Real estate fails

[tarheels]

The D.C. metro area where we're looking just seems to have an extra special combination of dumb agents and bad decor that I need a dedicated spot to pick on them   The gaffes aren't worthy of their own posts bc they're not that funny, more like mildly amusing, but I see stuff so often that I almost post and then decide not to, so I'll just dredge up this post every now and again and put them here.  Anyone can contribute their own at any time





1) This is the very first line of this listing.  Methinks this agent doesn't understand the meaning of the word "feature." 

"This beautiful 3 bedroom home features a traditional wood burning fireplace (for decoration only)."




2) And...pea green sponge paint!

[kitty]

Wow...

Maybe that second one was inspired by some crazy Trading Spaces back in the day when they put moss on the walls?

[mrs.jacinthe]

Whoooooaaa dog. That second photo is BAD.

Let me know if you need a realtor referral in the DC area. I have a friend who is a realtor there and she's great.

[Susie]

Oh, dude. Awful.

I have, disappointingly, stopped looking at real estate listings ever since the site I was using (and had saved searches on) redid their website. Now you can't do searches by school district. The town lines here do not correspond to school district lines at all, and there are too many town names within the district I'm interested in to bother All the sites I've checked have eliminated the "by school district" search option. WTF!

[SusanBAnthony]

That sponge paint reminded me of something. A house that we were seriously inspiring had this horrible shiny silver wallpaper in the dining room and up the staircase (so tall walls that would be a pain to rip down and fix). We were horrified, but whatever, it can be fixed. We look closer and realize it isn't wallpaper, it is intricate silver sponge painting. Easier to fix, but more horrifying that someone thought that was a great idea. Wallpaper in the 80's, I can forgive. I expected better of the last ten years!

[tarheels]

Feb 14, 2013 11:52:47 GMT -5 mrs.jacinthe said:

Whoooooaaa dog. That second photo is BAD.

Let me know if you need a realtor referral in the DC area. I have a friend who is a realtor there and she's great.

We're only going to rent (NO MORE BUYING! lol), but if she acts as a tenant's agent as well, I'd love her name.  I understand if not because many agents don't wear both hats.  I just need to find somebody there with a D&R clue. (Doesn't seem to be a lot of HGTV watching, BHG reading going on in the area.)  I'm afraid to contact an agent who's going to show me ugly houses and then it'll be all awkward when I reject all these houses like, "Yeah, I know it's a great location, but it's ugly as sin and I can't change it because it's not mine, soooo, NO."

[mrs.jacinthe]

tarheels - I've put in a FB message to her to ask. She was a knottie with me (way back in the day) and I'd trust her taste. If she doesn't do rentals, I can ask her to recommend someone who does.

[mrs.jacinthe]

YGPM!

[emjacobs]

THR want me to send you our agent? She's a doll and you would love her. She worked with us for 9 months, we go to dinner, etc.

[minniebee]

I can sympathize. I'm not looking in your area, but I've seen so many ugly or poorly staged houses, especially rentals.

We were debating rent vs buy for awhile, since we're not sure how long we're going to stay here. But, the fact that rental homes are so expensive here (lack of inventory has driven up the price), and the ugliness of available rentals is leading us to buy instead. Ugly is temporary when you buy, but not so much when you rent.

I saw one rental that had every room painted some shade of purple or lavender. Every single room. Even the inside of the screened porch was painted purple. Ew.

As far as homes for sale ... have the sellers not seen any of the dozens of TV shows like the Unsellables that talk about home staging? Even if you're not going to redecorate, at least clean up before taking pictures. Seriously. Why are you taking pictures of your bathroom with towels strewn about on the floor or your kitchen with a pile of dishes in the sink? Who wants to buy that?

[thewop]

Wow, that's all kinds of wrong. Looks like they smeared poo on the walls.

[ssmjlm]

Dang girl, where in DC are you looking? Those are awful.

[tarheels]

Feb 14, 2013 13:30:30 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Dang girl, where in DC are you looking? Those are awful.

