April Louisiana Road Trip.....Day Five & Six

Day 5 started way early.
We were at this motel for 5 nights, which meant, we sadly came to find out, 5 mornings of a really bad breakfast at this facility.
Bad like they had a huge pan of powdered scrambled eggs with some too well done(think burnt!)sausage bits in it.  The few mornings we went to the motel breakfast, at which we hardly ever saw another soul, they would bring out this pan of nasty eggs.  I truly believe it was the same pan each morning, since nobody ever took any eggs. 

Needless to say most mornings(besides the first and the last)we found different breakfast accommodations.

We took the Daughter to Sue's Country Kitchen for breakfast and later that morning we met realtor #1 to go see houses.

We saw a lot of houses and they were quite a mixed bag!

The view out the front of the 1st house.......this one was a possiblilty but nobody was in love with it.
But the price was right.

 

And this one was the backup property if the one our Daughter wanted fell through.

We saw one house, well I saw it from the car and we never went inside.  It was basically an old shack, something like this.....

It was a bit wider but in just about this condition.  It was located 1 block off a major highway and looked out onto the back of a new metal pole building church.  Behind the shack was some type of repair business.  No one answered the door for the realtor but then a woman came over to the car asking why we were here.  Evidently the listing agent never told the property owners someone was coming to see the house and this woman was the sister of the woman who owned the shack.  Let's just say this woman was not the friendliest person I've ever dealt with and leave it at that.

While this woman was talking at us, a real old woman came out onto the porch of the shack dressed in not much more than a smile.  It looked like the woman who "owned" the shack wasn't all there and her sister was "taking care of her".

While the realtor and I spoke with the owner's sister at the car, Hubs and the Daughter had walked around the backside of the shack checking things out.
When they came back to the car we quickly got out of there.
The shack was sitting in a swamp basically(thank goodness it was up on blocks!)and they had a sump pump running outside the house, trying to dry things up.
This place was beyond a hot mess!  And you wouldn't believe what they were asking for this!!! lolz

Moving on.....

A pretty nice kitchen, except it needed all new appliances since the previous owners took them all when they got foreclosed on.

This one was the last house we saw that day.  This is the shot of the BEST feature of this property--the large metal carport and nice poured driveway.  The house, needless to say, was a cobbled together construction mess.

 

Another foreclosure with trash being thrown out in the front yard.

Except the backyard was 10 times worse! lol

If you look closely at that homemade "pond", there is a partial mannequin floating in it.....

Heck these people took the large bathtub with them.
I suppose they thought it would make a great base for their next homemade pond out back.....lolz

Daughter left us to go to work and we looked at a couple more properties, one of which was the most promising.
We called it quits for the day at dinner time and Hubs and I went to eat at a place the Daughter recommended which wasn't too far from the motel......

Shane's Seafood & Barbecue it's the Cajun thing to do.

Unfortunately Hubs didn't want to share a Crawfish Boil with me and I wasn't up to eating an entire disposable aluminum roasting pan full of mudbugs by myself so I settled for something else.......



And here is what my plate looked like when I was done.....

We HIGHLY recommend Shane's if you are ever in this area.  Good food and good prices.
Not big on atmosphere but who needs that when you are elbow deep in gator and crawfish. lol

Back to the hotel and we turned in early with full tummies.

Day 6 was more of the same--looking at more properties this time with Realtor #2.
She showed us nothing I'd want to live in, let alone have my kid live in.
Oh well.

After Daughter left us we got a call from Realtor #1 telling us about a new foreclosure, not even in the system yet.
So we made plans to go see that one with Daughter and her BF on Saturday morning, as well as the top contender Hubs and I had seen on Thursday.

This meant we were free the rest of the day so we ran some errands.

We ended up going to World Market.

Let me just say I had never been in one of these stores before and I LOVED the place!

We went in there because Daughter said they carried lots of microbrews and wines.
Hubs found a few regional/local beers to bring home.

 Ah, the taste of decaying Edwardian landed gentry.....

