Adventures in Flipping (and “momming”)

So here on the blog, you may have noticed I don’t get into too much of the nitty-gritty behind my flipping transactions. I really just focus on the design and transformation. But every house seems to have its own story and hiccups. The Angler was certainly no different. But first, a little backstory, and a huge digression…

I’ve been a little haywire lately. I’m trying to finish up my hallway refresh because… it’s the hallway… on the first floor. I’m so tired of walking over drop cloths and around ladders and knocking over pieces of trim delicately leaning against the wall. My hands have been covered in spackle, caulk and paint for the past week and a half, which makes child requests uber difficult to fulfill. The bigger issue is that it’s not just one project; it’s a bunch of little projects wrapped into one. And I can’t get one single one completed! All these to-do’s hanging over my head make me batty. Add on top of that the dishes and general state of the house as I push on to get just one project done, and I’m totally edgy. In the meantime, I’m planning out future projects I can’t wait to jump into, and I can feel spring pressure coming on. The what now seems to be hectic time of year when I’m trying to get landscaping done in an often futile effort to fix issues in our yard and make it feel nice out there.

Granted, I don’t think I can blame that for me being… well… me. My husband and I have been attending some parenting classes at church, and last week we talked about natural consequences. The idea is that, although there may not always be a natural consequence for each misdeed, if there is a natural consequence, it will immediately come to mind. The question is whether we, as parents, will allow that consequence to take effect. Case in point, this morning, I had just pulled up to my daughter’s school when she realized she didn’t have her lunch. UGH! Her school doesn’t have a cafeteria, so without lunch, she’s out of luck. BUT, lucky for me, maybe, was that they were having a pizza party today. She had been whining that she didn’t like pizza, which is why I packed her lunch to begin with, but hey, this would be a good way to teach her to remember her lunch.

Now, my daughter has had a tough year. She started kindergarten and began developing serious anxiety. She would have what I called “happy hour” when she first got home from school when she would laugh and eat. But otherwise, the tears didn’t stop. I often had to drag her across the street onto the bus. Her lunch came back home hardly touched. She would often come home with strawberry red circles around her eyes like she has been crying, or trying not to cry, for hours. At first, we thought it was just the adjustment to school. But weeks turned into months, and it was only getting worse. I sought help from anyone who would talk to me, as the situation seeped into me, and I felt helpless. I was often in touch with her teacher, who wanted to be helpful but just couldn’t figure out what the problem was.

My pastor suggested I try the guidance counselor. And so I did. She was a very friendly person who seemed eager to help. She thought my daughter (who had been home with me save part-time preschool) was just missing me. And she thought she was having trouble making friends. We set up a plan for her to help with her socializing. To me, I thought it was odd, because my daughter was usually the outgoing one with other kids. She was always quick to make a friend in the play area at Chick-fil-a. It just wasn’t sitting right. But I was desperate and was ready to try anything.

After much inner turmoil and discussions, I brought some of my dear friends into the mix. And boy do I have a good panel of friends 🙂 One school psychiatrist, one former elementary school teacher, one kindergarten teacher, and one who knows her stuff on anxiety and has a special needs daughter. All of them are wonderful moms. They gave awesome support and insight that my husband and I hadn’t thought of since we were smack dab in the middle of it. We were constantly questioning whether maybe it was our daughter and not the environment.

One of them point blank asked me, “what’s your gut telling you mama?” And though I would still struggle to be sure I was making the right decision, I knew in that moment the right answer. We had to find her a new school.

I can’t say it was a 100 % smooth transition, but the truth is, my daughter now skips ahead of me to try to be the first in the class. She was jealous of her teacher who got to come into school on an inservice day when the students couldn’t. She loves doing worksheets! Within the first week, she had better relationships with her classmates than she had in 4 months at her previous school. The sense of relief in me has been tremendous.

And wonderfully, though I still see some lingering signs, the anxiety is dramatically waning. But I’m still careful not to induce it myself, like by being too late to pick her up in the afternoon.

And so this is what flashed through my mind right behind the thought of the school lunch consequence. Heck, she wouldn’t even be going hungry, she could eat pizza after all! But at that point, (and I later realized I totally made the right decision, as you’ll read below) I prioritized her healing over learning a lesson over remembering her lunch. I promised her I would bring it back.

