Happy Halloween: I Need A Pain & Suffering Stipend

This morning I met one of our agents bright and early for an all-day tour of one of our counties. I jumped in his car and we set off. He was borrowing this car from a friend because his vehicle had been totaled. The friend had left a stray unwrapped candy in the car for a few days and dear readers, the car was overrun by ants. On the passenger side. Where I was sitting. You can tell by reading this blog that I am very professional (just go with it, okay), so at first I tried to hide my horror and used napkins to capture and kill the ants that were popping out of the console and dashboard. I could just imagine that they were getting in my purse, in my hair, on my clothes, but I tried to be very blasé-pioneer-woman about it. Until I saw one on my seat. I couldn’t kill it fast enough and I squealed. The agent, who was sitting on the ant-free side of the car thought my reaction was completely disproportionate to the threat, but very funny. I’m glad someone was enjoying himself.

Later that day, we were touring through a subdivision of houses that looked inviting from the outside, but were disasters inside. One house had chewed up carpets, an abandoned mirrored wet bar, a poker room and big piles of rat droppings everywhere. The little girl’s room (all pink with animal stickers on the wall) was covered in the tell-tale pellet.The kitchen counter was barely visible. I was paralyzed expecting giant rats with red eyes carrying bubonic plague fleas to burst forth and feast on my trembling limbs.It didn’t happen. But it could have.

The second to last house we went in was infested with biting gnats which did feast on my arms, face and hands. The walls and carpets were so caked in mold that I ran out of the house nauseous and gasping for air. I was immediately accused of being pregnant instead simply being worn down by the events of the day. By the end of the day, I was sick, itchy, and suffering from delusions of ants crawling all over me. I wonder if I can get worker’s comp.

Bridging the Gap between Want and Need: Champagne Tastes on a Kool Aid Budget

We stand in the kitchen arguing about the utiltity of keeping cabinets that are older than 1990. I point out that with some new hardware, these cabinets could really get a new lease on life. My boss is fingering the covering that is peeling from one side of the cabinets and yells, "Look at this! They look terrible! New cabinets!" But I all I hear is .

I'm not just being hard on my boss. Our entire development department is extremely gun-shy from our first experience with a contractor who did lackluster work (a brand new roof is leaking 6 months after installation? A door fell off its hinges? The gas company wouldn't turn on the gas? Jigga?). To avoid those problems, on this go-round our desired scope of work is outsized: all new systems (flooring, HVAC, furnace), new cabinets, new appliances, new interior paint, new exterior paint/siding where needed, beautiful trim, no fiberglass tub surrounds, natural tile in all bathrooms and kitchens, all new fixtures. Not to mention the "green" touches that include insulation batts in the crawl space, blown-in insulation in the attic and new windows. I am here to tell you that is a pricey scope of work. One estimate came back at $69,000 -- for a $73,000 house! Obviously that is not sustainable or affordable, so we find ourselves in a quandary. We need a champagne product. We have kool-aid money.

Normally this paragraph would be the one where I tell you how we found a solution. But we haven't yet. I think we're going to have to get started on some rehab work before we can plot a reliable path to affordable quality on a large scale. My first acquisition closing is in 3 weeks., then the construction work begins. Stay tuned.

There's More than One Way to Skin a Cat on Gopher Pause Lane

When looking at foreclosed houses, we often check out the rest of the neighborhood to see if there are other houses in the immediate area that are also vacant and foreclosed that we can pick up as well. Turning multiple houses within a few blocks of each other gives us a greater opportunity to maximize the impact of public funds aimed at helping to keep neighborhoods from tipping into vacant danger zones.

With that in mind, I went cruising around a few days ago looking at HUD foreclosed homes. I found one in a subdivision that I liked. In true subdivision style, the house was on a street called Gopher Pause Lane, not Paws as in feet, but Pause as in "The Men All Pause" (thank you, Klymaxx). I should have known it would be an eventful evening.

The out of control lawn at the house next door to the HUD house made me think it might be vacant so I jotted down that address for further research. Another house, across from the HUD house, also had the general disheveled look of a vacant house and a lockbox. There was no sign out front, so I drove over to get the address, but I couldn't find it. Usually when I look at houses, I do it in the middle of the day so most of the neighbors aren't home. I was behind that day, so it was about 6pm and I was not able to prowl in private, as is my wont. A young man in his teens was standing on his lawn watching me do the drive-by roll back and forth in front of the vacant house. My window was down so he called out, "You trying to find somebody?"
"No, I'm just trying to find the address on this house. Do you know it?"
"Nah," and he walked over to the car where we started up a conversation about all kinds of things: how the neighborhood used to be so much more fun when there were lots of kids hanging around outside in the middle of the street, but since the police broke it up it's been really quiet and by the way, police helicopters are brown and gold, not silver and black like the one flying overhead now; how if I am not the one moving in, could we please find families with teenage girls so he won't have to get in his car to visit girls; and finally about how he is going to complete his education so he can buy a nice house that is the envy of his friends.

