries and our Jenny is working as a nurse's aide and just not making a lot of money. But she studied hard and got her GED and all of those medical certificates, so she is trying. We don't have children of our own. I guess we got the boomerang phenomenon without having the first half where you give birth and raise the little critters, LOL! We were thinking that we might have to wait until my DH reaches the age of 59.5 and take some $$$ out of our retirement to finally unload this house. We have that second mortgage down to $25,000 from $40,000. The house is now worth about what is left of the first mortgage. It has been hard. Our new house had a expensive foundation disaster two years ago and needed a new roof last Christmas. The roof will be paid off at the end of this year, so we can be more relaxed after that. It does not help that my health has worsened and I am not working. DH is a saint! But now Discover is offering us $25,000 at 7.99%. We have to investigate it more, but if that is still being offered at the end of the year, we could use it to pay off that second mortgage and get the house on the market next spring. Incredible. We weren't sure when that could happen, but did not expect it for several years yet. In a couple, three years we might be able to have that Discover loan gone, too and be FREE! Buyer remorse. I don't know. Who knew that the market would tank so bad? I do like this larger house. My knees appreciate not having the steps. I agree with DH that it is a darned good thing that we did not get that house with the pool! We have thrown money around the past six years like it meant nothing, and I have come to the conclusion that this is partially true. As long as you can keep your heads above water, money is just a tool. It has allowed us to help our young friends have a place to live through their hard times. We will do it as long as we can. We will give them warning when we decide to do the Discover deal or not, but they will have to be on their own eventually. With luck, they will get Social Security to allow disability benefits by then. All the long timers here knew this sorry story. If anyone has read this far, I hope there was something to learn in all of this!...See MoreMrs. N
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