Foreclosed to Fabulous: A Journey into Home Rehab

Before & After

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:35:00 +0000

Today, I present three of the first houses I worked on.

This house will close with a homebuyer later on this week. I superloved this house when we first saw it although it was very dated. Look at this door!

These mouldings!

All of these wonderful bones existed before the rehab. LOVE. I fought for this house because I could see its fabulousness even though it was old, rickety, had been abandoned for a while, and kind of had an odour.

This a four bedroom, two and half bathroom home is located in a golf course community in a suburban neighborhood. We fixed just about all of the major systems in the home and modernized the cosmetics on the rest.

The basement was the former owner’s fun space. The sign above the bar read “Happy Hour” in Technicolor. Charming, but not really resale-ready.

href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Crunako%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml">Here is the basement after renovation. We removed the bar, changed the carpet, and painted the walls, among other things.

The living room had dark, sad paneling and a dated fireplace.

We brightened everything up nicely, I think.

The second house is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom ranch home. It’s not yet under contract and I can’t understand why except that the neighborhood is a little out of the way.

Dining room before:

Dining room after:

Bonus room before (sad old-fashioned built-ins):

Bonus room after:

Quick Interior House Assessment Tips

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:17:00 +0000

I'm back with part 2 of Quick House (Rehab) Assessment Tips.

Interior:

It is of utmost importance that the house be well-sealed against the elements. I am guessing that if you wanted to be one with the outdoors you’d be at REI picking up a tent instead of looking for a house. So most of the interior checkpoints focus on ensuring the house keeps the outside out and water where it belongs.

Bathrooms

Do the toilets appear to be well-anchored or does it look like they have been leaking? Look around the bottom of the toilets and tubs for water or water stains. If you find water stains in a bathroom on an upper floor, go downstairs and see if the leak has come through the ceiling.

Throughout

Look up: are there wet spots on the ceilings? If so, are they still wet? Could be a leaky roof or a leaky bathroom upstairs.

Look down: corners and trim should not be compromised. If you can lightly kick the trim and it comes apart, that is water or termite damage.

Will we need to replace the carpets and wet room floors? The answer is probably on the carpets and maybe on the wet rooms (kitchen, bathrooms, laundry).

Unless the previous owners lived very lightly and had your decorating taste, you will almost certainly have to paint, replace light fixtures and appliances.

Check the trim around the back door. Here you are looking for signs of water damage indicating the door was not well-sealed and for signs that the door has been repaired or replaced because it was kicked in. Again, not a definite cause to walk away, but you should know.

Is there black pellet-shaped debris on the floors? Could be rat droppings, just sayin’, I've been there.

Does the floor plan make sense? Every now and again I’ll go into a house where the floor plan just makes me angry. It’s more of a fun house than a home. Floor plan changes are very expensive and I’ll usually walk away from them.

Are the floors even? I have a particular aversion to rolling hardwoods, slanted living rooms and thin carpeting covering a hard board with no subfloor. These flaws are not insuperable, but if the floor is really janky, you may be looking at an uneven foundation.

Bedrooms

Open the closet doors and check the corners and ceiling. On more than one occasion, I have seen the only evidence of mold or leaks has been in the closets. Open all doors and peer inside.

Kitchen

How gross are the cabinets? Some cabinets are great and just need light cleaning. Some are disgusting with missing parts or caked-on gunk. Missing parts can be difficult to match. On one house we threw a lot of money at trying to clean old cabinets before we just gave up and put in new ones.

Open the cabinet under the sink. Do you see signs of leaks? Is there a garbage disposal? Your inspection will let you know if it works or not.

Will you need to replace the countertops?

So there you have it: my quick and dirty house assessment guide.

A New Look and Quick Exterior House Assessment Tips

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:21:00 +0000

Has it really been SIX months since I last posted here? I apologize for being so absent, but here is my explanation. Since around December, I have been the project manager responsible for putting 93 houses under contract, closing on 59, completing rehab on 9, and selling 2 to home buyers (11 additional houses are under contract to close with home buyers). In the garden, I have suffered bitter defeat, small victories, and about 51 mosquito/gnat/spider bites. Mama is tired, y’all.

Still, I have missed sharing my experiences and I’m back with a whole new look!

I’ve learned a lot in the last six months, but since most of that time has been spent on acquisitions, I guess I’ll start there.

