In my previous blog post I explained that the Marmots had done so much damage to my house in Idaho, that I decided to sell it. The several new housing developments surrounding my house had driven the Marmots onto my property. Never in the past thirteen years of owning this house had the Marmots been so destructive. I believe that this change in their behavior was caused by the stress and pressure they were under from being chased out of their previous burrows.

I soon found out from my home insurer that they were not going to pay for any of the damage to my home or well-pump-house done by the Marmots. I was told that my home insurance did not cover, “damage caused by animals”, because it was the homeowner’s responsibility to detect and prevent this type of damage from happening. This made it even more clear to me that I should sell this house.

If I had wanted to sell this house, and had planned to sell this house, the Summer of 2022 would have been the time to do it. This was the peak of the Idaho real estate boom, that was caused by so many people leaving California. But I didn’t plan to sell, or want to sell my house. This just suddenly became necessary. Apparently there was still such a demand for houses in Idaho, that when I contacted a real estate agent that was referred to me, he was eager and enthusiastic to come over to my house the following morning to get started and take the real estate listing photographs.

One of the very first things that this real estate agent did, was show me thirteen real estate listings of comparable recent home sales near my home. The lowest of these recent comparable sales, was a home on less than one acre, for $250K. The remaining recent comparable sales, were all over $300K, going up to $550K. Based on these comparables, he said that he believed that my home was worth about $325K. This is what I believed as well, based on the number of acres of land that my house was on, and its location next to several new housing developments where the lot sizes were only 1/2 acre.

To clarify a little more, within a short distance from my house, there were one-acre lots for sale in the $80K-$110K price range. My house was on multiple acres, with a water-well, electric-service, and septic-system already installed. Just the amount of land alone, with existing utility services, and direct road access to each acre, was arguably worth more than $325K because of its potential for subdividing it into smaller lots.

But the beginning of the problems with my home sale, came on the second day of working with my real estate agent, when he said that he did not want to ask buyers who submitted an offer, to pay more than $1,000 earnest-money, because, “….it might cause them to be unable to make their down-payment.” I was wondering what the hell was he talking about, what kind of buyers was he talking about?

I explained to my real estate agent, that if an offer is submitted by a buyer, and it gets close to the closing date, I would have to travel from North Dakota back to Idaho in order to remove my personal property and vehicles before the closing. I am not going to make this trip, be absent from my job, risk losing my job, move a bunch of personal property, and have the buyer back out of the sale with no penalty, after causing me a great deal of expense.

An older friend of mine, who used to be a real estate agent, when discussing this with him, he said to me, “Hell yes you need to collect at least several thousand dollars earnest-money. That’s the only way that you are going to prevent people from tying-up your home with frivolous, nonsense offers that they know they can’t follow through with.”

When there was a second, much larger misunderstanding with my real estate agent over a different matter that caused me to contact the real estate broker of this real estate agency, the broker was in lock-step with my real estate agent about, “…Oh, no. We don’t want to collect more than $1,000 earnest-money from buyers who submit an offer, because that might interfere with their ability to make their down-payment.”

I quickly realized that both my real estate agent, and the real estate agency broker/owner were trying to steer my home sale towards local, first-time home buyers. I was beginning to question if this was not legally a conflict of interest, as they were not attempting to represent me and my best-interests, but instead trying to create a good-deal for their own friends, family, or someone else they had in mind. It was like they were trying to be “good guys”, “do the right thing”, “be charitable”, but with MY HOUSE, and at MY EXPENSE.

Within a few more days, a couple of realizations made the situation more clear. When I was browsing through all of the current real estate listings for that region of Idaho, from the lowest price going up, I found out that my house was currently the lowest-priced house for sale in that county. The reason why my real estate agent and the real estate agency broker/owner were trying to steer my house sale toward first-time home buyers, was because it was currently the lowest priced house for sale in that area of Idaho.

The second important realization that I made, was that first-time home buyers who lacked the necessary income or ability to make a down-payment, could qualify for a HUD/FHA loan guarantee, creating a bunch of potential buyers for every real estate agent in the area.

Within the first few weeks of my home being listed for sale, there were about fifteen home showings. I was advised by my real estate agent that it would be best for me to be absent during home showings, so I always planned to leave to go shopping or out to eat at least 1/2 hour before a house showing appointment. But in some cases I would drive to a neighbor’s house several hundred feet away, and watch from my vehicle without being seen.

