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I hate dealing with realtors. We visited an open house today near where we live. The realtor was like a leech - he was like a second skin until we left the main floor. I'm too polite and shy to tell him to give me room, but maybe that's what I should do.

The house itself was very disappointing. From the outside it looks bigger than ours, and that may well be true. But the interior didn't give that impression. The house had four bedrooms; ours has three, but they were all small. The master bedroom was significantly smaller than ours.

The house itself was badly in need of a complete redecoration. The info sheet said some windows were new but I didn't spot them. Apart from the carpets and the kitchen, everything else in the house was original; tired looking and badly in need of an update.

The basement was finished, with two fully carpeted playrooms, a separate storage room and the laundry room. The whole basement smelled like Tokyo in the middle of summer. I've not been to Tokyo, but that's how damp and smelly it was. The rest of the house smelled like pets, though there were no visible signs of them.

The house was priced at CAN$285,000, which considering the house needs about 30k in upgrades, is way overpriced.

The front garden had far too many plants and would be extremely high maintenance, despite the info sheet claiming low maintenance. The rear garden was tiny, overgrown with bushes and trees and extremely dark. Yeuch!

On our way out the realtor asked what we thought. I replied it was smaller than it looked from the outside. I really wanted to say all of the above but thought of better of it. He tried to engage us in conversation on our way out, and we struggled to leave. He gave me his business card, which I promptly threw away once we got home.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Good for you. Estate agents can be very slimy people. You are spending a lot of money on these houses and I think it pays to be brutally honest to them so they can pass that information back to the original owners. I hope the guy did not have your contact details or you won't here the end of it.

The whole process of selling a house is a miserable time anyway.

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