Sometimes I’ll arrive at a house while an agent is there with a home buyer. It is unspoken real estate etiquette to wait for the current party to finish before going in. Owner-occupants, however, take forevvvvvver to evaluate a house because they look at things very differently from investors. The owner-occupant is thinking, “Do I love it? Can I see myself living here? Where will my couch go? Is the kitchen big enough?” The investor is thinking, “How much is it going to cost me to turn this house around?”

I often need to see 15 or more houses in one day. Including driving time, that can easily eat up 8 hours or more. I don’t have time for the owner-occupant approach. I need to get in and out and on the next. I am not a professional inspector, but I need to be able to quickly ascertain whether a house is going to be within our price range to acquire and rehab. Foreclosed houses usually do not come with a disclosure report – they are sold “as is”. To kick things off, I will provide you with my methods for assessing a home quickly.

Please note: none of these tips are adequate substitutes for a real home buyer’s inspection. If you buy a house “as-is” without an inspection you will RUE THE DAY. Most of us will not want to climb around on the roof and cannot tell what polybutylene piping looks like (to your bank account it will look like replacing all the plumbing in the house). I certainly hate getting on my hands and knees to check if there is galvanized pipe under the sink. It’s hot, dirty and there are spiders down there. So hire a professional, please. The tips that follow are just to help you make an initial assessment when you are out and about.

Home buyer’s guide to 10-15 minute property review:

Exterior

Water

When you arrive, walk around the lot. Does it appear to be even or sloped? If it has rained recently, check to see if there is water standing anywhere on the property. If you don’t see standing water, are there spots where the ground is supersaturated? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” and the water is close to the house, take note.

Now back up and look up. How does the roof look? We’re not looking for uniform color; we’re looking for waves or other signs the roof has been compromised. Sometimes roofs with leakage problems will appear to have undulations running parallel to the ground. If these are extensive, count on a new roof. Now check your data on the house, if it’s about 10 years old and in foreclosure, you should guess that the roof has never been replaced and will need work.

While you’re focused on the roof, also check the soffit, fascia, and gutters. I could try to explain what soffit and fascia are, but this picture I grabbed from www.csgrestoration.com is worth a thousand words.

The way I keep it straight in my head is that “fascia faces ya.” Whatever, it’s cheesy; it works. Older houses will tend to have wood soffit and fascia. Untreated wood rots. Soffit and fascia often have to be replaced; usually replacement rings up in the range of a couple hundred dollars.

Take a look at the gutters. If they are all bent up and crazy-looking, you’ll likely have to replace them for about $1500. Follow the gutters if you can to see where they are directing water. Sometimes gutters will direct water along a valley in the roof where the fascia isn’t well-attached and rainwater will run right into the house. Gutters can also be so full that baby trees are growing out of them – true story! – in that case the gutters have ceased to direct water anywhere and you can almost bet on water damage inside.

Pests/Termites

If you are in the red clay termite belt of which Georgia is a part, suspect that there are termites in any home that has been sitting vacant for a while without termite treatments. My experience has been that 100% of stucco surface houses have had termites. Termites are not necessarily a deal-killer, but they do need to be treated immediately and a professional will have to assess the extent of damage they have caused.

Many homes will have nice landscaping around the perimeter of the house. If you are the gardening snob I was before I actually got into the garden, you may prefer the look of pine nuggets to pine straw. Again, if the house has not been treated for termites in a while, pine nuggets up against the house should give you pause. For some reason, termites are attracted to pine nuggets in a way they are not to other kinds of mulch.

As you are walking around the lot look for ant hills close to the house. If the ant hill is up against the house, there is a good chance the ants are inside too. Again, not a deal-killer, but you’ll want to be aware.

Pause now and again to check out window frames and window sills. If they are exposed to the elements, chances are they will need repair because the wood will rot over time. Same thing with wooden door frames. I still find it difficult to distinguish whether wood has been eaten by termites or weakened by water just by looking or handling the wood. Still, weak wood is weak wood and it all has to be repaired.

Siding

What has the builder used to cover the bones of the house? Rotten wooden siding (hard to identify, especially if the house has been recently painted) usually has to come off in its entirety for upwards of $10,000.

Hardiplank and cardboard siding come in many different varieties. Some are easier to repair and replace than others.

Brick is beautiful, but the joints in the masonry can get loose letting in water.

Vinyl siding is easy to match and replace damaged pieces.