Strange name for a wine.  I hope it doesn't smell like wet dog!

I also found that they carry a wide selection of gourmet sodas and a wide variety of them came home with me, especially the root beer varieties......

There were many Mardi Gras type items here.....

As well as kitchy kitchenware and kitchenWEAR.......

Here are a couple more things that came home with me......

 These were intriguing mints.  While they didn't taste like anything but sugar they smelled of lavender and were heavenly.  I should keep a roll of these in my purse just for the fragrance.

Since we didn't get down to NOLA I brought this home and as soon as I remember to go buy some powdered sugar we'll be having beignets.

I "heart" World Markets selection of spices.  I got multiple large bags of this assortment of peppercorns for $3.99 each.  Beats paying through the nose for those little jars at the grocery store!

We finished off our day at Podnuh's.
(The U in "Podnuh's" and the N in "Where the Smoke Never Clears" is missing in the sign behind Hubs). 
If you can't tell from the slogan, it's a barbecue place down in Shreveport.
Lots of Roy Rogers memorabilia on the walls.

We give it a B+ for 'cue.....

And that closes out Day 5 & 6.

Day 7 coming up soon.


Sluggy

Adventures in House Shopping Louisiana Style!

Our vacation trip to Louisiana to visit our daughter turned into a vacation/house shopping trip.

I ended up with 2 realtors because the first one I contacted weeks in advance, never got back to me with the emails of possible homes to look at before we arrived.
Ok, she did finally email me 2 days before we left for the trip but I went ahead and found another realtor in the meantime.
Realtor #2 was a bit more responsive.

So in the end we got shown houses by 2 different realtors.
It was funny that even though we gave each one the SAME criteria on what we wanted to look at, between the two of them they only wanted to show us one house in common.
Each one interpreted our needs SO differently it amazed me.

We only had a rapport with one of them, the young and new agent.  She didn't try to show us things at the top or over our price range, as she hadn't learned that "game" yet.  Honest and not trying to upsell us....I liked that.

Realtor #1 showed us mostly foreclosures, Realtor #2 showed us no foreclosures.

#2 showed up a house being sold to settle an estate and 2 regular properties.  None of these were asking less than $65K and most were at or over $80K(the limit I had set for them). 

One of those 3 places had no oven, a nonexistent living room, 1 bath and 3 tiny bedrooms and the asking price was $80K. 

Another house was tiny and had a very small fenced in yard.  The houses in this neighborhood were VERY close together and each yard for as far as the eye could see had at least one dog in it's also fenced in backyard.  Many of these dogs looked to be "outside" dogs and all hell broke loose with barking when they saw us.  I looked at my daughter and said, "If you move here with your own dog who loves to bark at other dogs, you will never have a quiet moment!" lolz

The only even acceptable house #2 showed us was the estate settlement house.  The previous owner loved to garden and the yard was full of flowers and bushes and trees.  The backyard was fenced in and there was a back porch that had been closed in to make a bonus room. Ok, the walls were fake white wood......

  Nothing in the kitchen had been updated from when it was built circa 1970 and all the appliances(except the fridge) and sink were Harvest Gold.

While ugly those appliance probably would outlast that newish fridge.
The house seemed to have the original carpeting and smelled like your grandma. 8-)

This house was in a city neighborhood with sidewalks and street lights and was on a small lot.  It was near the Air Force Base which meant it would hold it's resale value or could be rented out.  Location meant it was WAY overpriced at $89K but it was the cheapest home for sale in the subdivision(others for sale at that time were asking up to $120K).

And the house next door looked like it was a crack den.....ok, maybe not but obviously it was a rental because the outside was a hot mess and all the window blinds looked like a pit bull had played with them....often.  ;-)

Shopping foreclosed homes is an adventure I have to say.
Many of these homes suffer from neglect(if you don't have the money to pay your mortgage, you certainly don't have the money either to fix things that are broken, right?).
And due to the anger by the ex-owners toward the bank holding their mortgage, many of the foreclosed properties suffer from vandalism by the occupants before they leave(as well as actual vandals who break into vacant homes and steal things like wiring and copper pipes and appliances).

