Today, I am excited to wrap up the condo saga and talk about the roller coaster that was the first six weeks of 2021.
In case you missed it, we signed a purchase agreement in March 2019 to buy a brand new condo in DC. I have already talked about why new construction felt right for us, how things started to go south in 2019, and then when we really started to question what was going on in 2020.
Here is what happened next:
January 2021
Right after the holidays, we were invited to do our first walkthrough of our new condo. The last time we saw the condo was the summer of 2019. 18 months ago it was still just a shell. Before scheduling our first walkthrough with the developer’s representative, we scheduled a private inspection. We were advised that a private inspection would be more thorough and we could bring the punch list from that first walk to our second, formal walk with the developer.
We scheduled our private inspection and couldn’t wait to see our new home. Walking into the building, I was impressed. Everything looked just as I hoped it would. I was anxious to see beyond lobby but because of Covid-19 restrictions, the building requested that we only look at our unit. We were fobbed up to our unit and walked in the inspector. I remember saying, “Wow!” The inspector looked at me and said, “Wait have you not seen this before?” The answers was basically yes.
It was hard to focus on the inspection because I was so excited to actually see our new place. Luckily, we had an amazing inspector who took time to carefully walk us through everything. I can’t recommend ProTec Inspection Services enough! Our inspector found only two issues that needed to addressed immediately. If you have ever gone through the home inspection process, you know a list of only two items is really good. The first item was the ice maker. It was overproducing ice so the ice box had frozen shut. Not a big deal. The second item was a little bit of a bigger deal. The living room window wouldn’t open. It seemed like lever to open it was malfunctioning.
We left feeling really good about things. The space had some challenges (like the narrow kitchen) but overall we were just so excited to finally have a little more space and a place to call our own. Walking home I checked my phone. I had several text messages from friends and family outside of DC asking if we were ok. Why wouldn’t we be ok?
The date was January 6.
The rest of the afternoon was spent wiping away tears as we stayed glued to the television. All the excitement from the morning was erased. That night I went to bed that night with a pit in my stomach. Once again, the city that I loved felt changed forever. I couldn’t shake this small voice in my head that now had me questioning life in DC. Was this condo really the right move?
The next day I confided in my husband. I told him that there was a part of me that wasn’t sure moving forward with the condo was the right thing. He reassured me that I was happy during the inspection. It had just become difficult for me to untangle all the emotions of the day.
On January 22, we did our first walkthrough with the developer’s representative (our second walkthrough overall.) As you can see, there were ALOT of steps. Side note, I think they forgot about our appointment because the rep was over 10 minutes late and the sales team wasn’t answering my calls. Not super surprising based on past interactions. At the second walkthrough I flagged the two issues from the previous walkthrough (ice maker and window.) We then went room by room looking for any cosmetic issues. This was actually really fun. It felt like a scavenger hunt. Any ding or nick, we marked with a piece of green tape. I remember thinking that this was such a great perk of buying new construction. Something like this would NEVER fly in a normal transaction.
The rep said that it would take two weeks to fix the items on our list and we could go ahead and schedule our final walkthrough. I have to say, he was also really great to work with. He had been in most of the units and assured us that ours was in way better shape than most of the other units. This was nice to hear but also a little alarming. Why do most of the other units have issues? We had come this far though so I let it go.
Before I left, one of the concierges was nice enough to sneak us up to the roof and to a few of the ammenties so we could at least see them before we closed. In retrospect, I can’t believe buyers were forced to close without seeing these spaces.
February 2021
We scheduled our final walkthrough for February 12. We would do the walkthrough at 12:00 and then go to closing at 2:00 that afternoon. On our way over that day, I was nervous. I still had that little voice in my head telling me things weren’t quite right. As we got off the elevator on our floor, we noticed that construction was still going on. A team was coating the elevator doors in a fresh coat of spray paint– not the most professional welcome. The same rep from our last walkthrough opened the door to our condo and here is what we saw:
The fridge was in the middle of the kitchen.
Let me remind you. This was our FINAL walkthrough and we are set to close in two hours. Everything should be perfect at this point in the process. Obviously it was not. The rep, my husband, and I were silent. Finally, the rep goes, “Guys, this is bad. You need answers.” Again, I am so thankful for this rep. He was so sympathetic and helpful throughout the whole process. What we believed happen was that in an effort to defrost the frozen ice maker, someone unplugged the fridge. After taking a closer look at the cabinet around where the fridge had been and the flooring around the fridge, we could see signs of water damage. The trim had already split and I was sure there was water under the hardwoods.
We then walked over to the living room window. The window was still broken. The rep said that this is an issue throughout the building and it may require ordering new materials from the window manufacturer.
We quickly realized that the two major issues (ice maker and window) were not resolved and in fact, one of the issues was actually worse. Obviously this wasn’t going to be resolved before our closing in two hours so I made the call to cancel closing. Side note, the day before I went to the bank to wire our downpayment to the title company. Rather than wiring the money, I decided to get a cashiers check. Again, something in my gut was telling me to hold on to the money. Weird right?
We left the walkthrough started walking back to our rental. Again silence. We didn’t know what to say about what had just happened. I broke the silence and said,
“I don’t feel good about this.”
That afternoon we made calls to our parents and spent the afternoon and weekend canceling other appointments. I had contractors coming in the morning to start a design project, Verizon was scheduled to come, I had furniture coming, utilities were supposed to be going on which meant we would lose powers where we were– it was a mess. Not to mention, we also had to be out of our rental in two weeks.
By Monday, our minds were made up.
We decided to walk away.
The sales team was apologetic that our final walk had gone so poorly and said they had no idea about the damage. This is probably true but still pretty unprofessional. Once we got confirmation that we would received our full 5% deposit back (it had been sitting in escrow since March 2019) we didn’t look back. We sent a formal notice that we were walking away, the developer signed it, I canceled the cashiers check, and a few days later our 5% deposit was wired back into our account. It was over.
Honestly, had I known how easy it was going to be get out of it, we probably would have considered it sooner. Our purchase agreement said the developer had two years to develop the project so we thought that we were bound to that. However, I think the developer was happy to get our unit back and try to resell it at a higher rate. What kept us going in this transaction was the price we got and the fact that tens of thousands of dollars were tied up already. In the end, the developer wasn’t able to deliver the product and we were well within our rights to walk away.
The last part of puzzle was finding a new place to live in two weeks. That story next week.
