Sunday, October 17, 2010

More Crumbling Houses

Cullen and I went for a drive last night to see a house that has been on my radar for about eighteen months. It was originally way out of my price range, like three and a half times what I wanted to spend, then sold shortly before or after I bought my new house.

Then suddenly I got a notice that it was back on the market. Instead of being sold it is now a foreclosure and less than half of the original price. So maybe it was sold and the bank bought it. Anyway, it's back on the market at a steep discount. Not that I'm in a position to buy it since I just bought a house but this thing is a monster Gothic Victorian and I had to go and look at it.

So Cullen kindly agreed to accompany me, so long as I got him food while we were out, and we went to see it.

It's heartbreaking to look at these houses. You can see tons of them (not necessarily this particular architectural style, but former grand old dames) in Baltimore, rotting away, or partially burned, or in the case of one we saw with squatters living in it and and shitting on the stairs.

This house looked as though it had been purchased and partially rehabbed by a five year old with a short attention span. There was new paint all along one side but the other three sides were falling apart. The gazebo had peeling paint in some parts and other parts that looked new. Brand new screen doors were next to even larger shutters that had fallen and were rotting on the ground. The beautiful turret and two cupolas were amazing; all shell shaped shingles in many muted colors, but then there was a hole right in the side of the house.

It's depressing. And with money so tight for everyone I fear the house is just going to get worse and worse until it's too decrepit to save.

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1 Comments:

At 8:09 PM, Blogger Georgiana said...

One more thing - Cullen said he could smell the mold all the way from the car. I couldn't but this morning I woke up with the headache from hell that an allergy pill is not even denting. Sigh.

 

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