tales from behind the throne

and other real estate horrors

What’s behind your toilet?

Does it sweat?

Does it leak?

Is there something rust coloured, green or worse, brown thriving back there?

This stuff isn’t a problem unless you’re trying to sell your place.

You likely live with a whole bunch of flaws and small repairs that if you actually thought about them, they’d likely drive you crazy.

With no time, poor skills and even worse tools for the job, it’s easy to overlook all of the little things.

Someone who wants to buy your house?

They frequently see all of those same little things.

There’s a house we looked at years ago. It had a view of a nice little lake and was on a quite, dead end street.

It needed a bit of work upstairs but was basically move in ready.

We were ready to buy and prepared to offer close to asking price.

Then we went downstairs.

Downstairs?

It was full of all the little things.

There were asbestos tiles on the floor, switches that didn’t seem to work and the basement shower?

I was more worried about the mold there than the asbestos floor tiles.

Hiring specialists to deal with each of these little things would have cost tens of thousands of dollars.

A handyman?

They could troubleshoot the lighting issues, deal with the tiles safely and go into the Jurassic bathroom of horror with an eye to answers. The job could have likely been turned around for about a third of the cost of having a bunch of specific trades in and the hassle of contacting them all.

That house?

It stayed on the market for months, eventually selling for only 2/3 of listing price.

It’s now a beautiful home.

As a buyer, I sure would have liked to have had an idea what kind of warts were there before putting down big money on that place.

The homeowner could have spent around ten thousand dollars getting rid of this pile of little things and ended up with a lot more money in their pocket.

Be willing to explore what’s wrong.

Find out what can and can’t be fixed easily.

And sleep well at night knowing that what you have to sell is going to be worth it.