DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

When you buy a house, the day your offer is accepted is a high point. Soon after that, you hire a squad of experts to dissect the place as if it were a sack of dirty clothes, reporting back on every stain, odor, and sagging bit of elastic.

Armed with these reports, you as a buyer have the option of asking the seller to fix the problems, or asking for cash, or doing nothing. Or, technically, you can back out of the purchase altogether, although in my experience the problem would have to be huge for most people to cancel the transaction… because by the time the inspection reports come in, you’ve been in escrow for at least a week, after having come out on top of the bidding war that marks the sale of any nice property (in Northern California, anyway). You’ve toured the property two or three times, mentally put your family and furniture into the new home, imagined driving down the driveway with groceries, imagined entertaining friends on the deck, wondered how the heck you’re going to get broadband access there, given that it’s way the heck out in the sticks. In short, you’re committed, and only something devastating would break the commitment.

We endured about 10 days of pain. Buying and selling simultaneously, we had inspection reports from two properties to contend with. In both transactions, the buyers submitted “addendums” to the original purchase contract, requesting repairs, money, or both. In both cases, the sellers issued counter-addendums.

For my part, I had to scramble to get a heater repaired. The house inspector discovered that our heater was spewing carbon monoxide into the basement den. I heard his report from the buyers’ realtor, who enthused “We love the property, and the inspector said everything is in fabulous shape. There’s just the matter of the carbon monoxide from the heater; that’s the SILENT KILLER, you know. But the house is really great!”

Fortunately, a few hours’ worth of cleanup and TLC did the trick. The flue was obstructed with the grime collected over 25 years, causing insufficient draw, causing the combustion byproducts to vent into our basement. The heater expert opined that the CO levels were safe before the repair, but we’re all happier now that they’re 100% lower.

Meanwhile, three miles away, we discovered that most of our 2+ acre yard might be leachfield. Subsequent research indicated that this is probably not entirely true, but for a few days we believed that the only way we’d be able to build our new music and dance studio would be by redirecting the output line from the septic tank into the “seasonal creek,” which, by the way, is realtor-speak for “drainage ditch.”

Anyway, after way more difficulties than I expected, we pushed through terms everyone could live with. We and our buyers removed contingencies… and now it’s just a matter of time before loans fund and we move to the new house.

And, no, I really won’t have broadband way the heck out in the sticks. Fortunately there’s a local wireless co-op that’s running WiFi from peak to peak to share a big DSL pipe. But that’s a story for another time.