A close friend and her husband tried to sell me their in laws house in a private sale because they needed the money for a nursing home and knew my husband and I were looking to buy. They warned me about condition before I saw it, but it was bad. They wanted to assessed value which I knew was absolutely too high. But the thing that got me was that I’d ask about the age of the hvac or the water heater or this or that and her husband would say “oh it’s brand new. I put it in when we bought the house!”

They bought the house when I was 9 years old. The roof, the hvac, the water heater, the sump pump, the ventilation all probably would need to be replaced in the next few years.

It was an incredibly kind gesture to give me right of first refusal on this house, but I just couldn’t. Ultimately it appraised for about $50k then they tried to sell it to me for. We live in a hot market and I told them that they should just get an agent and they’d find a buyer for the as-is condition in no time. And they did get an agent and they found a buyer who went $10k over list (which was still ~$40 less than they offered it to me for).

They meant well. They really did. But people really will overestimate the value of the things they own, even if they mean well.