I have struck a deal on a little house to use as a winter getaway, a snowbird place. The seller wants to save money by not using a realtor, and I'm OK with that. She's a little old lady (as am I) and she really had no idea of how to proceed past putting up a for sale sign, so I have been doing the paperwork. We're working with a title agency, have sent in paperwork, and are due to close on March 10. We are in CA and MT, the property is in a small town in AZ, and the closing agency is in AZ. I had an inspection done and there were a few small issues, mostly electrical, but nothing that was a deal breaker and there was nothing that I was going to ask her to fix.

In conversation with the seller, I found out that apparently when the inspection was being done the neighbor's friend (call him NF) was present. NF, a handyman or contractor or something, had previously done a bunch of work on the house to get it ready to sell... paint, new windows, new flooring. It looks nice. So NF and inspector have a conversation about what issues are in the house, and I guess NF has "fixed" some of the smaller stuff, loose outlets, and I don't know what all. Also on inspectors advice NF cut wires to the doorbell and capped them off, "insurance thing" was what the seller told me, she's a talker...I have no clue what that could be about.

So anyway, now I don't have a high level of comfort that I know what's going on with the condition of the house, live across the country, and am not sure if I'm overreacting and getting weirded out over nothing. I had looked the house over pretty well when I was in AZ a couple of weeks ago, and I know it's a small town where everything is pretty casual and everybody knows everybody.. Does anyone have an opinion, would you be concerned or would you just figure that NF is just trying to help his friend out? I had already told the seller that I was going to accept the house in it's current condition, and then found out that the condition may have changed....for the better?... or hiding something?