And so, even though I really wanted get to work plowing through these projects, I went home to grab her lunch. I chatted with my husband just a bit, read a news article on my phone, and headed back out the door to take the lunch to her school.

I was 4 minutes into my trip when I realized it. I pulled u-turn, and when I got to my road, I stopped as I passed my husband leaving for work. He rolled down his car window, shaking his head with a grin somehow in total disbelief yet not even surprised at the same time. He just looked at me and said, “You poor woman!”. At this I started laughing and shaking my own head. My stomach ached from the laughing. Thank goodness he understands me! And in that moment, as I suffered the natural consequence of forgetting her lunch myself, I knew I had made the right decision. After all, I hadn’t even learned this lesson yet!

I can’t get no satisfaction

So, back to flipping. When we bought the Angler last summer, we knew there was a title issue. A mortgage from way back when hadn’t been listed as satisfied, which meant a title insurance company would likely not cover it for the buyers when we decided to sell. We handed off the question to our attorney for research and recommendation on how to handle it. In a nutshell, we needed the lender to record it as satisfied, or we would have to go through the courts, which could take months, and money!

As we cleaned the house, we went through papers to try to find anything relevant mortgage papers. There I was digging through trash, flipping tasks being glamorous as ever! But we came up empty-handed.

It took time to research, and, as my attorney told me, peel back the layers of the onion on this property. In the end, it came down to this.

The previous owners took out a mortgage with Company A in 1996, refinancing with the same company in 1998 and again in 2000. Later in 2000, company B bought Company A. In 2002, the owners also took out a home equity loan with Company B. Then in 2004, they refinanced everything from Company B with Company C, who sold the mortgage to Company D, which is the company that foreclosed on it.

The mortgage that was not marked as satisfied was the 1998 mortgage which was refinanced in-house in 2000. Company A was apparently horrible about keeping good records and satisfying mortgages (a quick google search found many others in my boat!) Our attorney searched to track down the records from that refinance, calling up past attorneys and mortgage agents, but he just hit dead end after dead end. I was in touch with the previous owner, who was gracious enough to give me anything she had, but she only found the 2002 mortgage with Company C.

Meanwhile, we had only a fuzzy understanding of the timeline and true issue – which mortgage needed to be satisfied and who could do that for me? From August to February, I had back-and-forth communication with Company D. I also faxed a couple of requests to Company B in November and December to research our issue. Both times they had told me it would take at least 30 days to determine an answer. We were now ready to list the house, and our attorney was retiring at the end of the year. His advice: see if the buyer’s title insurance will cover over it. If not, it can be handled in the courts and he thinks it shouldn’t be a problem to handle that post-settlement. Granted, it would take time and money!

We went under contract on February 1st, with settlement February 25th. Wow! That would be a quick turnaround. Aside from the title issues, a couple of other things popped up. The inspector mentioned there could be biological growth on the rafters in the attic. Yay! Mold! Now, anytime the 4-letter M word is mumbled or just suggested, I immediately feel a breeze. Money is flying out the window. This issue lingered after the contracted deadline for determining repairs, and we extended the repair negotiation deadline to the 25th. So I knew there was no way we would settle on time.

House for rent?

When we were under contract, I received a strange call from my sister. She asked me if I sat that my house was listed for rent on Craigslist. I was totally confused… my house? my flip house?

A well-meaning potential tenant drove up to the house, took a peek in the windows, and noticed the for sale sign in the front yard. Realizing something wasn’t right, he called my agent. As it turns out, some scammer listed my house for rent, furnished. He had conveniently just gone out of town to Missouri but told the potential tenant to wire him money to an account in Las Vegas to hold the property. So word to the wise… don’t wire money to a random bank account to hold a rental property on Craigslist.

Who uses fax machines anymore?

As for the title, we found out on 2/15 that the title insurance company wasn’t going to cover the title issue. In fact, there were two mortgages they claimed they needed release of: the 1998 mortgage and the 2002 home equity loan. I didn’t realize this 2002 loan was an issue at all. In the line of events, you could see that it was refinanced the very next year with Company B. It was Friday, and I knew we likely wouldn’t get much information before the weekend. It was going to be a long weekend.

Still, I started doing what I could. On the home equity loan, I contacted Company B to get a lien release. Yup, back to good old company B that I had been waiting on a response from. This time, though, they told me that if it was a home equity loan, I had to contact another part of the bank. Multiple reps told me it was an entirely separate entity. They didn’t even transfer me; they gave me a new number to call.