At that point, he started yelling over to his backyard where 2 other young men were, "Hey! Shot me one! Shot me one!"
"What's 'shot me one'?" I asked, still sitting in my car.
"I'm asking him for a cigarette."
"A cigarette?! You are too young to be smoking!"
"I'm a grown man," he protested.
"A grown man in high school," I shot back.
He grinned. "Yeah."

At this point the 2 guys and a younger girl came over to the car. He introduced me to them as his cousins and sister. After the pleasantries, they offered to help me find the address. I got out of the car and started poking around under the overgrowth on the curb then someone piped up behind me, "Hey, why don't you look inside to see if there is any mail with the address on it?"
"I can't get inside. There's a lockbox," I yelled back.
Then silence. And again the grin, "I can get you inside. We used to hang out in there, but it's boring now."
Before I could protest, my new friend had sauntered over and opened the unsecured garage door which led to an open door inside the house.

Well, you know I ducked on into the house to see whether they had ruined it and if I wanted it. They didn't and I did. As I stood at the bottom of the stairs watching one kid wave unopened mail over the bannister, another kid called out from the front of the house that he had found the broken mailbox under the front porch. It had enough numbers on it for me to ascertain the address and after the young girl asked her brother to bring home an old mirror that was lying in the garage of the house (if it had been a fixture I would have protested but sometimes you have to pick your battles), we started heading away from our trespass. After a brief tutorial on my hair (I have locks), I got in the car, promised to try to find families with daughters and left.

I'm learning to be flexible in this line of work. So there is more than one way to skin a cat on Gopher Pause Lane.

How Does Your Garden Grow?: Indoors!

The fall planting season is upon us and I have BIG plans. I purchased 472 bulbs in a blind buying orgy in May and they have all arrived. They are crowding out everything else in the refrigerator as I wait for the weather to cool down enough to plant fall bulbs. An expert at a neighborhood nursery told me that I should wait until after Thanksgiving (jaw drop). I told her that my husband would kick me in the face if I told him that those 472 bulbs would displace food in our refrigerator for another 6 weeks. She looked uncomfortable. Oh I'm sorry ma'am, our banter hasn't progressed enough for you to realize that I use "kick in the face" all the time for "will be mildly annoyed". I know, wildly inappropriate.

ANYWAY, this post is about indoor plants. I am trying 2 new indoor plants: pumpkins and paperwhites. I bought the Buzzy pumpkin quick start packet in the $1 aisle at Target. It included 5 pumpkin seeds and a soil pellet. You start the seeds right in the bag on your counter! I didn't believe it would work, but how could I resist for only $1? Well shut my mouth and call me Nelly if those seeds didn't start to sprout in 4 days!!

4 days after planting (aerial view):


4 days after planting (front view):


8 days after planting:


On the 8th day I transferred them to a larger pot. Check out the root system that grew inside the bag!


Yippers! Nelly!

I have also become enticed by the promise of paperwhite daffodils ("narcissus" for the horticulturist in you). They are bulbs that you can plop in a vase with a bit of water and they'll bloom in 4-6 weeks! We shall see. Here are mine on day 1:

I'll keep you posted.

Happy indoor gardening! It's a heckuva lot easier than breaking through heavy clay with a pickax for hours. More on that later.

Ugh. Today I Should Have Stayed In Bed

Today reminded me of a line in "The Day I Tried to Live" by Sound Garden when Chris Cornell wails "I should have stayed in bed..." with all the pent-up angst of a person whose day has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The CEO of my company tapped me to fill in for him at a training for using NSP funds. I was going to the training anyway, but somehow our company had been designated as the seminar's water boy. That meant I was stuck lugging around a "light" (read: made of solid lead) tin beverage tub and about 45 soda cans. The CEO, a man, promised me it was a light load that he had easily carried from his car to the meeting place for an earlier seminar. I always insist that I do not carry heavy items or move furniture at work, so he walked the sodas and the tub from his car to mine before we left the office. It looked heavy to me, but as I have mentioned before, he is outrageously kind, so I never dreamed he would lead me astray. And besides, what was I going to say? "No, Boss. I'm not doing that. Find another sucker. In this economy I could *easily* find another job."

