Reader Eric is pre-approved and ready to buy a house in South Florida. You’d think it would be a piece of cake considering the, uh, climate down there. Apparently not.

The market down here is really bad. I’d say that more than 75% of the houses we’ve seen are short sells or foreclosures. People are really down about the housing situation. You are constantly hearing on the news about how horribly hard it is to sell a house. Houses are selling way under their purported value.

Given all of these woes, you would THINK that homeowners would do everything they could to make their houses ready to go. If someone was ready to buy and had the cash, the owners should be able to say, “Paper or plastic? Welcome to your new home.”

Why then, in the name of friggin’ St. Joseph, can people not be bothered to even clean up their houses when they KNOW potential buyers are coming? Buyers that can lift the burden of these structures off of their swayed backs. Buyers who really, REALLY want to buy.

Of course, this rant doesn’t apply to the foreclosures. These houses are empty and dirty. They’ve essentially been abandoned when their owner’s oversized dreams were shattered by the radical (and entirely predictable) increase of their undersized sub-prime, adjustable mortgage payments.

I’m also not talking about general straightening of furniture or vacuuming or “staging” of the house in order to make seem like a nice product.

I’m talking about walking into a house with our realtor and having the owners not even bother to get their cracker asses off of the couch and turn off the basketball game. I’m talking about not leaving piles of dirty dishes in the sinks and dirty ashtrays on the tables. I’m talking about maybe postponing washing the dog in the kitchen SINK until AFTER their showing. I’m talking about maybe not deciding to boil whatever crazy, stinky, ethnic vegetable you found at the local farmer’s market ten minutes before someone was coming to maybe buy your house. A house that they don’t want to imagine stinking like boiled shit if they ever moved in.

These all happened. They were all different houses.

I should add that we’re not looking small places in questionable neighborhoods. These are in nice developments with parks, and gates, and guards, and Beaveresque features.

I should also add that we are the IDEAL buyers for todays market. We are pre-qualified for more than double what we’re looking at. We don’t have any contingencies for closing the deal. We are ready to go NOW!

It makes you wonder if the listing agents should maybe coach their clients a little bit about making their house a bit more appealing. Guess not.

Yikes? Is anyone else having this problem?

More at Eric’s blog.

What Housing Slump . . . ?? [Think Daddy]
(Photo:Arryll)

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