You think so?  This is sort of par for the course from what I've seen over the past year   This particular example of sponge paint is especially egregious, but bad paint or no paint (sad, old cream) are the norm.  We're concentrating on Alexandria inside the Beltway (or right beside, like Belle Haven).

[tarheels]

Feb 14, 2013 12:45:00 GMT -5 emjacobs said:

THR want me to send you our agent? She's a doll and you would love her. She worked with us for 9 months, we go to dinner, etc.

Thank you   If Mrs. J's person doesn't work out, absolutely.  She sounds great

[ssmjlm]

Feb 14, 2013 14:21:04 GMT -5 tarheels said:

Feb 14, 2013 13:30:30 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Dang girl, where in DC are you looking? Those are awful.

You think so?  This is sort of par for the course from what I've seen over the past year   This particular example of sponge paint is especially egregious, but bad paint or no paint (sad, old cream) are the norm.  We're concentrating on Alexandria inside the Beltway (or right beside, like Belle Haven).

Well it has been a while since I've lived in that area, but still there are a lot of DC area ladies on MM who rent and they don't seem to post similar pictures. 

I would think there would be some cute condo/townhouse in the area for rent with some nice neutral walls.  Maybe I'm in lala land.

[emjacobs]

Feb 14, 2013 14:25:58 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Feb 14, 2013 14:21:04 GMT -5 tarheels said:

You think so?  This is sort of par for the course from what I've seen over the past year   This particular example of sponge paint is especially egregious, but bad paint or no paint (sad, old cream) are the norm.  We're concentrating on Alexandria inside the Beltway (or right beside, like Belle Haven).

Well it has been a while since I've lived in that area, but still there are a lot of DC area ladies on MM who rent and they don't seem to post similar pictures. 

I would think there would be some cute condo/townhouse in the area for rent with some nice neutral walls.  Maybe I'm in lala land.

That's because all the good ones are scooped up in a hot second.  The market even out where I am (45 min west of DC) the average time on market is 3-4 days for sales and 2 days for rentals, unless you have something crappy. Craigslist is a big thing in this area so you might want to check that out to.  A ton of the rental agents are using it here.

[tarheels]

Feb 14, 2013 14:25:58 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Feb 14, 2013 14:21:04 GMT -5 tarheels said:

You think so?  This is sort of par for the course from what I've seen over the past year   This particular example of sponge paint is especially egregious, but bad paint or no paint (sad, old cream) are the norm.  We're concentrating on Alexandria inside the Beltway (or right beside, like Belle Haven).

Well it has been a while since I've lived in that area, but still there are a lot of DC area ladies on MM who rent and they don't seem to post similar pictures. 

I would think there would be some cute condo/townhouse in the area for rent with some nice neutral walls.  Maybe I'm in lala land.

Oh, there are.  There are some nice condos in high rises, but we have 2500 sq ft of furniture from owning homes since college and have a small dog and a cat.  Properties are just small there compared to here where we've got all the space in the world to spread out   We can consolidate our belongings some, but I'm not getting rid of
everything I own just for this couple years, and storage is expensive,
so we've just raised our budget instead.  You know how expensive it would be to replace rooms' worth of furniture later!  So when you need a minimum of 1700 sq ft and a yardlet and want a 3rd bedroom, there are a lot of ugly homes out there.  And there are lots of recent construction 3 story THs (apparently orange oak is still in style there for new construction - baffling, but I'll deal), but I can't get a read on what their locations are like IRL - so many have turned out to be in bad areas after I've researched them.  Hopefully Mrs. J's agent or emjacobs' can help find the perfect property

[tarheels]

Feb 14, 2013 14:39:22 GMT -5 emjacobs said:

Feb 14, 2013 14:25:58 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Well it has been a while since I've lived in that area, but still there are a lot of DC area ladies on MM who rent and they don't seem to post similar pictures. 

I would think there would be some cute condo/townhouse in the area for rent with some nice neutral walls.  Maybe I'm in lala land.

That's because all the good ones are scooped up in a hot second.  The market even out where I am (45 min west of DC) the average time on market is 3-4 days for sales and 2 days for rentals, unless you have something crappy. Craigslist is a big thing in this area so you might want to check that out to.  A ton of the rental agents are using it here.