The next morning (today) I am, of course, running behind. I still need to buy ice and regular sodas because all we had left were Sprite and Diet Cokes. My first stop is to a convenience store near my house. As I was walking into the store, a grown man riding a small BMX bike weaved over to me and said, "Hey, Black." I was really excited because usually black men only refer to each other that way, so I felt like I had been admitted to a little club! But that was the highlight of the entire morning.

The (in)convenience store had neither ice nor coke. On my way to the highway, a guy running a light that had been red for about 10 seconds nearly t-boned my car. Still shaking, I went to another store that had only ice, but no coke. In the third store, I found both ice and coke. Score.

Now I'm really late, still mad about the near-accident and hot. I got to the meeting place and I literally could not get the tub out of the back of my car. Remember, I had never moved it because my CEO carried it from his car and placed it in mine. The tub was huge, weighed at least 40 lbs by itself and had 20 lbs of sodas and ice in it. I began grumbling. LOUDLY.

At the moment of my greatest strife, a woman who is in a powerful elected position in my city arrived to the meeting place talking on her cell phone. By that time, I had unloaded14lbs of ice and half the sodas, but I was still struggling to get the tub out of the back of my 2-seater. Graciously, she got off the phone and came to my aid (and honestly, if she hadn't I would have talked about her until I grew hoarse because VIP or not, it is RUDE to strut by an acquaintance in distress).

The VIP tried to talk me down: "Hey girl, can I help you?"
"No." I said obstinately. "There just aren't going to be any drinks. This thing is ridiculously heavy and it's too big to get out of the car!"
"Well you got it in--"
"I didn't get it in! My boss put it in!"
"Well if he got it in, we must be able to get it out. And...there. Let me help you take this stuff inside."
And off she went, escorted by angel wings.

The police here are known for their quickfire parking tickets so I moved my car to a legal parking spot and ran back into the meeting room, not realizing that I left my hazard lights on from the unloading ordeal.

When I came out of the meeting 2 hours later, my car battery was completely dead. "Galileo," I said to my vehicle (because that's his name), "Come on. We can do this. They were just hazard lights." But no matter how much I sweet-talked him, Galileo refused to start. I just gave up. I called my husband and asked him to just come pick me up because I was DONE WITH THE DAY. He asked what I was going to do with my car. "Leave it! What's someone going to do? Steal it? Hrumph."

My colleague came over to see what was happening and as I walked over to her I stepped in gum. I was starving. There was fresh gum all over my heel. My car wouldn't start. And it was unbearably hot. I just started to deflate like a balloon that has been pricked by a pen -- it doesn't explode, the air just sssseeeepsss out.

But then I remembered. I'm surrounded by construction types! Someone has got to have jumper cables! And someone did! I got a jump, Galileo snapped to, I took my husband off of emergency car/wife breakdown duty and drove back to work.

When I finally dragged myself into the office in the early afternoon, I had 73 new emails and it wasn't even 2pm. "I should have stayed in beeeed!!!"

Rottweiler Phone Neighbor Update

You may remember this post about the Rottweiler Phone Neighbor (RPN) at one of my houses. He's the one who parks various vehicles in my driveway and knows the history of the neighborhood. Well, one day I was checking on the house and he told me why he parks cars in my driveway: since retirement he has taken to detailing cars -- in the driveway of my house! Then he leaned in conspiratorially and said, "I've been noticing your car and you really need to get it detailed. It looks baaad." Wow. Now every time I go over there he reminds me about the need to get my car detailed. And he even told my husband that his car needed detailing too! Way to be, RPN. Just make sure no one breaks in the house, 'kay? Thanks.

Now that RPN and I are BFFs, he feels free to come to me with all kinds of requests. The other day I stopped by the house and he approached me (RPN is allllways home) while gesturing expansively toward the overgrown yard, shaking his head and tsk, tsk, tsking, "What is goin' on over there?"

"Hey, RPN," I greeted him. "I know it's a bit out of control. I'll make sure it gets mowed."

"Well I wuuzzz gonna hit it when I did my own lawn," he hinted.

"Really?" I asked him, letting him know I was taking the bait and he could finish his thought.

"But I didn't know if I was gonna get paid!" He finished.

"We pay our bills, RPN. I'll check with my property manager and have her contact you."