We’ve discussed stucco. I grew up in SoCal, so I like stucco, but stucco that has not been properly taken care of will have cracks that require extensive repair, may have been bleached in the sun, and as I mentioned before will most likely need some attention to termites.

Peeling paint could mean that you need to repaint the entire house or just parts. If the house was built before 1978, you may need to do some lead paint tests.

Amenities

Is there a wooden deck or patio? Has the wood been treated? You may be able to get away with a sand ‘n’ stain, or the whole thing may have to come down if it is unsafe. I’ve been to many houses that have small 2^nd floor balconies. The previous owners often had grills on these balconies (look for burn marks where the grill was). That gives me heartburn, but your inspector can give you the lowdown.

Wow, the quick exterior checklist took up much more real estate that I expected. I’ll post the quick interior checklist later on.

Of Foreclosure, Families and Furniture

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:06:00 +0000

A lot of times this blog comes across as very cavalier about foreclosure. It's my job and the ho-hum of scouting empty houses can become impersonal. The reality of foreclosure's impact on real people collided with routine earlier this week. We visited a house with furniture still in it. NSP regulations require that homes be vacant for 90 days prior to putting in an offer so usually the houses are empty. However, entering the first house we encountered a pile of furniture -- a bookshelf, a chair, knick knacks -- right in the entryway. Someone had tied a small wicker basket on the pull chain of the living room ceiling fan as decoration. The basket was not HGTV-ready, but it was an authentic and personal trace of the people who once lived in that 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath home on an awkward corner of a middle income subdivision just about 10 miles from my office.

The presence of furniture gave me pause. It drew my attention to the dark spot on the floor where a dresser once stood. Furniture humanizes the insane paint schemes I have seen in many bedrooms, transforming tacky walls covered in little pink hand and footprints and ceilings decorated in purple rabbits into nurseries that once held children where parents planned to raise them in safe, stable surroundings. Then the market tanked. Or the job vanished. Or the landlord went under. Or all three. All that gets left behind are walls that I am going to hire people to paint over in pleasing neutrals, carpets that I will replace because they are stained with juice, food, mud and furniture spots. I felt complicit in erasing the memory of the people who once made their homes in those places and who were caught up, as renters or as buyers, in the orgy of easy money and easier real estate that brought about a personal, national and global economic implosion.

Sometimes I feel like I'm cleaning up after a disaster: every bit left behind is a reminder of what was destroyed, yet I know that something new--and sustainable--will spring from the destruction. Those former residents have moved on and to remain viable, the neighborhood needs to ensure that vacant houses get occupied to maintain values, safety and aesthetics. So I paint over carefully-drawn designs and stickers of smiling zoo animals; I tear up heavily used carpet and torn vinyl; and I replace woodwork chewed away by the family dog, hoping that the restart I provide will create the conditions for a renewal.

No Access: 3 Dirty Tricks of Real Estate Acquisition

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:32:00 +0000

Ah the joys of real estate. Apparently the market is heating back up because the dirty tricks of the trade are starting to peek out of their down market hibernation.

Before the market started to turn, access to foreclosed houses was not a problem. You got the code, opened the box and sashayed on in. Sometimes, the doors were just left unlocked. Nowadays however, heifers want to keep the competition at bay. Here are the top 3 dirty tricks I've encountered:

1) Jam the only access door from the inside so that subsequent viewers can't see the property. The last person to see a house will lock the deadbolt from inside and climb out of a window to ensure that anyone coming by afterwards will not be able to get in to see the house, even if they have a key.

2) Camp out at the property and when a prospect arrives to view it the interloper proclaims (falsely) that she already has had her offer accepted and she is just waiting for the carpet guy to come by so you might as well keep on moving.

3) Take pictures of the real estate agent, potential buyer and their license plates so that you can upload them on YouTube later while claiming they are out to "destroy the neighborhood." This is not a joke; I keep my sunglasses on me for unsolicited photo sessions.

More common ploys are to remove the mailbox, obscure the house address, hide the for sale sign and toss the house key in the bushes leaving the lockbox/supra key empty. The silly thing is, in this state, only 1 of 3 foreclosure deals that go to contract actually close. Chances are that the deal the trickster is trying to shield so desperately will fall through anyway. I know it's easier to climb out of a window than to line up solid financing, but only the latter will get you title; the former will just get you dusty.

