Thursday, January 08, 2004
I'm having one of those disconnected days. I got called out on Tues. night at 10pm to fly up to Vegas and then all night to Newark, NJ. You know..."The Garden State!" That is...If your garden is full of trash and rude, ignorant homeless people. Then I slept all day and woke up that evening to fly back. I got in at 2:30am this morning and just couldn't sleep much. The really bad news is that it may happen again tonight. I'm on reserve until 2am. My fingers are crossed.
My buddy Mike made me realize that it is time for the next installment of the house saga so ...
The House Chapter 2:
We left off at the offer for the house. The first one was rejected. (It really was pitifully low) The second was accepted and the date was set to close...Dec 1st! This was going to be great. We start making plans for remodeling and painting and horses and workshops and taxiways and building a second story and a third and floors made of Brazilian mahogany with gold inlay and a wet bar with a bartender and a maid and a gesha...and then we didn't win the lottery so...back to the story. The first hitch was the fact that the bank had a problem with the floors. You see, there weren't any. Just a concrete slab. We were told that there was a buyer before us and that he wanted the floors stripped because he was going to put in new ones and then the deal fell through. We think what really happened is that the carpet was soaked in blood from some drug deal gone bad and a vicious fire fight ensued leading to a massacre. But who knows. Well, apparently the underwriter doesn't consider it a complete house without floor covering so we learned what a "hold back" is. That's when you get a loan for a bit more than the cost of the house and have thirty days or so, after close, to get carpeting put in. Then they release the funds to you so that you can pay for the carpet that you have already paid for. (Gee, I sure could have used that money when I was paying for the friggen' carpet!) So that problem is solved. Sort of. You see we are going to put in hardwood floors ourselves, but we can't do it in thirty days. So, this is really crappy carpeting that will be torn up in a matter of months so we can put down the hardwood.
Lets move forward a few weeks. Nov. 23rd. We drive by the property a week before close to see if the sea of derelict vehicles belonging to these yokels who own the house have been removed as per our contract. We turn the corner and my jaw drops. Lorna didn't see it at first. The horse corral is all but gone. Only the sides of the stalls remain. The roof, gates and panels are gone! I go off the scale and at that point, probably shouldn't be driving. Once my voiced lowered to a frequency that humans could hear, I told Lorna to call the real estate people...The Deal Is OFF as far as I was concerned.
Now, we need some background here. The couple that owns the house are in trouble and are getting divorced. He has moved to a new house with the kids. She is living in the house on a mattress with a cat that she is not taking care of. There is a full litter pan with no signs of being cleaned and trash stretching all over the place. I saw her one day and she was disgusting. She's from Texas and really needs to go back. Well, to spite her husband and to get cash for whatever...She sold the corral behind his back! Our Realtor said that he told her that if this was a deal breaker, he was going to kill his wife...and he wasn't speaking figuratively. After some phone calls it was settled that he would get it back and reassemble it prior to close. By the way, the cars were still on the property.
Dec. 1 rolled around and with excitement in our hearts, we pulled up in front of the house and, of course, the corral was still missing and the cars were still there. Our Realtor was out of town so the owner of the agency was coming to do the closing. The wife was supposed to be there to sign papers but was nowhere in sight. Things were not looking good. The Realtor shower up and, with the restraint of a priest that is not having sex with small boys, I said..."We're not closing today!" She had no idea that anything was wrong so I spent a few minutes explaining things to her with very small words that she could understand. She fired up her cell phone and went to work. The results were:
The vehicles were being removed that day by some charity except for the fifth wheel trailer which he needs two weeks to remove because his truck blew up.
His wife wasn't there because she is in the hospital for "mental" reasons. They're not even sure she's competent to sign legal documents.
The stall will be back but he needs a week or so.
Our Realtor, who told us that she wouldn't be there because of some tests, was in Hawaii. Unless she is undergoing tests for a sever allergy to poi and BBQ pork, she is a major slacker.
