If You Really Loved Me You'd Let Me Eat Your Brain

So Anne and I paid $450 to have the house we're looking at inspected and tested for radon (or is it Radon?)  The home inspector spent over three hours going over the place. He listed a lot of little defects and three major defects. The major defects all had to do with dry rot.  And the R/radon was 0.1 over the recommended limit, whatever that means.  It's nothing major but it's fun to complain about when talking to the sellers.  "You want my kids to have three arms!?!?" and so on.

But the dry rot was the deal-killer. The problem with dry rot is that you can't know the extent of the problem without tearing stuff up. Could be $500, could be $5,000. The inspection revealed three different instances of dry rot and all had been painted recently. Hmm. Tricky.  They might have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids and that talking dog.  That and the house inspector.

To call Thaa Reverend a pessimist when it comes to human nature is an overstatement. Thaa Reverend believes that in a proper environment with a logical and coherent system that rewards good behavior and good jujjment all of mankind would live in harmony. We could even do away with money, like those 24th century Star Trek freaks. We would no longer spend our lives acquiring Stuff. We'd be enlightened, no one would work more than five hours a week, no one would have money, everyone would drink wine, education would be free, promiscuity would be the order of the day, and bathing would be optional. Kind of like...France.

As soon as money enters the picture Thaa Reverend touches his lips to his medallion of St. Cheapass and starts the bidding at one dollar. One of the teaching of St. Cheapass is "Thou shalt not have the right to cure." St. Cheapass probably got burned in a real estate transaction, like a dirt wall not being up to code or something. In real estate parlance, giving the seller the right to cure means they can fix any problems revealed by the home inspection, and letting them fix the problems isn't a great idea if they're a bunch of assclowns.  The kinds of assclowns who paint over dry rotted wood on purpose or ignore the problem in the first place.

My real estate attorney is a disciple of St. Cheapass so he's always insisted on denying sellers the right to cure.  This gives the seller more leverage when asking for concesssions.  If you find a problem you negotiate a dollar figure and take care of it according to your standards.  Leaving it up to the sellers is a bad idea.  When Anne, the real estate attorney, and I were on the phone today (me at a pay phone on a busy highway since I was in a cellular dead spot) he was absolutely giddy over the fact that we had the "sell shall not have the right to cure" clause in the contract. He even used the phrase "saved the day" to describe how valuable that clause was.  "I'd rather have my fox watching the chicken coop than their fox watching the chicken coop,"  sayeth the attorney.  Sounds like something St. Cheapass would have said, or stolen from someone else, since he;s too lazy to think up anything original on his own.  St. Cheapass probably spent his formative years staying on dirt couches at a friend's place, waking only long enough to hit his Zoroaster skull bong and order some take out halabfalaj.

Thaa Reverend and his entourage signed all the paperwork giving the sellers the finger, stapled it to our real estate agent's forehead, lashed him to the truck, and let the Atty. Humongous deliver his "Walk away...just walk away (or knock $10,000 off the price)" message to the listing agent. The listing agent was aghast and acted offended and shocked. She told Atty. Humongous that her sellers were a peaceful people and wanted nothing more to do with us unless we waived the inspection contingency. Ha!!

We, and I mean the Royal We, were in no mood for her games and did not fall for her Realtor® tricks. I don't know exactly what Atty. Humongous said to her but I know my version of the message would have been brought to her today by the letters F and U.

Maybe I should send the listing agent an e-mail tomorrow reminding her that now the sellers know about a number of major and minor defects and they're required by law to disclose them to potential buyers.

If only I had a friend or two who enjoy bothering and antagonizing people who could go to the next open house and ask for a property condition report. If the report doesn't disclose the known defects, well, who knows, maybe Thaa Reverend will come back with an even lower, more insulting offer.

Mrs. Thaa Reverend has demanded that Thaa Reverend advise his readers that if they ever want to sell a property with all sorts of defects they should go through First Weber. They seem to be good as selling places with fresh coats of paints and all sorts of ugliness underneath.  Mrs. Thaa Reverend does not agree with Thaa Reverend's idea of toilet papering and egging the house at midnight though, so it's be pointless to tell everyone that the property we were looking at is at 2582 Norwich St., Fitchburg, WI.