Poconos Victorian
As mentioned in the previous post, I expanded my search outside of Wildwood due to frustration with not being able to close on a house there. In the NJ/NYC area, most of the Jersey Shore has been tapped out for cheap Victorians - either torn down or super-expensive. I then started browsing through http://circaoldhouses.com/ for houses in Pennsylvania and New York state, and saw an amazing Victorian over in Stroudsburg, PA. The house was a Queen Anne built in 1896 and listed for 209K.
It's got the witch's hat so it's got to be good.
I've been to Stroudsburg a few times before and it's a small town in the Poconos with a decent main street and close to the Delaware Water Gap. We got to see the house and it was in amazing condition. It needed some minor work on the roof and landscaping, but for the most part it was move-in ready. The realtor said the house had been on the market for over a year and the sellers would be willing to negotiate on price. Also nice was the house was in a Historic District so the entire neighborhood had a nice feel with old homes compared to Wildwood getting torn up with shit condos.
We visited some local antique stores and we were able to actually find postcards from the early 1900s with the house on it. Besides the negative of not being a seashore home, this place seemed like a perfect Victorian to get and the price was cheaper than most houses in Wildwood. I told the realtor that we were interested in the house but wanted to check out a few other locations before considering an offer.
Built-ins, wallpaper, woodwork, wood floors, radiators, all the good stuff.
Look at the detail on a simple thing like the door's strike plate.
A couple of weeks passed and we decided to make a return visit to Stroudsburg for a 2nd visit and if everything looked good on a 2nd glance, put in an offer. That's when the old house owner craziness started to take hold. First, I received a call from the realtor that the sellers were thinking of taking the home off the market because they were unhappy with all of the lowball offers they were receiving. She wanted to give me a heads up in case we wanted to make an offer. We got back to her and said we were interested and wouldn't submit a lowball offer, but wanted to see the house again. From that point on, things got weirder. The agent tried to set up a 2nd visit, but she said the sellers were having a temper tantrum and had removed the lockbox from the house. They didn't want to let us in to see the house a 2nd time.
We made a 2nd trip up to Stroudsburg and looked at the house from the outside and while it still looked great, I got gun-shy about proceeding with an offer since I didn't want to engage with another insane seller. Strangely, the agent never called us back to follow up with the house after I walked away from it.