All is fair in love, war and real estate, but you know what? If you want to keep me from buying the house, just offer more. It won't be that hard.

7 tips for eliminating houses from listings

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:00:00 +0000

I often receive large batches of listings from the sources we use to acquire houses. There are far too many to see individually so I need to use a heavy hand to whittle down the stack to a manageable group that we can go and see. These 7 tips, particularly #5, may not be as helpful to those of you who have lots of resources to use in bidding wars and list price offers but to bargain hunters who have to keep prices very low like me, these tips have saved a lot of time.

1) Where you can see the “Days on Market” or DOM, the property should have been on the market at least 60 days. The more DOM, the better for negotiating.

2) If the house is listed over $80,000, it should have been on the market for at least 90 days (I have made some exceptions for listings over $80K that are fabulous, but I am only asking the agent to keep his eye on them to see if they go down).

3) If you are getting overwhelmed by 3 beds/2bths, start looking for larger houses and pick only very cheap 3/2s.

4) No properties with HOA fees.

5) Approach every listing with extreme disdain. Does the listing have the smell of desperation? This scent is becoming more and more faint as the market improves, but still if there is no hint of a willingness to negotiate, keep moving.

6) Size (less than 1200 sq ft and more than 2250 sq ft). The smaller properties are hard to sell; the larger properties are crazy expensive to renovate.

7) Wood siding. More times than not, it all has to be replaced and the return on the investment is low.

How Does Your Garden Grow?: With Incredible Indoor Amaryllis!

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:44:00 +0000

One of my best friends gave me indoor-blooming red lion amaryllis for Christmas. This is a plant I have wanted to try, but couldn't bring myself to drop the cash for it. Thank you, Santa!! Readers, this plant is awesome! It sat in a box on our front porch for a week while we were out of town for the holidays. When I got to it, it looked hale and hearty with 3 sets of foliage popping out of the top. All I had to do was take it to a sunny window, add water and wait. We started out here:

Soon we were here:

And now we are here in the land of fabulous blooms! Each stalk has 3 gigantic blossoms:

It's so perfect that it looks fake! In this landscape of snow, front and biting winds, it is so nice to watch life and color claim its space and shine.

My-my-my Poker Face

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:26:00 +0000

Today marks the fifth time in 30 days that I have been told that my face mirrors exactly what I am thinking or feeling. It is the second time in 30 days that I have been chastised for such expressiveness at work. I'm not going to lie to you, dear Readers, I find all of this kind of tiring. My husband tells me that a poker face is something you have to practice and hone. I mastered my brand of poker face when I was a teenager. I called it "stony face." Whenever I would be getting chewed out for some infraction, I would practice making my face look stony. The effort involved in mastering my facial expression took my attention away from what was being said, so when I looked like I wasn't paying attention it was because I wasn't paying attention. (Hi Mom! Hugs!)

So it is with me. If I look uninterested, happy, bored, tired, it's because that is how I am feeling. I don't have techniques that allow me to pay attention to an asinine conversation and not register the frustration in my face. You could say it's a good trait: I'm not a good liar. You could also say it's some Sun Tzu-inspired fatal character flaw. Whatever.

What I want to know from you is do you have any suggestions on how I can improve my poker face? In the meantime, I will leave you with a little Lady Gaga doing her poker face.

Poop

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Propelled into action by the mandate to buy eleventy houses in 20 minutes, we have been hitting the streets hard looking for inventory. The county wants to concentrate on neighborhoods instead of flitting around the jurisdiction, buying houses scattered hither and yon. I have a preferred subdivision which is undergoing a lot of foreclosures, but is still pleasant, well-kept and has retained its value as much as could be expected under the circumstances. Three of us headed out last week to a house in the subdivision. On the way over, I announced to the group that unless the house had been gutted buy fire, we were going to buy it, so everyone needed to get their minds right.

The house was in worse shape that I expected. The front and back porches needed extensive work, along with the usual list of cosmetic fixes inside -- paint, fixtures, carpet, appliances. I walked from room to room snapping pictures. The electricity was off and the flash of the camera helps to illuminate dark rooms, particularly bathrooms which usually don't have the benefit of windows. I stopped in the doorway of a hall bathroom upstairs, checked it out and kept moving without taking a picture. The rest of the team, two men, stood in the bathroom door and snickered, "I'm surprised you didn't start yelling when you saw this."

