November 22, 2009

We decided this morning not to stick around Hillsboro but to move on to Chillicothe which is south of Columbus. Hillsboro is just to far away from bigger towns and itself is a small, small, village/ town. After unsuccessfully trying to get a hold of a Realtor who could show us the 3 properties in Chillicothe we just started rolling. We tried over and over again to talk to one of the agents but as we later learned, everybody is in church on Sunday morning.
Arrived in Chillicothe and finally received a return call from one of the agents. We hooked up with her in her office and started our tour. First house was so,so, 2nd was so,so but the 3rd house was amazing. Huge practically new brick house, and inside it was HUGE! The problem was that somehow water got into the basement and since it is a bank repo they turned the electricity off and the sump pumps didn't work. So the basement got flooded with 6 feet of water for months. Now just think, the whole basement is about 1000sqft and that all under water including electrical boxes, water heaters, propane heaters and everything a modern house has. Then the cement walls and wooden stairs started to wick the moister up and the wood floors in the house started buckling. It was pretty much a mess. Also the guy/owner who built the house just doctored some of the stuff, unfinished base boards, weird cutouts in the counter tops and strange unfinished spaces. But there are 5 bedrooms and each one had it's own full bath with those absolutely high tech showers which looked like space capsules fully automated with remote control. Weird. But it was a million dollar home now to have for $ 255'000. But one would have to put in at least 50 grand to fix everything up. David was ready to make a real low ball offer but man, I am scared of that place. Just to many unknowns because of the water damage. I worry that once you start fixing things up one would open a can of worms. We will sit on it for the rest of the weeks and continue to scout the country side. I love this part of Ohio because it looks like Switzerland with a lot of cattle and dairy farms and not just cornfields like in the north of Ohio. We are parked at Wallmart and the Realtor promised to have a few more properties to look at tomorrow.