I saw THE MOST GORGEOUS Old Town house on Monday. Gone by Tuesday.  It was at the tippy top of our budget (like, probably not even reeeeally a consideration), but it was fabulous and met all of our criteria and was gone in a hot minute. ("Gone (gone), gone (gone), go-one like a soldier in the civil war, bang bang"...anybody? lol)

Em, I do stalk CL.  And I have the listings emailed to me   Thing is, we aren't sure when we're moving yet, so all I'm doing now is browsing.

[emjacobs]

Ahhh ok. That stinks

[simpsongal]

I saw a lot of after-thought decorating when we were house hunting in the DC area. Like, builder-painted beige walls (30 years old), a random photo or dilpoma on the wall (amidst a sea of blank wall), and beige/maroon furniture that seemed like it came from various thrift stores.

This area is high on education, not so much on style.

[ssmjlm]

Kingstowne would probably meet all your criteria but its further out than you want.

[candreco]

I'm just a little south of there near Mt. Vernon, and yeah, good stuff goes fast. Both the house we sold and the house we bought this summer were under contract w/in 3 days of being listed, including all of the back and forth stuff. There's just not much on the market here.

It's frustrating enough that I'm not sure our agent is even still doing real estate right now.

[tarheels]

Feb 14, 2013 16:13:55 GMT -5 simpsongal said:

I saw a lot of after-thought decorating when we were house hunting in the DC area. Like, builder-painted beige walls (30 years old), a random photo or dilpoma on the wall (amidst a sea of blank wall), and beige/maroon furniture that seemed like it came from various thrift stores.

This area is high on education, not so much on style.

This is so it!  I'm really curious to see when I get up there if HGTV is included in the cable packages and if the grocery stores sell home magazines at the check out lines   I just...how do people live like that forever?  First apartment in college, ok, but as an adult?  Don't people want a cozy home?

While the green sponge paint above is horrendous, at least it's something!  The owner cared and tried.


ssmjlm I've heard conflicting reports about how long it takes from Kingstowne and Cameron Station into the District.  A friend of mine said 30 minutes, other people have said 90 minutes when traffic's bad (and that's, um, always).  Whatever commuting nonsense may or may not be going on in those areas, I just don't care to deal with it.  So for now I've just scratched anything roughly west of Shirlington and south of Belle Haven.  We'll start searching close-in and fan out if we have to, but we upped our budget by 30% because we're so serious about not sitting in gridlock for 90 minutes on a regular basis.

[ktzmoh]

Wow that's some bold sponge painting. and a lot of green.

[hbomdiggity]

Not sure what your budget is but that area doesn't have a lot for sq footage. And what is there will be $$$$$, which is why you're not finding anything too fabulous.

The problem is that most sfh rentals are for military (not sure if that's you as well) and so they are accustomed to it and they just don't care.

I would def consider putting your furniture in storage to open up your opportunities - commute (I wouldn't want to commute from much farther out) wins over space in my book.

[TBM]

I keep checking this post hoping that you have added more real estate fails. Where are they? ;p

[downtoearth]

Description says, "You will love all the updating that has been completed on this 2 bdrm!"
But it should say, "You will not notice any updating on this 2 bdrm, but is does look clean."

[downtoearth]

Here's another fail that maybe you should wait until you hook them to reveal...on another house the description says, "Two homes on one lot. Excellent potential for investment or for the buyer looking for a multi unit building to help pay the mortgage.... One property was remediated for methamphetamine exposure by XXX engineers and remediated and removed from the Meth house list."

[bunnymendelbaum]

Ok, DH and I have been peaking in on rentals to have an idea of what to expect after we sell. Check this one out. I think they accidentally uploaded the "Before" photos.

$875 / 3br - 1000ft² - renovated home in West

[ssmjlm]

tarheels, I completely agree on the commute. The only reason I put up with a minimum hour commute from MD to DC for over a year was because I could live at home rent free and put a dent in my SLs from grad school.  If I hadn't met DH and moved completely out of the area, I was looking for something much closer once I had some nest egg built.