Re: Inspections
Early in September we visited friends who had just moved to TV; we were on our way to a trade show in Orlando. Fell in love with the place and the concept (they say 'don't drink the water,' but we heard it too late...) and immediately hooked up with a Villages salesperson (very decent guy), ran around looking at FSBOs as well, and tooled around in our friends' golf cart checking our neighborhoods/villages.
In the next few weeks we researched and learned the ropes; we came back in October with a day lined up with our Villages salesperson, another day with an MLS salesperson, and a day of further checking our areas and FSBOs.
Then our friends took us to their neighbors two houses from them who were anxious to sell (and these people DID have their house listed with TV but we saw it through our friends, not the salesperson), and we ended up buying directly. The communication between us and the sellers went very well; the four of us drove together to the closing! In fact, though we don't recommend this and it just happened to happen in our situation, things that the sellers promised to do before the closing never got done; at the closing they told us to give them the bills 'after the fact,' and so far they've paid them with no problem.
With some sellers (and I should add some buyers...) it's better to have a real estate person do the communicating; we happened to be fortunate. Good luck!
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