Hitting the Wall

My favorite "room" in the house - I do miss it

It happened so often during the process, you′d think I′d have gotten used to it.  But I tend to be a slow learner.

The first Wall Hitting experience transpired while in the rehabbing phase.  An altercation broke out between The Handyman and me.  As I wrote check after check, I grew angrier and angrier.  We knew he and The Painter were taking advantage of us to some degree, but felt powerless to stop it.

I confronted two of them (not very gracefully I might add) and The Handyman shot back with a reasonable defense.  I would try to recreate the conversation (if you want to call it such), but in all honesty, I don′t remember the words.

What I firmly recall is how I felt when it was all over.  Miserable.  I′d blown it.  I′d taken all my frustrations over the project out on someone else.  In short, I had been a jerk.  On the way home that night, I picked up my phone, punched in his name, and apologized.  He said I had nothing to apologize for, but he was wrong.  The apology cleansed me, although didn′t excuse my behavior.

Things went well for a couple of weeks, and then we began to run out of money.  It forced us to “fire” The Painter and The Handyman.  I hugged each of them and thanked them as we said our goodbyes.  We parted on good terms.  And we even brought The Handyman and his Assistant back when we found ourselves incapable of doing some work later on.

My Wall Hitting continued.  Twice more I cracked when overtired, overworked, and fearful about the money we watched disappear faster than we could replace it.

Tears have been a source of relief for most of my life, and they flowed freely as I Hit the Wall again and again.

For Sale by Morons

Anyone who′s ever bought or sold a house can probably regale you with horror stories.  Somebody somewhere dropped the ball.  Professionals who were supposed to walk you through the sale failed in some major way.

Our case involved deficiency on both our part and the professionals.  We didn′t do our homework.  At least not fully.  And worse yet, we thought we knew a lot more than we did.  To top it off, we trusted someone we had no business trusting.  And in the end it bit us in the butt.

In my post entitled The Cost of Inexperience, I explain what a land trust is and is supposed to do, and how it didn′t work out in our case.  I won′t repeat myself here.  Suffice it to say, I Hit the Wall the day we got the message we had no rights to the property whatsoever.  It shocked us, threw us into a tailspin, and made us feel irresponsible.  Not a good place to land.

We recovered from the blow just long enough to get hit with the next one – the underwriters were unclear as to whether or not the sale could go through because it was considered a flip.  Apparently there′s a law stating properties used for investment purposes could not be sold as FHA homes.  Here we go again….

Educating the Title Companies and Underwriters

During a phone call, Andy′s brother mentioned he thought he′d heard the FHA had suspended the anti-flipping clause.  Andy checked it out and sure enough, his brother was correct.  (Amendment to anti-flipping rule)  We found it necessary to inform the title company and the underwriters on subjects we felt they already should know.  Still they deliberated for another week or two before making a decision.

Once they concluded the house could be approved for an FHA loan, the next bump in the road slammed into us.  Doug – the reluctant homeowner.

Because we didn′t own the house and had only been renting, albeit making major repairs during our tenancy, Doug had to sign the house over to us, so we, in turn, could sign it over to the new owners.  Pretty complicated, huh?  Back to – if only we’d been smarter about everything.

An Unbelievable and Idiotic Request

Although it benefited him and his wife, Doug balked.  He wanted to be sure it didn′t affect his taxes and then he started making noises about gaining some profit for himself.

It took us weeks of cajoling and juggling to finally get Doug and his second wife to sign the paperwork.  On the day Doug came up to the title company office to sign his portion, he stopped by the house before heading home.

The office - at the time of this event, the receipts sat on my computer tower to the right of my desk (the one you can see in the photo)

He and Andy conversed while I continued to pack.  Doug leaned against the window (Andy later mentioned he wreaked of alcohol), and said, “Do you happen to have any receipts of the work you did on the house I could use on my taxes?”

My jaw dropped.  I tightly gripped the glass object I was wrapping in plastic bags so as not to drop it too.

Andy didn′t miss a beat.  “I think they′re in storage,” he said.  In reality, they sat in a shoe box on my computer in the office, which Andy didn′t know it at the time.

I couldn′t believe the guy′s gall, but I had to admire it.

After he left, Andy looked at me and said, “I couldn′t look at you.  I was just praying you wouldn′t say anything.”

Honestly, I was too shocked to utter a word.  The guy knocked me right between the eyes with his audacity.

Counting Down the Days

As things began to fall into place; as we jumped each hurdle, climbed over each obstacle, we started believing we might actually find a way out of the mess we’d plunged into.  But we were careful not to count our chickens before they hatched.

We packed and cleaned and continued on as if the sale would go through.  What else could we do?  We had to trust in forces greater than us – things we couldn′t see or touch.  Just believe it would work out one way or another.

But what we couldn′t have known then was – the worst was yet to come.