We closed on the house on Wednesday. Things did not go exactly according to plan.
On Tuesday night we were supposed to meet the realtor at the house for the final walkthrough to make sure that all the expected repairs had been made. I got done with work a little late and I texted M and said "Do I even still need to come?" thinking that by that point he and the realtor had already seen what we were going there to see. But he replied and said "Yes, please come, we need you."
So I walk into the house and find M, our realtor, and the seller in the primary bedroom. The seller, Peggy, lives next door, and the house belonged to her mother. The seller does not typically attend the walkthrough, but there she was. And M and our realtor are immediately looking at me like 😬😬😬.
Then I notice that there is still a bed -- a whole-ass headboard/footboard/boxspring/mattress/quilt situation -- in the room. "There's still some furniture in the house," says the realtor.
It turned out that Peggy had left us this bed, a huge television cabinet, three living room chairs (one with ottoman), multiple end tables, a pie safe, a computer desk, a printer table, a treadmill, a miniature fake Christmas tree, a big old tube TV with stand, a VCR, a cedar chest, cleaning supplies in both bathrooms and the kitchen, a huge cement patio table, some yard sale-quality unframed art, and assorted nicknacks (vases, fake flowers, throw pillows, a few random dishes, etc). As we walked through the house she kept pointing at things and saying "And this stays, and this stays..." and M, the realtor, and I were all just looking at each other like "What the actual fuck?" How does this person not understand that when you sell a house you have to get all of your shit out of it?
Our realtor kept trying to gently ask Peggy to leave so we could discuss the situation and Peggy was not really catching on until the realtor was a little more straightforward and Peggy said "Oh, you want me to leave?" As soon as she left our realtor called Peggy's realtor, who was appropriately appalled at the situation. Our realtor wrote up a document specifying all the things that needed to be removed and that Peggy had until 4:00 pm today to get it all out of there, and that she'd have to pay a $50 penalty for each additional day.
M and I had planned to go to the house immediately after the closing on Wednesday to celebrate and be there alone for the first time, but we didn't see any point in doing that since all of Peggy's stuff was still in there. So we have not actually been to the house since we bought it. Peggy called M earlier and said all the stuff is out, so we're going over there this evening. I truly hope this is all resolved and that we don't have to make things even more awkward with our new next-door neighbor.
I am, generally, a little nervous about Peggy. She is very sweet, but her parents were the only previous owners of the house, and she lived there herself when she was younger. She was emotional at the closing and I can understand why. It has to be very difficult to see new people move into your family home, especially as her mother lived in the house until her death this past May. I want to be friendly with her but I also hope that she doesn't feel like our house is in some sense still her house and that she can pop over whenever. I hope she's not devastated when I dig up scraggly bushes in the front yard that her parents no doubt planted. I hope she's not offended when we put up the first privacy fence on the block.
M said when he talked to her earlier that she sounded chipper and that she told him that she'd found the blueprints for our house (cool!), so hopefully things will be smooth from here.