"What?" I came back to the door.
"You didn't see that?" Joe pointed at a dark mass on top of the closed toilet seat.
"What?" I asked. "It's a dark rag left there by the work crew."
"Oh. OKAY." Joe grinned and walked away. "If that's what you want to believe."
"What is he talking about?" I thought and leaned in deeper in the doorway.

OH SWEET MOTHER CARRY ME HOME. It was POOP. Poop. Dried human poop. On top of the closed toilet, not inside. Why?! We're still putting an offer on the house, I'm just glad it was the last one of the day. I needed to have a glass of wine after that.

Git Her Done. NOW.

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:30:00 +0000

As many of my past posts have illustrated, while the local governments have been getting their NSP sea legs, we have received many hurry-up-and-wait directives. "We need you to have a gajillion houses under contract in two weeks!" shrieks the local government. I dust off the pipeline that has been sitting idle while I await directions, leap into the field and put in half a gajillion offers. I gather up all the various paperwork required to submit homes to the county for approval and continue to mine sources, negotiate counteroffers and wait for county approval. And wait. And wait. And we lose deals while we wait. It would be different if the county would respond that they've reviewed our offering and don't like the houses, but they don't respond at all. At all!! I'm supposed to cheerfully shrug off all the wasted time and effort. I know I shouldn't care since I can't move forward without the county's approval, but I know I will ultimately be judged based on my production regardless of the forces beyond my control.

Anyway, so a few days ago, my ultimate boss, the head honcho comes into my office with his face all alight and tells me gleefully that the county is ready to move forward in aggressively acquiring houses.

"Okay," I smiled beatifically at him and turned back to my computer screen.
"No, really. They are committed now."
I turned back to face him.
"And that means that we'll need to have 10 closings a month for the next 6 months."
If he hadn't been serious I would have burst into peals of laughter. Ten closings a month is a dream. Why? Well, we do desktop reviews of about 25 houses for every 5 we go to see. We see approximately 5 houses for every 3 offers. We have to put out about 3 offers for every 1 we get accepted. By the way, we also have mountains of meetings and 5 other jurisdictions where we are starting rehab and resale processes for houses that have already been purchased. Ten closings a month? Okay. We'll get right on it.

I contacted our realtor, who is awesome and extremely hard-working, and told him the news. He laughed too, but promptly sent me over 50 listings to review. I picked out 21. Twelve were available. We visited them and decided to put out 7 offers. None have been accepted or countered yet. It's a slog, but we are pushing.

The next day, the head honcho revised his goals for the county. Instead of promising 10 closings a month, he committed that we would have 60 houses under contract by the end of March. You know it's mid-January, right? Seventy-odd days to put 60 houses under contract? It's beyond laughable; it's absurd. Everyone I work with who is a practitioner knows it's absurd but no one will tell him. I'm not going to tell him either since I, apparently, am negative enough (see the next post). Still, we are going to mine every source we can thing of, put out a flurry of offers and deluge the county with requests for approvals. It's going to be an extremely chaotic, bumpy ride. I hope we're all strapped in.

And....We're Back!

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:54:00 +0000

Happy 2010! It's been a while because I was on a long, and judging from some prior posts much-needed, vacation. Now that I'm back in the saddle before I head off into the wild blue rehab yonder, let me take stock of where I stand: 2 houses purchased, no construction started (sigh); 1 house completed and on the market for six months (bigger sigh); 3 houses under contract and scheduled to close this week, but without the County approvals, it's not looking good (exasperated rolled eyes + big sigh).

At the office on Monday morning I find extensions on 2 of the closings scheduled for this week (yay!) and one very p.o'ed sales agent for the third (sorry dude, government stuff takes longer). Still, the p.o'ed agent is well within his rights - we've extended the closing twice. Now I find myself contacting everyone I can find trying to get his house closed in 3 days. Hee!! Three days! It's so preposterous that it makes me laugh. But, save the day - when I made the request to my lender (the cool one, not that one makes me want to tear my hair out) he did not shoot me down immediately. As long as the chain of title is clean, he should be able to fund and I should be able to close and be a hero -- or at least less of a heel for taking so long to get to closing.

I'm excited about this house. It is conveniently located, has a brick facade and is on a street with other well-kept houses. And it's less than $100K! Check it out:

The entry way!

I spy a fireplace...

The master bedroom. Ooh la la, the ceiling:

Nice kitchen:

And of course, to me the best thing about this house is the next door neighbor's monster-sized mum!! GORGEOUS, people!