"Aren't you the owner? Don't you have the money?" He pressed me.

"Noooo. She is in charge of keeping the house straight. I am just the owner. I'll have her contact you."

When I contacted the property manager, she told me that she doesn't like getting involved with neighbors because they are always bugging her about getting paid immediately. I asked her to throw RPN a bone because I needed his good will. She called him and he cut the grass. A few days later I received a groggy sounding voicemail from a woman telling me she was a neighbor of the house and to please call her back. When I called back the new classic, "She's a 5 Star **tch" blared in my ear as the ring tone until a very tired sounding woman answered the phone. She told me she was RPN's wife (Erp?!) and he needed to get paid for cutting the lawn. Ack! The neighbor harassment had already started and she was calling me!! I told her I'd call the property manager and we'd handle it.

The property manager said that the woman had already called her all loud, rowdy and wrong, demanding payment in cash. I was beside myself with laughter and then she topped it off: "And she is none of his wife. She can claim it, but she can't claim it like you can!" I am a newlywed. I laughed so hard I nearly ran off the road. I really need to get a bluetooth. And a professional lawn guy.

The Great Pool Debacle of 2009: A Post Script

A post script on the Great Pool Debacle of 2009: The recent Noah floods that deluged the metropolitan area FILLED UP THE BLESSED POOL even higher than it was before meaning that we had to drain it. AGAIN. I am about to hire prison labor to tear that friggin’ pool out of the ground with their bare hands.

Chatting Up the Neighbors

An important part of keeping your vacant house more or less safe during all of the time you are not there is striking up a good relationship with your neighbors. They are a great source of "eyes" and may also direct their friends and contacts to the house as potential buyers or renters. Going into a new neighborhood can be difficult since no one trusts real estate professionals anymore, but being in the South helps.

I always enter a neighborhood with lots of smiles, waves and greetings; when the time is right, I put on the full charm offensive. This neighborhood gave me me some trouble though. The next door neighbor to the right has 2 dogs, one is a pit bull, that go completely batshit crazy whenever someone approaches the house. One of those dogs is the one that bit one of our contractors.

The next door neighbor on the left has two grim rottweilers that used to pop up and bark at me while he talked on the phone in the front yard. The dogs are bored of me now. They can barely muster a growl when I arrive. Rottweiler Phone Neighbor had been parking his and his friends' cars in the driveway of my house and though it made my blood boil, I knew it was a small offense. Besides, parked cars make the house looked occupied. So fine.

We wrote letters to and called Animal Control on Mad Dog Neighbor and now the dogs are no longer a problem. To help you keep the DogI don't ever see Mad Dog Neighbor. Rottweiler Phone neighbor, however, I see all the time.

ANYWAY, after the house had been staged and was looking fabulous, I started chatting up Rottweiler Phone Neighbor. He told me had been a resident of the street for 15 years. I wanted him on our side and I wanted to show him that we were doing good work and were not fly-by-night real estate parasites. Much to his surprise, on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, I invited Rottweiler Phone Neighbor (RPN) in to check out the house. He was blown away by how beautiful it looked and he started to let me in on the history of the neighborhood. Here's a brief rundown:

• 2 houses across the street have been owner-occupied for 20 years. That makes me feel good;
• One house across the street was vacant for 12 years (I just about fainted right there on the porch). It has just been rented (probably for $15 a month but WHATever!!);
• A house two houses to our left just rented for $600. I've seen pictures of this house online. Supposedly it has been renovated, but it looks tuurrrrrrible -- sloppy paint, unfinished floors, a messy yard, and an anemic kitchen. Am I jealous that the owner has beaten me and rented his house already? Yes! But we can't even cover our operating costs at $600 a month, so c'est la vie;

After these tidbits, the stories start getting interesting:

• The owner of the house directly across the street won the lottery a few years ago and sold his house. It turns out that he held title to the property with a wild deed (a wild deed gives the impression of a scroll running screaming through the streets waving its arms with its ribbon flying chaotically behind it. And that's kind of accurate. A wild deed is outside of the chain of title and does not confer clear title to the holder. Usually the holder of a wild deed loses in a title dispute. And that's just what happened here:) The new buyer ended up losing his purchase money and is now renting the house from the rightful owner. He cannot find the lottery winner to sue him. Of course, I have a little gem of a house to sell him if he ever wants clear title again; and finally
• About 10 years ago, back before our house had central air, it was rented to a family who left their air conditioning equipment on the wooden front porch (do you see where this is going? I've written about a similar situation). Well, there was a short in the A/C that led to a spark and according to RPN, the house burned to the ground. No one was hurt.

