A Real Bargain

161 Crawford Road
Downingtown, PA

This is our former home in Downingtown, PA.  It is located in East Brandywine Township, four miles outside of Downingtown, on 6.875 acres of a wooded hillside.  Bill and I brought the land in 1976 and had the house custom built to our specifications in 1980.  In the twenty-five years we lived there we added many additions, like the sun room (see picture above), brick terrace, and extensive landscaping and three ponds filled with goldfish.

Because I couldn't keep up with the ever increasing Pennsylvania school taxes and the other county taxes which were rising at the rate of 20 to 25% a year, I put the house up for sale in January of 2006 for $695,000.  Four days later I had an offer of $640,000 which I laughed at and refused much to my later regret because this was the beginning of the downtown of the housing market.

I eventually sold the house for $500,000 in November of 2006 and moved to our newly built house here in Delaware (where I am typing this blog from).

The new owners of our old home (a couple from Florida with two young daughters) bought our house at the great bargain of $500,000 and promptly refinanced it for $567,000, thus netting a tidy profit. I had sold the house for less than its value just to stop the pain of carrying two mortgages.

The new owner upgraded the house by putting in a new master bath and finished off the room above the garage for a home office.

For whatever reason, he could no longer keep up the monthly mortgage payment (I think there was a family discord but I don't know that for sure), so he simply abandoned the property in early 2009.  The property has been sitting vacant for almost two years now.

All of my lovingly planted shrubbery was left to grow and grow.  The ponds fell into stagnation.  I don't even want to think what happened to all the happy fish who used to reproduce in those ponds.  That was one of my problems, what to do with all the fish I was producing.

Last August the house went into foreclosure.  It was auctioned off.  I don't know who the new owners are but I do know they have been trying to sell it for the past six months.  They are selling it "as is."  Well, let me tell you the "as is" just means the grounds were let go.  No leaves were raked, no branches picked up, no shrubs trimmed.  The inside of the house is just as solid as we left it, even more so because I put in many upgrades, including $4,700 for all new top of the line granite counter tops in the kitchen (what was I thinking)?

The past few months Bill and I have been watching the price of our former paradise (which Bill still loves) go down and down.  Here is the latest price:

Folks,                         THIS IS A BARGAIN!

 $379,900?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

If I had the money (which I don't) I would buy this in a snap!  I'm playing the lottery.  Maybe lightening will strike and I'll win the BIG BUCKS!  Then I would make Bill's dream come true, he could go back home to the place he has never stopped loving.  

Bill sitting on the terrace he built late August 2006, a few months before we moved to Delaware

Last Visit to the Old House in PA

Our former home at 161 Crawford Road, Downingtown, PA today

Bill and I just returned from a day long trip to our former home in the woods outside of Downingtown, PA.

We are exhausted.  The drive up and back is a total of five hours.  That's a lot of hours on the road on a hot, humid and brutal day like today for two old buzzards like me and Bill.  With the exception of perhaps one or two days, this whole summer has been a succession of brutally hot and humid days of 90 degrees plus temperatures.  Today was no exception.

Today's visit to our formerly beautifully landscaped home on 6.875 of wooded acres in East Brandywine Township was bittersweet.  This was our last visit before the house and property will be auctioned off for non payment of back real estate taxes in excess of $17.000.  The owner also owes over $600,000 in mortgage payments plus penalties, interest and legal costs. There is also a per diem cost.  The meter is ticking.

Apparently the former owner just walked away from the property that he bought from us on November 17, 2006 for $500,000.  He lived in Florida and saw our home advertised on the Internet.  We later found out that his wife had threatened to leave him unless he moved her and their two young daughters out of the brutal heat and humidity of Florida.

There is another whole story about how I almost went off the financial cliff with selling my house that I won't go into great detail here except to say that I originally put my house up for sale January 9th, 2006 at a price of $695,000.  Yes, I got greedy.  My real estate agent advised me to put it on the market for $650,00 and be happy if I got a settlement of $625,000.  But, I fell into the "I know better than the real estate agent" trap and insisted that I could get a better price.

On January 14th I had an offer of $640,000 which I turned down.  I actually laughed at the offer.  What I didn't know was at that time I was right on the edge of the housing bubble.  Eleven months later, after seven failed settlements, I was finally able to sell my house for $500,000.  Except for maybe a terminal illness, this was the worst experience I've ever had in my life.  I was at the cliff's edge and I saw the abyss.  It was the scariest thing I ever saw in my life.

Where I almost went down the financial tubes was I had built another house in Delaware (the one I'm in now) and was carrying a mortgage on that house at the same time I was trying to sell my other house.  The market found out (probably because of my big mouth) and they smelled blood in the water.  After a lot of scrambling and sleepless nights, I was finally able to sell my house to this man who was trying to keep his marriage together and me trying to keep Bill from committing suicide.  Me?  I was going crazy.

On September 19th our house will be auctioned off at the Chester County Courthouse in West Chester, Pennsylvania.  We will not be there.  This chapter of our life is closed.

Bill took a few more videos today.  I took a few pictures.

Me surveying the neglect of our former home from one of the terraces that Bill built - he laid every brick by hand over a 20 year period

The video and the pictures don't show the true neglect that has befallen our once showpiece property.

Whoever gets this property will be getting a real bargain.

One thing is for sure, the birds and other wildlife don't seem to mind that there isn't anyone living there anymore.

My only regret are the loss of all my goldfish that thrived in my three ponds.  Most of those goldfish were born in this ponds and that was the only life they knew.  They are long gone.  The ponds are still there, dark and dank.  The only living organisms in those ponds now are mosquito larvae and toads.

The Dual Ponds with water fountain - May 1980

Happy goldfish waiting for me to feed them

Dual Ponds  - many generations of goldfish were born in these ponds

I hope whoever buys the property will restore it to it's former glory and enjoy it as much as we did the twenty five years that we lived there.  That property used to sing.  I hope it does again.