And I'd Shoot You Too....I'm Sorry, What?

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:36:00 +0000

Long live democracy. The ancient Greeks (I don't know why I have been stuck on the ancient Greeks lately) took their politics seriously. Polis referred to the city-state and anyone who was eligible to take part in the polis (generally free men), yet abdicated that responsibility and decided to remain in a self-involved bubble was called an idiot. Obviously the ancient Greeks were not familiar with county commission meetings where even people who are intimately involved in the polis can prove themselves to be idiots as well.

I attended a county commission meeting this morning. The commission meets in a converted church. There are sheriff's deputies present, but no metal detectors, not even a wand. People breeze in, standing in the doorway and filling out comment cards. The walls are painted a fresh peach neutral, sunlight pours through the arched windows and the commissioners sit in the converted pulpit on a slightly raised platform behind a long desk that separates them from their constituents. They are bathed in warm, beatific light from recessed lights overhead. Where the pews have been removed, the audience sits in newly-installed row seats. A podium with microphone is situated between the two columns of seats. County residents have been speaking all morning about the state of the county's budget. One of the last speakers to arrive to the podium is a gruff looking man; his hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail that reaches the middle of his back; his thick padded blue plaid jacket covers a dingy gray sweatshirt and appears to scratch his neck. He places his thick dirty hands on the podium and begins to speak.

The first few minutes of his speech are spent berating the chair of the commission. His large, work-stained hands fiddle with his prepared remarks as he calls the chair arrogant, reminds the chair that he works for him, scolds the chair for driving a county-issued vehicle and finally adds, "You're a thief. If a thief were in my house, I'd shoot him and then call the sheriff. Yeah, you're a thief. I'd shoot you."

I'm sorry, what? I glance around and no one looks discomfited. The chair is scribbling furiously on his notepad. The sheriff's deputies look bored and stay put. I rest my chin on my hand to keep my jaw from going slack. Sure, the chair of the county commission is not the President of the United States, but are threats of violence so commonplace that a direct threat to an elected official elicits no reaction at all? Did I mention that there is no metal detector at the door? Did I also mention that the speaker is wearing a bulky jacket that could have easily concealed a weapon? It's not like it would be unprecedented for someone to just haul off and start shooting in unexpected places. At the end of the meeting, during the time on the agenda for the Chair's comments, the Chair notes the remark and states that he doesn't "quite know how to take that comment".

I'm sorry, what? Take it as another notch on the headboard of violence in politics. Violence in (and between) politicians is more common all over the world than I realized. In our own Congress in 1856, South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks caned Massachussetts Senator Charles Sumner over a damning speech Sumner gave about slavery and the Southern way of life during the "Bleeding Kansas" era of our history. Brooks beat Sumner with a cane he used after being injured in a political duel some 16 years prior. Just a few years ago in 2004, the Vice President told US Senator Patrick Leahy to "go f**k yourself" on the floor of the Senate -- verbal violence counts. And it's not just us. In 2005, members of the Ukrainian parliament came to blows over legislation for their entry to the World Trade Organization. In 2007, an Israeli parliament member slapped a lawyer who made a disparaging remark about his budget priorities and the Taiwanese parliament had a full-fledged brawl (article on both incidents here).

The assemblies in ancient Greece must not have been Tupperware parties either, judging from Caesar and Marc Anthony. Still, I like to think that we can disagree without being disagreeable and that there is still room at the table of participatory democracy for our better angels. To the man who began this story threatening the chair of the county commission because he felt his property taxes were too high, I say this: Sir, we live in a democracy. Here, the motto is you win some, you lose some, you throw some away. The reason we don't kill and maim elected officials we don't like is because the democratic experiment is based on the premise that we all get a fair chance to vote for our candidate and if she loses we still respect the winner's position because the next time around our candidate might win and we would want her opponent's supporters to treat her with respect. It's the give and take of democracy, dude. You should get used to it because the undemocratic nations I could point you to would not take kindly to your well-honed Wild West/Ted Kaczynski flair. I'm just sayin'.

Mama's First NSP House

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:18:00 +0000

After finally completing the Sisyphean task of closing, mama has her first NSP house. Before you look at the pictures, I will warn you: It is NICE, people. It was only built a few years ago as part of a brand new subdivision that got caught in the maw of the financial/credit meltdown.