RPN would have told me many more stories, but I started to edge toward my car. At that moment the postman drove up and RPN and I walked down to the curb. We were standing together under my umbrella when the postman helpfully piped up, "You two kind of favor..." (that means we look a like). I just smiled. Angrily. But then RPN started selling the house! "You should see what they have done to the house up there, man. It's nice! Do you know anyone who needs a house?" And then to me, "Give him a card!" I gave him two cards. You never know.

Stripes are the New Free

We were at yet another set of meetings at local government offices and moving from place to place because our conference rooms were booked by other groups. On the way to the last conference room which was really a storage room with tables and haris in it, we were hit in the face with the strong scent of fresh paint. I screwdd up my face and toldm my collague that I was definitely going to faint because of the fumes and when I truned back around I saw the painting crew: they were all male and dressed in white jumpsuits with thick black stripes. On their heads, they wore square rimless painter's caps that were also striped in black and white. They looked something like the outfits Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence wore in the movie "Life". Actually, this is almost an exact replica of their clothes.

The mena were uniformly nice and respectful as we passed through -- they took off their caps as the ladies walked through their work cordon and called ahead, "Be careful," "Wet walls," and "Coming through!" I thought it was some kind of schtick. I turned toward my colleague and said through gritted teeth, "What is this? Why do the painters have to dress like convicts?"

"They are," she replied. "This is how they work off their time. They don't get paid, but they can get shorter sentences."

Oh. so the jurisdiction gets free labor, while the men pay down their debt to society and maybe pick up a skill that can be used for employment afer incarceration. Still, I couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for the guys -- they were genuinely respectful and it seemed like they were being used by the state. By the same token, I couldn't see the people on the other side of their criminal transactions -- the people robbed, homes burglarized, innocents beaten, or kids hurt in a DUI accident -- victims are almost always anonymous and forgotten. I never feel ambivalence about the guys who do work detail as I speed by on the side of the highway, but somehow being in close quarters with, and looking into the eyes of, another human being in captivity outside of the context of his prior actions, haunts me. Do you have any opinions or feelings about prison labor?

The Great Pool Debacle of 2009: Part II -- NEXT DAY UPDATE:

I spent FORTY minutes on the phone today discussing this cursed pool. Apparently the "eccentric" constituents keep calling the county. They have had the police, code enforcement and animal control out to the house. My poor beleaguered public servant partners at the county are totally nonplussed. They want to do the right thing and try to keep the pool for the family that will eventually buy the house, but they don't want to waste taxpayer money on an asset that won't recoup its value and they have to do something to get Connie Constituent to please. stop. calling.

Well, I had the pool drained the next morning, as requested. So now the county would like to maintain the concrete bowl instead of collapsing the walls into the empty hole in case the next owner wants to spend the money to fill the pool back in. Look, the county is coming from a really generous place. They are trying to preserve the joy of a pool for the future family. We've all heard that the road to hell is lined with good intentions. I'm from southern California where just about every backyard has an in-ground pool. This may not be common knowledge outside of pool-centric areas, but the earth exerts a mighty force on the walls of in-ground pools. If you empty a pool and don't fill it back up with water relatively quickly, your pool walls will start to crack and collapse from the pressure of the surrounding earth. Simply filling the concrete bowl with dirt and gravel will not exert the same pressure as water. Any effort to reuse those walls will be futile because the outside pressure will ruin the structural integrity of the walls themselves.

I begged the county officials to release the pool idea and let the earth reclaim it, but they were adamant. I called the GC. He confirmed my supposition about the pressure of surrounding earth collapsing the pool walls in the absence of water. Essentially, here is how he broke it down:

• The county fixes the pool by doing all the work mentioned in this post: $10,000
• The county fills the pool with dirt and a future homeowner decides to later dig out the dirt and rebuild the pool with all of the accouterments that a pool requires: $10,000

Any way you slice it, to maintain that pool, somebody is going to be out $10,000. Either the county is going to have to spend it on the front end to fix and secure the pool and be content not to get it back in the final sale or the family is going to have to spend it to rebuild the pool after they move in.

How did this whole thing end? We are collapsing the concrete sides into the empty hole, filling in the rest with dirt, planting grass seeds and calling it good. I know I initially wanted to keep the pool, but the pool is now just a giant distraction. Kiss the pool good-bye; it'll be gone in a few days.