By Living Room Realty, March 30, 2018
You really don’t know what it is like to live in a house until you move in. The neighborhood noise, the functionality of the layout, the things that you love/annoy you, etc. As a part of their search process, my clients Cory & Verelle have been looking into to some new construction homes in the northern part of the Woodlawn neighborhood in NE. That area is pretty close to Columbia Blvd and some railroad tracks that can be noisy. The listing agent of one houses they were interested in gave us permission to spend a morning in the house hanging out for a few hours to see how it felt.
One February morning I met them out there. I got the key out of the lockbox; when I went to turn the deadbolt it felt like it may have been unlocked. Weird, I thought, but sometimes the action is so smooth that you don’t feel it. The house was really cold. We went over to the thermostat to crank up the furnace. Weird, there was no response. Then we tried to turn on some lights…the switches were dead. I went into the garage to check the electrical panel; there were a bunch of breakers tripped. I called the listing agent to see if he knew what was up.
As the phone was ringing, my client said “why did they remove the range?”. Then I looked around the kitchen and thought “why did the remove the dishwasher too?”. Phone still ringing…still thinking…”why is the staging half removed? They did a crappy job taking it out; the floors scratched and walls are gouged.” Right as he answers the phone, it hits me: THIS PLACE GOT BURGLED!!
Undeterred…we went back a few days later, and as it turned out, the train noise was really bad. That was a bummer because the house was awesome other than that. We ended up finding a house that was a little further south, a little smaller but a perfect fit all things considered.
