So, as some of you know, my husband and I are looking for a house to buy. We found one that we liked quite a lot, but it is a 2 story with a very open living room (the second story is only over about half of the house, so the loft on the second floor overlooks the living room and the ceiling in the living room is very high) and we were afraid the utility bills would be rather more expensive than we wanted to pay. Especially in the summer, since we're located in the middle of Texas and it gets quite toasty down here (it was over 100 degrees F for something like 54 days straight this summer.)
So, we asked our realtor if it would be possible for her to get the average utility bill costs for the place in the summer and the winter. It took her about a week to do so; she said she contacted the seller's realtor, who tried to contact the seller, but the seller was out of the country or something and couldn't get them for us right away. Okay, fine, we're in no rush.
Well, the seller's realtor just emailed us with the response: Averages are $70 in the winter, $90 in the summer.
This floored us. We were expecting twice that, at the very least. The house in question is 1651 square feet, more than double the size of the apartment we're living in now (800 square feet) and our utility bill in the summer is usually around $100-$120. Now, granted, this apartment complex is pretty old, I think it was built in the 80s and I don't know how much, if any, improvements to sealing/insulation have been done since then. The house was built in 2005 so it's probably much better insulated than our apartment. Plus, our apartment is an upper which is always warmer than a lower especially in the summer. Plus, my husband has a lot of computer equipment that he runs constantly (4 computers (one of them being mine) and a server, at the very least, run pretty much 24/7.)
So...questions...is it possible the seller's realtor fudged the utility bill numbers to help persuade us to buy the house? He's told our realtor twice now that they really want an offer, any offer. Is there any way we can somehow verify the numbers he gave us? It just really seems almost too good to be true, but if those numbers are fairy accurate, we're seriously going to consider putting an offer on this place.
So, we asked our realtor if it would be possible for her to get the average utility bill costs for the place in the summer and the winter. It took her about a week to do so; she said she contacted the seller's realtor, who tried to contact the seller, but the seller was out of the country or something and couldn't get them for us right away. Okay, fine, we're in no rush.
Well, the seller's realtor just emailed us with the response: Averages are $70 in the winter, $90 in the summer.
This floored us. We were expecting twice that, at the very least. The house in question is 1651 square feet, more than double the size of the apartment we're living in now (800 square feet) and our utility bill in the summer is usually around $100-$120. Now, granted, this apartment complex is pretty old, I think it was built in the 80s and I don't know how much, if any, improvements to sealing/insulation have been done since then. The house was built in 2005 so it's probably much better insulated than our apartment. Plus, our apartment is an upper which is always warmer than a lower especially in the summer. Plus, my husband has a lot of computer equipment that he runs constantly (4 computers (one of them being mine) and a server, at the very least, run pretty much 24/7.)
So...questions...is it possible the seller's realtor fudged the utility bill numbers to help persuade us to buy the house? He's told our realtor twice now that they really want an offer, any offer. Is there any way we can somehow verify the numbers he gave us? It just really seems almost too good to be true, but if those numbers are fairy accurate, we're seriously going to consider putting an offer on this place.
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