Tips for First Time Home Buyers: Watch Out for Ancient Curses

“Location, location, location,” the potential home buyer is well-advised to take note of this maxim long-lived among real estate professionals.

But it is not the only thing to take under consideration in making this major purchase, almost certainly the most expensive one of your life.

Can you get some third party assessment of how the school district is? Are they well-funded, and are facilities up to date? Is the area well-served by public transit?

It is a touchy question, but can you really afford the place? Are you being swept up in the excitement of home ownership without taking a cool eyed look at the state of your bank balance?

It is no fun, many homeowners will tell you in confidential moments, to scrape together the mortgage payment month after month. The course of life is uncertain and incomes can rise and fall through the years. Just a word to the wise.

Consider too the history of the house.

Have there been a series of ax murders over the decades whereby innocent families, such as yourselves perhaps, have moved in and one member or another of this otherwise congenial family, falling under the spell of some mysterious malevolence, found nothing better to do on a slow Sunday afternoon than to chop the other members up?

Does this phenomenon recur and recur over the decades, as though replaying some ancient curse that must, according to a ghastly creed lost to history, follow its own grisly logic?

These are the types of things that a little research in the local library can turn up.

Chat with the neighbors about it if you see them out in their yards. Most are happy to talk!

Do they, in in the first few minutes of conversation, lower their voices and mutter darkly of unholy rituals that seem to occur with some regularity next door, at the very house that you are taking a stroll through and which is moving up the list of your own personal favorites?

Do they bring their hands to their faces like that fellow in the picture The Scream, and then do they start to scream?

Note that down in your little notebook that I recommend you carry. “Neighbors nice!”

Step back and take it all in, the unspeakable rites and the recurring series of ax murders and what not, and the experienced real estate professional may well tell you: let this one go.

Sure, the place has amazing curb appeal with those gorgeous trees, that wraparound front porch, the tire swing in back, and the many authentic touches of construction and decoration throughout the house, but the whole ‘replayed ancient curse’ thing is going to affect resale value, and may weigh upon individual members of the house, each according to their temperament.

The little lady, ordinarily so bright and chirpy, it’s her chief characteristic in fact, already seems to be getting a determined, even demented look in her eye when she hefts a stray hatchet left lying around in the tool shed out back, as though testing it for balance and follow through. The very tool shed that plays a big part in this bloody legend it occurs to you now.

No, all in all, best to let this one go.

There’s plenty of fine houses in this neck of the woods, in this very neighborhood in fact.

Just look at this one a few door down. The same honest construction, the same interior charm and exterior sturdiness, it puts the earlier house, the hatchet murder one, right out of mind.

The only problem with this one is seen as you round the corner to the back yard and note that there is what appears to be a team of archeologists hastily covering up their work with tarps immediately upon seeing you.

Upon questioning, your real estate professional notes that there is an ancient Sumerian dig underway here, right in the heart of stately suburbia, which surprises everyone, but there you go, complete with antique pottery, ancient tools, eerie primitive daubings on the wall, and, wouldn’t you know it, some sort of horrifying beast cast into bronze or some like metal that seems upon first introduction to be an ancient unholy demi-god type of fellow.

“I wasn’t sure whether to show you this one,” explains your real estate professional, “but I am assured that no actual curse has of yet been leveled upon the house, and almost certainly all the paranormal activity that has been evident around here since the dig began will come to a close once they move on and close up the site. Almost certainly.”

Well, again, why take a chance?

Of course the place is lovely and otherwise just about meets your list of what you want in a house: roominess, four bedrooms, three baths, a downstairs that can be transformed with some squares of carpeting and a plug-in Papst beer sign on the wall that seems to show a waterfall in a sylvan setting constantly falling, good drainage, a pleasing color scheme.

Still, patience is your friend in these matters; there are hundreds of houses on the market, why get your mind fixed on this one alone?

Whatever the initial appeal of the house, don’t be too quick to whip out the checkbook and write the down payment.

It is easy to be carried away by emotion at this stage of the game but keep a cool head and keep your eyes open.

Keep looking at other houses and take notes on each. Do the walls drip, or ‘weep’ blood? This is a turnoff when entertaining and could eventually grow tiresome.

Is there a walled-up section of the basement that, upon casual inspection, seems to be a Gate into Hell or, alternately, the type of cozy hideaway that someone got walled up into some time ago as an example of someone else’s taste for bloody revenge?

Check along the floorboards and where the walls meet for cracks and evidence of settling. If you buy, write into the contract a foundation inspection. This is not something that you want to be saddled with, foundations can be terribly expensive to bring back into align.

Oh, and if you see a detached hand, somehow or other entirely separated from its body, scuttling along the floor as if driven by an ancient impulse to bring death to everyone in the house, again, steer clear, I say at least. Who needs that kind of trouble?

Well, the same goes for any laboratories hidden away behind secret doors which reveal a pleasing sense of organization, for the jars are neatly labeled ‘eyeballs,’ ‘spleens,’ ‘brains,’ and so on, but which otherwise seems to hint at an unhealthy obsession with piecing life together from the spare parts of other people, some of whom may or may not have entered into negotiations willingly.

Old touches such as dumbwaiters between the floors can be perfectly charming, but if now and again the hostess who opens the door to the dumbwaiter on the upper story expecting to find a new bucket of ice or a platter of artfully cut limes and lemons and instead finds a severed head on the platter staring dreadfully out at her, well this could be enough to put a damper on even the cheeriest cocktail party.

Ditto on plumbing that seems to reveal a ‘knocking’ in the piping, is slow to fill the hot water heater, or which spews hot and cold running blood in the kitchen sink. These kind of small details can be burdensome to the homeowner over time. Who needs it? I say again.

Finally, explore the history of the property’s real estate transactions. If the home has been on the market for a century or more, this too can be a signal to the potential buyer that something is amiss.

It’s the small things than can make or break the successful home ownership experience, so by all means explore the construction of the windows, the remaining time on the warranties of the appliances, and the proper insulation in the attic, but likewise, don’t overlook the details like an unholy ‘beast thing’ rolling its ‘ghastly head’ down the upper hallway each night, all the while ‘gibbering’ and ‘shrieking.” Perhaps ‘slavering’ as well.

Best, as I have been suggesting, all in all, to give a pass on these kinds of properties.