Not long after hurricane Katrina I told my wife, “get in the car, were going to go buy a house.” She had this puzzled look on her face like I must have either be joking or had lost my mind. I took her down the street one block and showed her this house that had been all but destroyed by the hurricane. A huge pine tree had cut the house right in half. The people that owned the house had just let it sit that way and had done little to protect the house from the elements since the day of the hurricane. Of course they had moved out of the house and I guess it was some what out of sight and out of mind.
I found out who owned the house from some workers that were working next door and had given the owners a price on what it would take to put the house back to gather. I called to people and they said it would be fine if I went in the house and looked around. This is what I saw.
As you can see, it was going to take a little more than some tender loving care.
We talked it over and decided to make the people an offer. The house sits on a corner lot in a very nice neighborhood and we felt that $40,000 was a fair offer. We called them up and made the offer and they said that they would talk it over and get back to us.
A day went by before we heard back from them and when we did they said that if we weren’t going to just flip it that they would accept the offer. We assured them that our intentions were to fix it up and make it our home.
Keep in mind, Hurricane Katrina was in August of 2005. It was March of 2006 before we made the offer.
Thus, we bought the farm.
Tags: Hattiesburg, Huricane Katrina