The resolution...Another Hold back! $2,000 of the purchase price would be held back until the 15th at which time if the corral was not returned, we would get the money. (It never did come back but the fifth wheel trailer did disappear one day). We closed three days later on Thurs. the 4th.
But things were far from over...more later.
My buddy Mike made me realize that it is time for the next installment of the house saga so ...
The House Chapter 2:
We left off at the offer for the house. The first one was rejected. (It really was pitifully low) The second was accepted and the date was set to close...Dec 1st! This was going to be great. We start making plans for remodeling and painting and horses and workshops and taxiways and building a second story and a third and floors made of Brazilian mahogany with gold inlay and a wet bar with a bartender and a maid and a gesha...and then we didn't win the lottery so...back to the story. The first hitch was the fact that the bank had a problem with the floors. You see, there weren't any. Just a concrete slab. We were told that there was a buyer before us and that he wanted the floors stripped because he was going to put in new ones and then the deal fell through. We think what really happened is that the carpet was soaked in blood from some drug deal gone bad and a vicious fire fight ensued leading to a massacre. But who knows. Well, apparently the underwriter doesn't consider it a complete house without floor covering so we learned what a "hold back" is. That's when you get a loan for a bit more than the cost of the house and have thirty days or so, after close, to get carpeting put in. Then they release the funds to you so that you can pay for the carpet that you have already paid for. (Gee, I sure could have used that money when I was paying for the friggen' carpet!) So that problem is solved. Sort of. You see we are going to put in hardwood floors ourselves, but we can't do it in thirty days. So, this is really crappy carpeting that will be torn up in a matter of months so we can put down the hardwood.
Lets move forward a few weeks. Nov. 23rd. We drive by the property a week before close to see if the sea of derelict vehicles belonging to these yokels who own the house have been removed as per our contract. We turn the corner and my jaw drops. Lorna didn't see it at first. The horse corral is all but gone. Only the sides of the stalls remain. The roof, gates and panels are gone! I go off the scale and at that point, probably shouldn't be driving. Once my voiced lowered to a frequency that humans could hear, I told Lorna to call the real estate people...The Deal Is OFF as far as I was concerned.
Now, we need some background here. The couple that owns the house are in trouble and are getting divorced. He has moved to a new house with the kids. She is living in the house on a mattress with a cat that she is not taking care of. There is a full litter pan with no signs of being cleaned and trash stretching all over the place. I saw her one day and she was disgusting. She's from Texas and really needs to go back. Well, to spite her husband and to get cash for whatever...She sold the corral behind his back! Our Realtor said that he told her that if this was a deal breaker, he was going to kill his wife...and he wasn't speaking figuratively. After some phone calls it was settled that he would get it back and reassemble it prior to close. By the way, the cars were still on the property.
Dec. 1 rolled around and with excitement in our hearts, we pulled up in front of the house and, of course, the corral was still missing and the cars were still there. Our Realtor was out of town so the owner of the agency was coming to do the closing. The wife was supposed to be there to sign papers but was nowhere in sight. Things were not looking good. The Realtor shower up and, with the restraint of a priest that is not having sex with small boys, I said..."We're not closing today!" She had no idea that anything was wrong so I spent a few minutes explaining things to her with very small words that she could understand. She fired up her cell phone and went to work. The results were:
The vehicles were being removed that day by some charity except for the fifth wheel trailer which he needs two weeks to remove because his truck blew up.
His wife wasn't there because she is in the hospital for "mental" reasons. They're not even sure she's competent to sign legal documents.
The stall will be back but he needs a week or so.
Our Realtor, who told us that she wouldn't be there because of some tests, was in Hawaii. Unless she is undergoing tests for a sever allergy to poi and BBQ pork, she is a major slacker.
The resolution...Another Hold back! $2,000 of the purchase price would be held back until the 15th at which time if the corral was not returned, we would get the money. (It never did come back but the fifth wheel trailer did disappear one day). We closed three days later on Thurs. the 4th.
But things were far from over...more later.
// posted by Chris @ Thursday, January 08, 2004
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