Old, New

Back in January, the neighbor to the south of us finally sold his house. He had it up for sale for quite some time. If you've ever seen the movie MONEY PIT, with Tom Hanks and Shelly Long, this guy actually lived it. To start, he overpaid for the dump. Houses in the area were going for around $100,000, he paid $127,00 for a fixer upper. He's from California, so in his mind, he was getting a smokin' deal. He hired a "born again" contractor, who openly expressed his arrogant pomp, whenever he spoke to you, and ended up taking my neighbor to the cleaners for about $180,000. The scope of the project was quite extensive. He basically took the house down to the foundation, did a small addition, added the garage from hell, and rebuilt the whole house. Needless to say, the first contractor was fired. The second contractor arrives to save the day. They pretty much unraveled everything the first contractor did, because of code violations, and started from scratch. Finally, after two years of construction/destruction/construction, the house was, for the most part, finished. He had workers over, off and on, to do small things, but he was actually living there. Not too long after, he had a small stroke (if you met this guy , you'd understand), and decided to move where there were other people living in close vicinity, because he was afraid to live alone. After putting all this time, money, and effort, he put the house up for sale. Last figure I heard was $380,000 for the price of the house plus remodel costs. It sold in January for $127,000. Our new neighbor moved in just last week. My old neighbor's misfortune continued after the sale, (some legal issues) that held up closing for the next six months. In the meantime, he lost out on a job opportunity in Texas, because he could not leave Nebraska until he got the house off his back. The new neighbor was very patient while waiting for all the legal "crap" to get cleaned up, living in a couple of different places, sleeping on friends' couches for weeks at a time. The day finally came! Old neighbor, free at last of his burden, new neighbor finally settles into his new castle. What an experience for both parties. The life stories they now both possess, are definitely worth telling. Hope they blog about it!