At least this entity was a little less outdated. They actual use email instead of faxing. I informed them that settlement was scheduled for the 25th, and I needed this issue to be rushed. I realized I had no grounds here for being fast tracked, but thankfully they seemed fine with “rushing” it. Based on previous experience, I had no real hope that they would get an answer in time.

Now back to the main mortgage: I called back Company B, the mortgage section. I was following up on my request from December. But they couldn’t give me any information. But they did say I needed to fax in the title search.

Oh yeah, the title search. We had paid for that way back in July and yet I hadn’t seen it. Let me call my attorney.

And so began a big back and forth with my old attorney, my new attorney, and their paralegal on my title search, which apparently couldn’t be found. We wouldn’t receive it until Wednesday (t-5 days until closing) . And then we needed to figure out how to fax a 67 page document. Really? I really have to fax this?!!

So I called them, hoping they could give me an email address, or I was about to head to Staples to fax this baby. But I was shocked by what they told me. A request had been put in for this property and it had a rush on it. The work wasn’t done but they were scheduled for it to be done by closing on the 25th. WHAT?? I was so excited! How did they even know when closing was?

At this point, the number of parties involved in this transaction were ridiculous. There was my agent, the buyer’s agent, the buyer’s paralegal, the buyer’s attorney, our previous attorney, our new attorney, our new attorney’s paralegal, and the title company. Yeah, there was a lot going on. It became a game of telephone, both literally and figuratively.

Let me back up: my agent had called the buyers’ title company Monday morning, who said they can typically get requests pushed through banks for lien releases much faster than the average joe. I was pumped! The title company knew how to get stuff done. They told me to call back Friday for another update.

And so I did. I was told the issue had been resolved and the response was faxed to x number.

I called my agent. I guess they had faxed the info to the title insurance company, so were we good to go? Their response: we never even contacted Company B. I was dumbfounded. It meant we were back to square one on the main mortgage. This was a Friday. Closing was Monday.

Trash digging… again

Meanwhile, I tried to follow up on the home equity loan. The agent was so friendly, telling me that they sent the letter of intent, showing they were going to get the liens released with the recorder of deed’s office, this past Monday. It was coming from North Carolina so it should have been there. Ugh, nope, I hadn’t gotten anything in the mail this week… at least I don’t think so. Granted, that company sends me countless credit card solicitations, which are immediately ripped up and chucked. Had my husband gotten it?

And so now for the second time in this flip’s prolific history, I found myself wading through trash for super important documents. No luck.

And then, the mail came. In it was the letter. And not only did the letter cover the home equity loan, but the first mortgage as well! I was the one who had requested the lien release and put a rush on it. So much for separate companies!

I immediately emailed the letter to the buyer’s attorney, but I wouldn’t receive a reply until Monday. Oh well, the mold issue was still outstanding anyway, so who knew whether this deal would go through.

Monday morning, I received a response from the buyer’s attorney: the letter wasn’t from Company A, so it wasn’t what they needed. But there was no more Company A! I was frustrated, and decided to dive into other things around the house to distract myself. I thought we would have heard about the mold issue too, but there were just crickets.

With all this hub-bub, I hadn’t cleaned out the house yet. After all, I didn’t want to unstage it if it had to go right back on to the market. But then at 1:20 Monday afternoon, my agent called and said they wanted to settle at 10 AM the next morning. Wait, what? There was no mold, the title was good to go, and the buyers were ready to move. Hallelujiah! But wait, we had to get that baby cleaned out!

I rushed to clean out my car. Then it was a good 25 minute drive to the flip house, and I had to pick up my daughter from school at 3. I knew I had to get as much done as I could before hand. Amazingly, my brother (who wanted my staging things to stage a house they had just built) and sister-in-law showed up with his truck , and I pulled away from the house at 3:00 with it totally cleaned out. Still blows my mind. It’s amazing what you can get done when everyone pitches in.

Thank you for sticking with me (or just scrolling down to see if I would ever stop jabbering). This month has been a little crazy, but I’m ready to dive in again. But first, I’d better get this spackle and paint off my keyboard…

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The Luan Saga: A glimpse into flipping houses and being a mom

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