This house will require light rehab and roof work. We should be able to put a family in it within the next 2 months.

Three cheers for progress!

Part of the master bedroom:

Kitchen:

The Sisyphean Task of Closing

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:13:00 +0000

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a mortal king who was accused of various misdeeds including robbery, murder and gossiping about Zeus' dalliances. To punish him, the gods sentenced him to push a large boulder up the side of a mountain and regardless of his effort, once it arrives almost to the top, the boulder rolls down the mountain where he must start pushing it to the top again, for eternity.

In my experience, real estate closings are sisyphean, except instead of there being just one person toiling alone, a whole team of people band together to push the boulder over the mountain but anything, a light wind, a wandering pebble, or someone stopping to tie his shoe will send the entire thing crashing back down to the valley where the whole team must all start again. In the last three years I have been involved in over 100 closings. A few times we were able to get the rock over the hill smoothly and on-time, but in most instances, the closings were delayed, pushed back, or rescheduled and we all slumped away drained and dejected to try again later.

All this is to say that after being nearly crushed by the boulder, I finally closed on my first NSP house!! I'll post pictures of it later, but I had to share my excitement at getting through the acquisition phase. Now on to getting contractor bids and choosing the general contractor whose team will make the house irresistible!

How Does Your Garden Grow?: OWW. Amending Soil Hurts

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:43:00 +0000

I have complained on this blog many times about my obstinate, heavy, non-draining, angry, rock-filled clay soil. For this year's fall planting season I decided to do something about it. Before planting the 472 tulip, daffodil, pink oxalis and grape hyacinth bulbs that I accidentally bought this summer, I decided to dig 3 big flower beds, get rid of all the dirt and refill the beds with luscious, dark store-bought soil (I ended up planting 646 bulbs in all).

Like every other project I take on, it turned out to be WAY MORE WORK than I had ever imagined. There are 3 flowerbeds, each one is about 3 feet wide, approx. 20 feet long and one foot deep. Each bed holds approximately 1 gajillion pounds of heavy clay. At first my husband and I thought we could knock out the project over a few days. Sure, the digging wasn't fun and I am constantly mortified by how much stronger he is than I am, but we were making progress. Until Lawn Waste Trash Day. The guys didn't even attempt to take our 8 bags of heavy clay away. Instead, they put a big embarrassing neon green sticker on one bag that said "WRONG. LAWN CLIPPINGS ONLY." Blast. Now we had a problem because even though we could dig all day, we did not have the means to haul away 3 gajillion pounds of heavy clay.

I set to work through Craigslist and found some guys who would come out to dig the holes and haul the dirt. They worked for 10 hours digging and hauling. The poor guys didn't even have a pickax, so I let them use mine. Here is what one of the driveway beds looked like before:

and after:

I know it's hard to tell, but a foot down is deep. This is a picture of one of the workers standing in the hole:

This is the "short" bed at only 15 feet:

This bed, which fronts on the street, is longer than the car! Now it's filled with drowned tulips and topped with pansies.

As the guys finished digging a bed, my husband and I started to fill it with large bags of gypsum, soil conditioner and mushroom compost. We do not have a truck or a limitless supply of cash to spend on dirt, so after about 40 bags of dirt dumped into the gaping maw of earth made no dent in the work, we decided to mix in some of the original dirt. You have to use hoes and rakes to mix the compost, soil conditioner, gypsum and clay. It is hard work. We were covered with dirt when we finally came inside at 11:30pm and we were in unspeakable pain. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to peel off soil-caked clothing. It even hurt to lie down.

My only comfort was watching episode 3 of Glee on my Apple TV and drinking tea spiked with vodka (which, by the way, is divine).

How Does Your Garden Grow?: Cercospora Leaf Spot

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:14:00 +0000

Seriously, dear readers, I'm about to toss my remaining hydrangea plants into the kindling pile.

You may recall when they were ravaged by mushroom root rot. Out of 9 original hydrangea, 6 of them survived the mushrooms only to be ravaged by something called cercospora leaf spot which also hitched a ride here from the nursery. The fungus doesn't have the decency to just kill the plants, it keeps them in this semi-weakened form where they are 1/2 yellow, 1/2 green and will not thrive or flower in the spring. The disease attacks the bottom leaves, and not matter how many I ctu off, there always new bottom leaves to get spotted, turn yellow, wither away and die. I'm advised to get a high nitrogen fungicide to kill the spores. I really feel like I'm in a bad relationship with my hydrangeas. We both know it's not working; we've grown apart but no one has the courage to just call it quits.

