The City Loves Raymond

Raymond had lived in his home for more than 40 years. In that time he had installed a new furnace, new electrical service and hundreds of other improvements. He never did though install a "tub made of gold." He was certain though that the city assessor thought he had. In 2008 his property was assessed at more than $180,000.
The four bedroom home is on East Washington at Second St. "The city says there are 4 bedrooms, that room is not big enough for a bed. Someone downtown needed a raise." The way he figured, he was paying for a few raises after the market price of his home, via comparative sales and and several eventual offers told us it was worth about 145,000.

Just as we thought he was on his way, waving goodbye to property taxes and paying for someones "leather chair" the City found another way to make his home that much harder to sell. The buyer, "a young fellow," was taking advantage of 3 city loan programs and down payment assistance plans. "Fine with me, that's his problem." Turns out it was our problem too. In an effort to make sure that the loan programs were never used and wasted as much money as possible, the home needed to undergo an additional inspection, over and above the one the buyer paid for. They would not only be looking for safety hazards but also do a lead paint inspection. Using some kind of electronic device they would test over 100 surfaces of this 80 year old home.

Do you think they might find some lead paint? For the most part any paint manufactured before 1978 is lead paint. I think they might. I could have saved the city the few hundred it cost to find that out. "Hazards" or places where paint is loose or chipping are what you need be aware of. In the opinion of the agents involved there was need for paint on the garage, that's about it. Go figure there was actually more. Go figure too that the work needed to be done by licensed lead abatement specialists. So after having to pass on two of the three programs and still have the lead paint issues handled by licensed specialists, we moved to close.