We looked at the house. It was tiny inside. Very, very tiny. But the lot wasn't. It was perfect. It was flat and deep and really, really, really on the sunny side of the street. I had dreams of building my dream home. Moving is torture for me--I don't every want to do it again, but every few years that spot at the top of my stomach starts quietly talking 'start packing' and within a year, I'm gone. In fact, I'm right there now. I don't have any immediate plans to move, but I've started collecting boxes. I've been here for just about four years and it's time to go. I don't have an emotional attachment to this house; but I should; or maybe Elmer ruined it for me for all time...but I'll get to that point later in this story.
Rodney and I went under contract to buy the house. I was working with the woman who lived there with her developmentally disabled daughter. Rodney was working with the husband who had left her and moved on to both a white picket fence and a woman who wore white (she was a nurse) in Princeton.
And that was when the torture began. Right after contracts were signed Rodney thought he'd like to screw me out of the deal. He asked me to drop the signed contracts off to his car; and then he asked me for ten thousand dollars payable to his business to get the contracts back. Nice friend. Luckily, I'm always looking for the loopholes and although I was as green as grass to the real estate investing world, I found my way out.
In NJ we have a three day right of rescission. I went to see her attorney and told him what had happened. While I was sitting in his office, the phone rang and I saw his eyes get big looking at me. When he got off the phone, he said to me 'that was Rodney, he just told me that you were out of the deal--but since he just lied to me, I'm not working with him, I'm working with you.' Those first contracts were rescinded, new one's were drawn and my real education began.
I pulled title--it had to have been close to an inch thick. Anyone who could have had a lien on this property did. Child support, welfare, food stamps, motor vehicles, the county public defender's office--everyone. (Isn't the public defender's office supposed to defend you if you can't afford an attorney?) And every one of those liens needed to be handled before I could short sale the property. You can only imagine the warrants of satisfactions flying off of the fax machines--but I negotiated every bit of that outstanding debt. The negotiations came addressed to the word attorney next to my name. I didn't tell anyone that I was one, but I smiled thinking that they thought that I was. (It's a dream to head to law school. I could sit and read contracts all day long; find the loophole in, find the loophole out; write your contracts accordingly. No apologies; I like to win.) The worst of this deal was in the child support liens. One county kept telling me it was transferred to the next. The next told me it was sent back to the first...round and round it went until I made a phone call to a man that I know who actually owns the courthouse in one counties that the child support mandate was supposed to be in. It was Friday and the sale of the house was scheduled for Tuesday. He told me that he was in Georgia and couldn't directly help me, but that in every county there was 'an equity judge'. I thanked him; I knew exactly what he was talking about. I called the chancery division judge's secretary; she asked me how many cycles I needed. I told her one; she gave me three. Everything that needed to be was cleaned up in those six weeks.
When I went to the township and asked if there were any records of underground oil tanks; she pulled out a file on the property. I happened to notice the original plot map; it had the perc tests attached. I asked if she would be kind enough to make me a copy. She handed me the original telling me that 'it was old'. I walked out of there knowing that no one was buying that property but me. Not Rodney, not anyone at the courthouse, no one but me.
And then, I went back to my mentor Elmer and he told me that I HAD to flip the property. I HAD to sell it and all I thought was but, but, but...the flat lot on the sunny side of the street...my pool, my wrap around porch, my conservatory all gone? He said that I had to learn that a house was a commodity to be bought and sold like anything else and that if I didn't sell this one for a profit, I never would. Do you know that little voice that sits at the top of my stomach that whispers to me 'start packing' and my head always replies 'oh, shit'; well it was there talking to me.
I had to go drop off my car for an oil change or something and the little voice said go put a sign on the house. It wasn't on the list of things to do that morning so I looked around and all that I found was a piece of cardboard that came from the dry cleaners that I had a sweater wrapped around. At 7:30 a.m. the sign went up, by the time I came home at 8:10, there was a message on my answering machine with an offer to sign contracts at 5:30 p.m. I flipped that house in 40 minutes and made $35,000.00 on my first deal; but none of that really is the point of my telling you this story.
When the woman who invited me into her home to take pictures on that very first day knew that it was over and she was really leaving the house, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said to me 'I don't know what I'm going to do.' I smiled at her, and to use a current expression, I thought to myself 'I got this'. I told her that I knew what she was going to do and I told her to go get her pocketbook. The first thing she wanted was a pack of cigarettes. I bought them. Then I took her to food stamps, section 8 and social security. When it was all said and done she had over $2000.00 a month in income for her and her daughter. She said to me that everyone else was interested in how much they could get from her house; I was the only one who was interested in her. I told her that she might have lost her house, but she didn't loose me...that for the next year while she was working to get back onto her feet, if she needed me to call and for as much as I could, I'd help her figure it out.
That moment changed me. I knew that it was far better for me to be helping someone one on one who needed it--really needed it than to be working as a real estate agent...or really, as a spokes model for a blue home, or a yellow one; perhaps you'd like brick face.
I have what I call my brag book. Every homeowner that I was ever able to help even when there wasn't a dime in it for me--because I was able to save their house for them--not for me--everyone of them who had sent me a thank you note, I've saved them all. It reminds me of why I did that. Because for them, it wasn't a house. It was a home filled with the memories of birthday parties and Christmas eve. Of roasts in the oven and the smell of freshly cut grass. It was lemonade on the porch and the sound of crickets at night. That's what I keep searching for, for myself; a place and a man that feels like home.
And that guy who curled my collar and told me to cover up was perfect for me. He's not my opposite; he's just like me and perhaps that was why he didn't feel the magnetic pull that I did then; and still do.
By the way, the house was flipped once again and a gigantic house was built on that lot. It was someone else's dream house built from scratch. A few days ago I happened to notice that a house--just two doors down from my first deal is for sale. It's vacant; it's a short sale...same size lot on the sunny side of the street...yeah, there's a part of me that's thinking about it....
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