Love's Real Stories

Hot Time

Summertime heat in the North Valley can be vicious. Especially for people from the Bay Area accustomed to cool breezes by day and cold fog at night.

Jack and Mary Quince, a Bay Area couple, met me at my office one July morning to tour country property. The weatherman predicted temperatures of 105 to 108 degrees.

“Let’s go,” said John, “we have miles to go, right?”

We walked together toward my car in the parking lot and I noticed a station-wagon with a wire cage screening the open back window. A Golden Retriever stared anxiously at us through the mesh.

“That’s Rollie,” said Jack. “It’s okay if we leave him here, right?”

“Uhh…” I said.

A car zipped into the parking lot, made a snappy stop-and –reverse, and slipped backwards into the parking space next to my car.

My wily old mentor, KDV, popped out of the car.

“Morning, babe,” he said.

I made introductions and told KDV I was taking the Quinces out to see country properties.

“Ah. What fools these mortals be,” said KDV. “You do realize it will be so hot today the chickens will be laying hard-boiled eggs? It will be hotter than a two-dollar pistol, my friends.”

Jack and Mary laughed tentatively.

“But take heed!” said KDV. “After the sun goes down, my friends, it’s a midsummer night’s dream.”

KDV nodded toward the station wagon and asked Jack and Mary, “Is that your Retriever?”

Jack told him of the plan to leave Rollie.

“Only if you want to come back and find Rollie cooked like a rotisserie chicken,” said KDV. “In two hours that car will be hotter than Satan’s basement.”

“Let’s just take our car, then,” said Mary.

Four hours later we rolled back into the parking lot in the non-air-conditioned station wagon. The property tour was like a trip through a blast furnace. Jack and Mary sat slouched and wilted. Rollie was a limp rag. I said my good-byes and staggered off with no expectation of seeing them again.

Four days later, to my surprise, Jack and Mary bought a country property.

Forty days later, we closed the sale. I made an evening visit to their new place.

“It was a hot one today,” I said.

“Yes,” said Mary, “but tonight it’s a midsummer night’s dream.”

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June 19, 2014

Pros

My fixer-upper buyers, Brad, Bob, and Bill crawled over, under, around and through a 1920’s “handyman’s dream,” a two-story house they were in the process of buying. Today was inspection day, and as fate would have it, the hottest day of the year.

I leaned against a side fence in the shade, perspiring and panting after helping Bill raise his extension ladder to the attic access door up in the gable end of the weathered old house.

A voice from behind me said, “I hope those boys know what they’re doin’ buyin’ that old piece of junk.”

With effort, I turned around, wiped the sweat from my eyes, and looked over the fence to see a large man wearing cut-off jeans, work boots and a Caterpillar cap.

“Oh, they know what they’re doing. These guys are pros,” I said.

“Then they’ll know better than to turn the power on before they .…“ Blam! An electrical explosion that sounded like a lightning strike came from the direction of the garage at the back of the property. “…check for rusted fuses and loose electrical wires.”

Sparks shot from a frayed old electrical wire draped across the metal garage roof.

Bob ran out the back door yelling “Kill the juice! Kill the juice!” Bill poked his head out the attic access door like a turtle, with pink bits of insulation stuck in his hair. Brad ran around yelling “Where’s the power box? Where’s the power box?”

The big man in the Caterpillar cap appeared on the scene, striding purposefully to the sidewall of the fixer-upper. He calmly found the power box, and killed the juice.

“Pros, huh?” he muttered.

Three hours later, inspection day was ending. Bob, Brad, and Bill staggered out of the house dirty, streaked with sweat, and overheated.

“One last thing,” said Bob. He turned on the swamp cooler mounted on the front wall of the house. It vibrated and squealed and tumbled off the front wall of the house like a dropped safe. Its waterline snapped creating a great fountain arching over the front yard, cascading down like a waterfall.

The big man in the Caterpillar cap appeared again, rolling by in his pickup truck just in time to see Bob, Brad, Bill, and me whooping and jumping about in the spray shooting from the wall of the house. The big man slowly shook his head.

If I read his lips right, he muttered, “Pros, huh?”

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June 5, 2014

Air Force

Two laws that govern the movements of objects inside houses are important to learn.

Law Number One: “If you slam the front door of a house with sufficient force, it will cause the interior walls of that house to vibrate to the extent that a shelf as far away as 24 feet from the point of impact will eject a vase from its surface and send it crashing to the floor below.”

Law Number Two:: “If all the windows and doors in an air-tight house are closed, and you turn on the whole-house fan, and if that whole-house fan is of sufficient size and capacity, it will cause an air suction of such force so as to cause ashes from within a fireplace to be instantly sucked out through the fireplace opening with the appearance of confetti shot from a cannon. A 12-foot radius of flooring in front of the fireplace opening will acquire an ashy-gray hue similar to the surface of the moon.”

I learned of the two aforementioned laws one afternoon while showing a house to my clients Bob and Denise Carlson, and more importantly, their eight-year-old son Mason.

