quote:

Originally posted by Qaanaaq-Liaaq:
About the first bungalow style house in the post:

Spec sheet says 2 attached garage spaces but I don’t see the garage in the photos. Is the garage attached to the back of the house and accessed through an alley?

It’s certainly in a good location, near the downtown area of Arlington Heights and the Metra train station.

Spec sheet says it has “Heating (Unspecified type)”. You can see radiators in most of the room photos. You’ll need to have portable humidifiers for the rooms during the heating season. It has no cooling either. This means a costly conversion to a forced air hvac system or spacepac system or use portable window air conditioners in the rooms.

I’ve looked at many bungalow style houses. The staircase leading to the second floor is usually the suicide type of staircase in which the vertical portion of the stair is high but the depth portion of the stair is short. One false step and it’s down you go.

Pic 24 shows the front of the house with the driveway on the right, but there's a dumpster there. The plan for the first floor, pic 29 of the 31 available, shows the location of the garage.

I notice that listings without photos of the garage are very common.

I always assumed that was because the garage is where people put all their junk while they're trying to get the house prettied up for listing photos.

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
I notice that listings without photos of the garage are very common.

I always assumed that was because the garage is where people put all their junk while they're trying to get the house prettied up for listing photos.

No basement photos of the first house either.

Never a good sign.

quote:

No basement photos of the first house either.

Never a good sign.

Yeah, I would be more worried about basement photos than garages, just because more can go wrong, and be harder to fix, in a basement.

So the bungalow sold for a bit over asking:

https://www.realtor.com/reales..._M76182-87053#photo6

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
Meant to post this MCM ranch a while ago. I have been walking past it for years when I'm on my daily constitutional. It's got great curb appeal and it's one of those houses I thought I'd love to see the interior of.

Talk about disappointment....more rough than diamond...the floor plan is, um, interesting...

https://www.zillow.com/homedet...-60004/3324210_zpid/

Original asking was $850K, dropped to $800K, sold for $755K.

Good luck to them. I think they're going to need it.

Whole place needs redecorated; kitchen needs gutted. terrible layout. Looks like it was last done in the 80's.

We're potentially looking for a place in Canada, and I've noticed just totally random problems with photos. High on the list:

1) photos of "your view" that are taken with a telephoto lens focussed to the point where the picture is practically pixellated, because the view of the mountain/ocean/downtown is actually miles away

2) photos that are missing for significantly important parts of the house--like no photos of the bedrooms, or the kitchen

3) photos that have no distinguishing characteristics, like a photo showing just a corner of a room, labeled "primary bedroom"

4) overly staged and stylized presentation, like one showing a model tastefully arrayed across the sofa, sipping a cup of tea, like "if you buy this house, you will become this gorgeous human and have all the time to sit around sipping tea and relaxing"

5) photos of bathrooms with the kitty litter box as the dominant feature

6) stock photos of a multi-unit apartment complex, where the photos are obviously not taken from the same unit, and are most likely not of the unit they're trying to rent/sell... like a compilation of the best view from one unit's kitchen, the best bathroom layout from another unit, the nicest floors from a third unit, etc., etc.

7) My personal fave: text that says, "hurry, this one won't last" next to the "time on MLS - 436 days"

The New York Times has a column with people looking for a specific type of apartment, house, etc. in a specific location. They offer three alternatives and ask, which one would you pick? Which one would they pick?

The whole exercise is fun but silly, because quite often the important criteria that the buyer used to decide wasn't disclosed to you. You also only get two pictures, one outside, one inside.

The interesting point as it relates here ... sometimes the pictures indicate that they are staged virtually. I wonder how often that happens in the real estate market these days.

quote:

sometimes the pictures indicate that they are staged virtually

I notice this very rarely with local listings but more often when looking at swanky listings or listings in popular locales.

Sometimes it's done very poorly, sometimes you almost don't catch it.

Nina, sometimes the really weirdo listings (like the litter box ones you mention) seem to have fascinating backstories.

I saw one recently where the large house, located in an area that I believe is expensive, was just trashed. It looked like a landlord's nightmare. The interesting thing is that no effort had been made to move the junk or wipe away any filth. None. In fact, the photographer seemed to be seeking out junk and filth.

We're talking about the New York suburbs, where hiring somebody to clean the place wouldn't just move the place faster but could presumably raise the selling price substantially. (I think. Maybe I just don't understand real estate, but their neighbors are sprucing up their houses to sell.)

This listing was so bad that I started dreaming up scenarios. Was it a foreclosure? It seemed to me that the bank would spend a few dollars to clean it up.

The piece de resistance was a photo that was a bird's-eye-view down into the nastiest toilet I've ever seen outside of a backwoods truck stop.

The best explanation I can come up with is that the person who's living in the house lost it in a divorce and is using the photos to get back at the spouse who can't afford wait to sell it until they can take possession and spruce it up.

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:


The best explanation I can come up with is that the person who's living in the house lost it in a divorce and is using the photos to get back at the spouse who can't afford wait to sell it until they can take possession and spruce it up.

I'm not sure if that's true, but I love it as a possible explanation.