The House Next Door 2

House flippers are on crack.

The house next door was purchased for $225,000 in 1990 by the last person to live there more than a couple of years. They sold it for $380,000 in 2001 to the previous crazy owner, who moved in 6 months later, that summer.

This is a continuation of the story that I first wrote about in the posting "Flip That House" on April 29th. Here we are on July 7th and the situation isn't much different.

That big pile of trash outside the house, remember that? They started dumping bags of trash over it. The bags had dirty diapers in them and burst open. Imagine living next to a house where they thought it was OK to dump bag after bag of dirty diapers out on the driveway.

I finally got pissed off and called them. There was this strange little game of cat and mouse trying to contact the guy. The number that the "owner" had given me was a loan & real estate office. The guy I talked to didn't answer the phone and the guy that did insisted I tell him what I wanted to tell the other guy. The guy asked me if I wanted to sign a contract. What the hell does that even mean? I wouldn't tell him anything, and he kept explaining that he was this guy's partner and I could talk to him. Finally, after some frustration that I would not get to talk to the owner, I started telling his "partner" about the pile of poopy diapers. You never heard anybody backpedal so fast. Suddenly, he had nothing to do with that property and he was all about getting off the phone and stopping our fruitless discussion.

Last week or so, a new For Sale sign went up.

They had not finished this little breezeway connection between the master bedroom and the "Photography Studio" that the crazy Cuban had built. They paved the area below the causeway and ran water to the building. This was the infamous $20,000 work that would increase the value of the house to $1.1 million dollars! It's not done yet. The yard is about 2' tall, completely overgrown, and the dirty diapers are still there, rotting in the hot summer sun.

The realty company is one I've ever heard of before. I spoke to my friend that used to live in the house yesterday. He called the realtors to ask them what was going on. They told him that they wanted $1.2 million for the house (remember, they only paid $605,000 for it 6 months ago, and it's in worse shape than it was). He went "WHAT! You've got to be kidding!" and the realtor immediately said, "Well, we'd be willing to negotiate... we'd be willing to take off a lot." So my friend asked, "A million?"

He was told that the entire house would be redone and ready for sale by the 24th of July and asked if he wanted to see it and if he wanted to sign a contract. He told them he'd be willing to look at it after they finished the work.

Like I said, house flippers are on crack.