Still Not Thinking about Selling

They are at it again,  Last week someone from Muffley & /Associates "Land Acquisition Team" left handwritten (but probably not written by the signer) at Lynsley's house and at ours, and I think he also talked to Kathy.  Here is Lynsley's card:

And here's ours:

The text of the two is nearly but not quite identical.  Here is ours:

Dear Neighbor,

I have a lovely young couple who absolutely loves [sic] your street.  They have asked me to reach out to you about your house specifically. They are ready to pay a premium for a special place to call home!  They want to know if you are interested in selling?  Please call me when you recieve [sic] this so we can discuss a price that may interest you!

Thank you, 

Jarrett Reeves [initialed "JR", followed by a phone number]

This is frustrating on so many levels.  There is the fake familiarity of "Dear Neighbor," and the "lovely young couple who absolutely love your street."  There's the implication that this lovely young couple is "specifically" interested in our house (as well as Kathy's and Lynsley's and who knows how many others), no doubt because our houses are so nice -- or maybe because they think they are teardowns, which most of us find pretty offensive.

Of course, if there really was a "lovely young couple" who wanted to live on our street, there's Danielle's house, that's been on the market for a while now.  

There's the lot where the duplex used to be, that is now home to random construction debris and a swamp.  There's the other duplex, on the corner at Cumberland, where a builder got a variance to build "an English country cottage-style home" but nothing has happened yet.  If you're interested, though, here's what they say it will look like, after they cut down the trees and build it:

And most famously, there is the site where the apartments used to be, where the city had to approve building three houses on two lots because they made a mistake on a planning map maybe ten years ago and the property was purchased based on that planning map.  Nothing has happened for years there, except damaging trees and periodic stop work orders because of tree damage and erosion.

Periodically signs for real estate companies or developers appear there, but nothing has happened.  Recently new, very large signs appeared, which may be the harbinger of new, very large houses to follow.  Or maybe not -- we'll see.

So, if there really is a "lovely young couple" who absolutely love our street, they have lots of options.  Those options do not include purchasing and demolishing Lynsley's, Kathy and Steve's, or our houses, though.  The Land Acquisition Team at Muffley and Associates may want to make note of that and save themselves some time.

One Year Later

The small brick duplex that used to be a few houses away from us was demolished a year ago yesterday.  The duplex had not been occupied since November 2013,  It was in the fall of 2014 that several large trees behind the duplex were cut down.  By March 2015 there was a dumpster in the driveway and a "For Sale" sign from Keller Williams and a Black Dawg Construction sign in the front yard.

It was demolished a year ago yesterday, on July 2, 2015.

By the next morning, there was just a pile of debris; in this picture, the trees that were cut down the previous year are still visible behind where the house used to be.

And here it is a couple of days later, after the heavy equipment was gone.

The debris got removed along with the remains of the trees that were cut down, but by fall there was a dumpster, a pile of rocks, and a trailer on the lot.

There also was a puddle at the low point of the back yard that never really went away.

By January 2016, the dumpster was gone, but otherwise nothing much had changed.

By early June, the trailer was gone and the grass and weeds had grown tall.

There still was a puddle in the back, maybe because there was an open drainage pipe.

 

These pictures were taken about two weeks later.  Someone had mowed the weeds, tidied up a little, and put the signs back up, but the rocks were still piled up near the mailbox.

Now, we're a year out from demolishing the house, and the lot is still a mess and there's still mud in the back yard, even though it's been a long time since it rained.

I don't know if or when this will ever get cleaned up, but if I were Black Dawg Construction or Keller Williams, I really wouldn't want to have my sign here.