Bob and I stood in the hallway of the house admiring the whole-house fan built into the ceiling. I had never seen one so big and Bob had never seen one at all.

“A whole-house fan,” I said, “is designed to pull stale warm air out of your house. When the outside temperature cools in the evening, you open a few windows, turn on the fan, and it pulls fresh outside air into the house quickly.”

Mason raced around the house opening and closing doors and flipping wall switches on and off. Neither Bob nor Denise showed any concern or any interest in controlling the curious and energetic child.

Mason went outside and rang the doorbell at least 47 times, then slammed the front door, a big heavy oaken mass, with enough force to enact Law Number Two.

A vase wobbled and tumbled off a shelf on the wall beside the fireplace. But the carpet below was thick, plush, and the whitest of white, and cushioned the fall. The vase remained intact.

It was then that Mason found the wall switch for the whole-house fan. I noticed that Mason had opened the glass doors to the fireplace and I was just about to close them, when Law Number Two was enacted.

I forgot to mention in my description of Law Number Two that any objects within the 12-foot radius of the fireplace will also acquire an ashy-gray hue similar to the surface of the moon.

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May 22, 2014

Out of the Shadows

A “shadow inventory” of new buyers is infiltrating the real estate market.

This “shadow inventory” of buyers is made up of people who lost their homes through distress sales, such as foreclosures or short sales, and are ready to jump back into homeownership. These buyers have worked hard to get back on their real estate feet, but they are also lucky. New loan programs have sprung up recently, allowing them to qualify to buy again, despite the heavy hit they took on their credit when they lost their homes.

Traditionally, if you lost your home through foreclosure your credit would suffer enough damage that you couldn’t qualify for a real estate loan for up to seven years afterward. A short sale would set you back at least three years. If you also declared bankruptcy, your credit damage was that much worse.

Now lenders are giving new consideration to distress-related credit damage. The hard times in the Great Recession were so bad, and so many people lost their jobs and their homes, that lenders have created new loan programs to accelerate their re-entry into the market.

FHA launched the “Back-to-Work-Extenuating Circumstances” loan program which cuts the waiting period for loan-qualifying down to one year after a foreclosure, a bankruptcy or a short sale. The borrower has to prove that they suffered a 20 per cent drop in income for six consecutive months due to job loss or another economic event, and they must have 12 months of on-time rent payments.

Sean and Anita Burkes recently bought a new home through the FHA Back-to-Work-Extenuating Circumstances loan program.

“It’s a great program,” said Anita, “but it’s not easy.” She made hair-pulling motions as she described the amount of paperwork involved in getting the loan. Then she held her hand two feet above the table top. “A stack this high,” she said.

Sean laughed. “The only worse paperwork nightmare I’ve seen was our short sale when we lost our house a year and a half ago,” he said. He held his hand as high as he could reach above the table. “A stack this high,” he said.

“We’re so thankful, though,” said Anita. “We were really down and out. But Sean got a new job, and now we own our new home. It feels good that a lender will take a chance on us again.”

Sean nodded. “And it feels good to come out of the shadows.”

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May 15, 2014

The Czar

I could have saved us all millions of dollars if I had been appointed the Real Estate Czar of the United States, if only there really was such a position as the Real Estate Czar of the United States (RECUS).

If I were RECUS, I would be in charge of all the banks and I would compel them to handle their foreclosures and short sales the right way, instead of their way, which is inept and idiotic, and causes people to shake their heads, pull their hair out, and blow their tops.

The President of the United States (POTUS) should have appointed me RECUS when it was needed the most, back in 2006 when the housing bubble burst and the Great Recession was on the horizon.

My first act as RECUS would have been to notify every bank that I am in charge of all sales; that I have direct access to POTUS and therefore, all bank bailout funds. Then I would have issued the following directive:

“RECUS’ New Short Sale and Foreclosure Rules”

Banks may no longer refuse a short sale for no good reason. If in RECUS’s opinion, the seller has a legitimate hardship necessitating a short sale, and the price offered by the buyer is Fair Market Value, the bank must approve the sale.
For every short sale refusal for no good reason, RECUS will direct POTUS to subtract $10,000,000 from the bank’s bailout money (BOM).

Banks may no longer demand 40 pounds of paperwork to be submitted “for the bank’s sole perusal in settling the aforementioned sale” and then claim “non-receipt of the aforementioned documentation”.
For every pound of paper required by the bank over one single pound, RECUS will direct POTUS to subtract $10,000,000 from the bank’s BOM.
Additionally, the bank will be charged $1,000,000 for every use of the word “aforementioned” more than once.

Banks may no longer refuse a short sale, then foreclose on the property, and subsequently sell the property for less than the short sale price the bank had in hand in the first place. For every dollar less than the original offered price the bank accepts, RECUS will direct POTUS to subtract $10,000,000 from the bank’s BOM.
Additionally, if the property deteriorates during the bank’s ownership after foreclosing, $10,000,000 will be subtracted from the bank’s BOM for every dollar needed to bring the property back to the same condition in which the bank received it.

Actually, I wouldn’t have saved us millions; make that billions.

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