From what I observed, the people who were being shown my home, they didn’t have very much money, or life experience. They sometimes acted kind of lost. The fact of the matter was, they didn’t want or need a house on acreage to keep their horses, cattle, chickens, goats, dogs, construction equipment, boat, motorhome, they were just there because this was the lowest-priced house for sale in the region, and they were going to try to get a HUD/FHA loan guarantee.

I looked up information about HUD, the U.S. Department Of Housing And Urban Development, and FHA, the Federal Housing Authority. These Federal Government Offices were created to assist low-income and possibly disadvantaged groups of people such as minorities, LGBT, people with AIDS, in obtaining housing through financial assistance and enforcement of non-discrimination in housing. For readers who don’t believe me, here is a quote from the HUD website, “HUD continues to play a major role in providing shelter for America’s most vulnerable populations: the working poor, minorities, Native Americans, people with disabilities, people with AIDS, the elderly, the homeless.”

HUD/FHA has applications for people with low-income, inability to make down-payment, and first-time home buyers, to receive loan guarantees, making them eligible for bank loans to buy a house, that they otherwise would not qualify for. These HUD/FHA applications are complex, time-consuming, and often get tied up in government bureaucracy during multiple stages.

Because of the HUD/FHA programs, every real estate agent in the area had a HUD/FHA first-time home buyer, low-income buyer on hand to bring to my house, because it was the currently the lowest-priced house in the area, even at $325K. But these first-time home buyers, low-income buyers didn’t want, or need a house on acreage in a rural area. For instance, how are these low-income people going to mow that many acres, it takes a tractor to do it, which costs as much as the house down-payment they can barely afford. And, it could easily cost $100 per week, $5K per year in fuel for their daily commute to and from work.

Though every real estate agent had their first-time home buyer, low-income buyer to bring to my house in order to create a possible sale and receive their portion of the roughly $18K real estate commission, there was/is a risk to me as a home seller in accepting an offer from a HUD/FHA participant. After accepting an offer, the wait time for the completion of their HUD/FHA loan guarantee application could take 3-5 months, with the possibility of not being approved at all for many different reasons.

In the case of my home sale, I am unwilling to make any improvements or changes to my property to complete the sale. Except for the Marmot damage, my home is O.K. the way it is as far as I’m concerned. I am aware that HUD/FHA would probably require me to remove some things from my property, in order for their participant’s loan guarantee application to be approved, but I’m not going to do it.

I sometimes look at the situation this way: I own a paid-for home that is worth about $325K. Someone who doesn’t have the income, or the down-payment to buy my home, doesn’t even own a home, is going to tell me, “Hey, you need to have that Dodge box van, other vehicles, that storage trailer removed from your property.” Why the fuck am I going to take orders from a low-income renter, with no property of their own, who has no legal ownership in my property yet, and has a 50% chance of being denied their HUD/FHA loan? How many times would I be willing to spend $5K for a property improvement request from a buyer, only to have the buyer fail to qualify for a loan, or just back out? Zero times would I do this.

A neighbor asked me the question, “How are these people who don’t have the income, or the down-payment to qualify for a Bank loan, who receive a HUD/FHA loan guarantee, how are these people going to make the $2K per month mortgage payments?” My thoughts, “Isn’t this how the 2008 housing-bubble-burst, nationwide home foreclosures, bank failures happened? The Federal Government pressuring banks to give mortgages to people who were not qualified in employment history, income level, down-payment?”

As I explained in my previous blog post, I left Idaho in 2011 to go to work in North Dakota because I couldn’t earn enough money in Idaho to survive. For the next ten years, I had to continue to travel to North Dakota for work, because I had not been able to earn enough money in Idaho. Keeping this in mind, the way I see it, if a person or a family doesn’t have the income or the down-payment for a $325K house, they probably shouldn’t be trying to buy a $325K house. Why are they even trying to stay in an area where they can’t afford the lowest-priced house on the market? Isn’t that a big indication that they need to leave and go live somewhere else?

I try not to tell EVERYBODY, because too many people knowing will ruin this, but there are many small towns in North Dakota currently, where the price of a single-family home, is roughly the same as a person’s annual income, not six times a person’s annual income like Idaho currently.

Here is a good example of a small-town North Dakota house currently for sale, $59,900 3BR/1.5BA 2,000 square feet, low-crime, four city-blocks to the K-12 school, three city-blocks from the grocery store https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1018-1st-Ave-W_New-England_ND_58647_M77231-31494