Hey everyone, my fiancee and I have been casually looking at buying a rowhome or condo here in DC for the last year or so. We both got good paying jobs and will be getting married later this year.
We finally found a place we really like. It's at the high end of our budget and is a short sale. The unit is the top floor of a 4 story condo building (4 units). The place needs a lot of work. Just touring it for 30 mins we decided it needs new carpet and paint before moving in. This place has many features (extra bathroom, loft, roof patio, etc) and a lot more space compared to other similarly priced units.
We reached out to a realtor we used a few years ago when my then-girlfriend was looking at buying a little one bedroom place. He got back to us later that day and told us to stay away from this condo because:
"after looking close at this I think that this building may be more of an issue than just the unit. Back in 2005 this was listed as a "defunct" condo which meant the association was in default and that only cash buyers could purchase in the building. the last time this specific unit was on the market it was also a short sale.
This is a 2 unit building with a rocky history that currently has half of the owners ( this listing) in bad financial shape and probably has not been paying condo fees. You should consider buying a condo the same as getting into a business relationship with your neighbors and by that metric, this is not a good business to get into, and it will be equally difficult to re-sell down the line if the building is in poor financial health."
The HOA for this building was VERY low ($150/mo) and the exterior/lawn of the building seemed like it had been neglected for a while. The listing says the building was built (renovated?) in 2006 and judging from appearance I would say that is an accurate time.
So my question to you reddit: Is the realtor just telling us to stay away because it is a short sale? I've heard short sales are a bad return on time investment for realtors. Additionally, I'm not too concerned at a face value about the status of this building/HOA before the housing collapse, I sort of feel like everything was in bad shape then.
If we choose to pursue this (against the realtors advice) what extra things should we be looking into due to the short sale nature and rocky history of this building? At a minimum we need to find what outstanding liens may be on this unit/building and we would want to meet the neighbors to find out what their attitude is towards increasing the HOA and ensuring the finances of the building are solid moving forward. Extra thorough home inspection FOR SURE. Anyone have any experience in a similar situation?
Submitted January 10, 2017 at 09:20AM by Smitty2k1 http://ift.tt/2ieDjst
