Unsuccessful...

CC and I have been in Florida for the past 5 days. CC had an interview and a site visit and we were going to spend some serious time looking for a house. We arrived on Monday afternoon and drove straight over to Cooter's. They were having all you can eat crab legs so we thought we would dive straight into our vacation. We moved from there to the beach for a couple of hours before heading to the hotel. CC had an interview the next morning followed by a full afternoon of looking at houses. Dad drove over Tuesday and met us at the first house. We traveled around all afternoon without finding anything that suited our needs. Dad wasn't feeling well so he checked into the hotel. We decided to go out to eat. CC received an email from Texas de Brazil. I had never been there before and so we went. The special on the e-mail included a bottle of wine and dessert with our meal. It was SO GOOD! The gauchos walk around with different types of meat that has been roasted on a spit. Beef ribs, sausages, Fillet Mignon, flank steak, roasted lamb, lamb chops, chicken, etc. The list goes on and on. It was a fabulous dinner.

The next day we were back at it again. CC went to a site visit at a hospital that had already offered him a position and we were all off again. We looked and looked and looked. Again, nothing that "spoke" to us. We were very disappointed but what can you do? We had dinner at Cooter's and Dad left to go back home to Orlando that evening.

Thursday was to be our last full day in Tampa so we decided to go out and do something. We decided on the zoo. We arrived late morning and were overwhelmed by the number of buses and school children running around. I decided maybe the zoo wasn't such a great idea. (At least not at that time of day) and we decided to drive around looking at homes in areas we knew we liked. We saw some homes in Hyde Park that were extremely expensive. We were priced out of that area pretty quick. Most of Ybor is condos and apartments. We hit up Old Clearwater Beach and found a couple fixer uppers that could potentially work....


Then we saw it! We found this house in the Largo area.

This house absolutely rocks! It is a foreclosure and we were able to look in all of the windows. It has high ceilings, all tiled floor, granite counters, stainless steel appliances and an outdoor kitchen. This particular piece of property also sits on a lake and is only 3 miles from the hospital that interviewed CC.

We were very taken with this house. Finally! Something we like that is in our price range. I know I was wanting to downsize (this house is 3,000 sq ft. same as my current house), but wow! Can you say Wow? It was something we decided we had to have. I called my father. We were going to put a bid on this house without even going in. We figured that anything major will be found on the inspection and we would be able to really decide at that time. Daylight is burning and my current home is pending so sooner rather than later right? Wrong....

Dad called back not long after my original call to tell me this home was built with Chinese drywall... What? Chinese drywall? Really?

Apparently at one time there was a shortage of drywall (between 2001-2007) and drywall was
imported from China. This drywall, come to find out has something in it that when it comes into contact with humidity or moisture (Florida is just chock full of that), it releases a gas and liquid. Sulfuric acid! It eats all the copper and silver in the house. It requires remediation in order to properly fix the issue. So... That means drywall, molding, carpet, tiles, vinyl, appliances, mirrors, wiring, copper plumbing, any electronics that were in the house, etc. Basically stripping out the entire inside of the house to studs and rebuilding. This is a bank owned property. They said they got an estimate for remediation on this house and the figure they were given is 130k... 130k!!! Holy cow! CC and I have gone over all of the numbers, what we can offer on the house in order to have the money to fix it. It is practically haunting us. We just can't make the math work so we are passing on this house. Damn... I really hope the third time is the charm.