Cold feet

Q and I were going to put an offer in on a house today. We met our agent at the house to take another look and sign the offer. As we looked around I got a bad feeling which steadily got worse and worse. The house was recently renovated, but poorly, and initially I was prepared to accept that, but as I looked around and added up all the little things that were wrong, it totalled the sum of one bad house. I hadn't noticed a couple of cracks in a couple of walls the last time - cracks in the brand new walls. The floors upstairs were brand new, but so uneven that the bottom of the closet door in the master bedroom had to be cut up on an angle. When closed it was over an inch above the floor, but when open it was only a few millimeters. One or two things like that I could deal with, but there were significant problems in every single room of the house, including the "finished" basement. The railing on the second floor wasn't properly attached, either and the banister - while stained - hadn't ever been sanded. I could go on and on.

Then there were the neighbours. On one side was a junky semi and the occupant had two large dogs which barked and growled at us as soon as we entered the backyard. On the other side, which is the other half of the semi, was a backyard full of huge mounds of dogshit I presumed were from yet another big noisy dog. No thank you.

Q was disappointed. The house is in the area that we would really like to be in, and we already go outbid on another house just up the street. He was willing to live with the problems and fix them as we went along but I just couldn't. It's one thing to live in an old house and deal with all the quirks, but in my mind it's entirely different to be in a newly renovated one and dealing with crap. My gut was screaming at me to walk away from this one, and I just couldn't ignore it.

Besides, we just got some new listings to check out on Wednesday and some of them may have potential. I'm not worried. I'll know the house when I see it.