Many foreclosures are in bad shape inside.....damage to walls and doors(holes and graffitti, sledgehammers taken to toilets and sinks, cement poured into drains to harden and make the plumbing nonoperational, mirrors and lights shattered, cabinets and/or cabinet doors ripped off, carpet and other flooring ripped up.
You name it, we saw it.

One property we visited, when we got there, the front door was wide open and a huge pile of what looked like cabinetry pieces and carpeting was piled on the front yard, and there was someone inside the house cleaning the rugs. 

 

He was hired by the bank that owned that house to clean it out and up so it was sort of clean(at least the carpeting was), but take a look at the backyard of this place.......

 Besides all the junk and tree stumps, the previous owners had dug a hole and filled it with water in an attempt to make a pond.

A duplex rabbit hutch next to a child's old plastic restaurant buffet table.  I wonder if Hasenpfeffer was ever on the menu?

And take note of the mannequin floating in the "pond".  I neglected to snap a shot of the main part of the backyard, or rather the GARBAGE DUMP that made up most of the backyard.  I counted 15 plastic coolers in various states of repair(ALL of them needing repair), along with every conceivable discarded household and yard item you could think of.   There was a burn pit with what remained of a metal/plastic desk chair someone had attempted to "dispose of" in an unsuitable manner.

Though I didn't get a shot of the garbage dump yard in whole, I did snap a quickie of this shack/shed in the backyard.  You can see some of the trash that littered the yard(along with a cooler or two).  Note the interesting "Louisiana Yard Art" on the shed.  The cross is made up of rusty circular saw blades if you can't make out that much detail.
Such panache, such flavor......

After viewing this yard, I can imagine what the inside of the house looked like BEFORE the bank cleaned it out!

The problem for buyers with a bank foreclosure is that the bank will come in and clean up the property(remove damaged parts)but they don't repair or replace anything(besides roofs or missing walls).  So you see a lot of houses missing flooring, doors, ceiling fans/lighting fixtures, etc.
And since they don't replace or fix anything inside, you know you'll have to spend, to varying degrees, to get any place livable again.

And the fun really comes in when you can't see what hasn't been replaced/repaired.
While some deficits are obvious, like this house where someone took the bathtub with them......

And less obvious was the house where they had taken parts of the HVAC system so that it was nonoperational and needed to be replaced.  While the house seemed like a good deal on the surface, this small detail made it a very expensive deal!

Then we saw a place that had potential, if the previous owners hadn't gone and tried to "remodel" it.
Instead of fixing the foundation/floors of the house, they had just covered it up by installing expensive finishes(fixtures, tile and tubs/sinks)in the bathroom)over the much bigger fundamental problems.  Nice finishes in the bathrooms.....but the floors were all tilted and because of adding tile floors, the doors on the bathrooms couldn't be closed.

This place had an odd building in the front yard(one of just many oddities of this property)......

At first we thought it was an elaborate child's playhouse, but it had electricity running to it and business type stickers on the front window, so we think a previous owner had some kind of workshop upstairs and sold something in the downstairs room.  It was in disrepair(the flooring was rotted through)so we couldn't even go inside it(plus the top room was locked).
I did think, with some repairs/modifications, it would make a really cool chicken house! lolz
It's just too bad the house was a cobbled together mess, the long driveway required at least $5K in repairs, and it had an algae-filled pond "mosquito breeding pool" out front that needed aeration work or draining.

Among all these horror stories, we did find a gem in the end, IF the inspection comes back clean.

Sluggy
 

Another Horrible Real Estate Outcome

Perusing Real Estate Listings led from one thing to another online until I happened upon this clip.

It seems very few have been able to avoid the downturn in the housing market.
Some stories are sad.
And then there are other stories like this one......

Sluggy  :-)