I'm not ready to break up just yet, though. I'm going to get the fungicide. We've fought through mushroom root rot and ravenous slugs, surely we can beat this leaf spot together. But if we can't, I will have ot put on my Dereon jeans, 6 inch stillettos and sing to those hydrangeas: "You must not know 'bout me/ You must not know 'bout me/ I could have another shrub by tomorrow/ so don't you ever for a second get to thinkin'/ you're irreplaceable...."

Witness the slow and dramatic death of a hydrangea with cercospora leaf spot.

Ten Things I Am Thankful For In My First Year of Non-profit Rehab and Gardening

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:38:00 +0000

Looking back, I have a lot to be thankful for in my first year of single family home rehab and gardening. In fact, this started as a list of 5, then it grew to 10.

1) The extended Homebuyer Tax Credit. For all the people who will be on the other side of those newly renovated houses....keep buying!!

2) My First NSP Closing (more to come)

3) The Development Divas' sense of humor. Sometimes the reality of the enormity of the task we have taken on stresses us all to the breaking point. Still, we manage to smile, or even laugh: "Smile though your heart is breaking/Smile even though it's breaking..." -- thanks, Nat King Cole!

4) Patient family and friends who never complain when I go on ad nauseum about my work or when I spirit them off to look at my properties when we're just supposed to be going to the grocery store.

5) Really great real estate partners. There are a lot of posts here about real estate professionals who are behave less-than-professionally, but our partners (agents, inspectors and assorted consultants) are really a hard-working, fun group of top-notch experts who are driving our program to success.

6) Funny, friendly and unforgettable neighbors. From Rottweiler Phone Neighbor to the great kids on Gopher Pause Lane to all the others who just stop to wave, gossip or demand that I not put a renter on their street, all the neighbors make sure this work is never boring.

7) Our continued safety. I make light of crime, but I know we are all very lucky that we have not had so much as a frightening near-crime experience.

8) The varied decorating ideas I get from touring houses: How about putting roofing shingles inside the bathroom? Rustic!

Or using your kids' hands to spruce up the ceiling?

Or even documenting your love of live band music mural-style?

9) Pansies that don't stop blooming.

10) Smug, home-made, home-grown food.

Meetings: My Kryptonite

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:56:00 +0000

Meetings are like my kryptonite. They drop into the workday, and with the sheer power of hot air and wasted hours, threaten to derail all semblance of productivity for the day.

My department of Development Divas (yes we are all women! Holla!) is constantly having a planned or impromptu meeting. There are also conference calls, vendor interviews, vendor coordination meetings and meetings with all of our local three-legged race jurisdiction partners. It's a wonder we can get anything done at all. Add to this that I am a horrible meeting participant. First, if the meeting is too early in the morning (before 10am) I am likely to show up wearing oversized sunglasses and clutching a huge cup of coffee like a real estate version of Rachel Zoe. Second, regardless of the meeting's start time I can only concentrate for 30-45 minutes at a stretch. After that, I start fiending for my Blackberry. When I've checked all emails, Facebook, and maybe even played a surreptitious game of Brickbreaker, then I start planning my next meal, my next outfit, or my next social outing. I start making off-topic stream-of-consciousness observations to myself: gee, her eyebrows look great; where did she get that lipstick; I wonder if he knows his socks don't match; my but she's a loud talker, I can't imagine her volume level when she's actually upset or maybe she's asserting her dominance over us by screaming I would have felt more comfortable if she'd just peed in the corner and marked her territory in that way at least it's not my office; I'm getting a headache; I think I'm hungry; and so on.

After an hour, I become like a fish heaved out of water. I can't stay still; I shift around in my seat; I make excuses to get up and walk around. If it were at all appropriate I would fall to the floor writhing and gasping for air.

Am I the most dramatic personification of Short Attention Span Theater ever or does anyone else agree that meetings and conference calls are life-force-leeching necessities of the working world?

Holla if you hear me!

Legally Blonde/Flippin' Birds

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:38:00 +0000

"Legally Blonde" hit the theatres when I was in law school. Elle and her world were absolutely not real reflections of our own, but they were tinged with a heavy enough stain of truth to be a good parody and to remind us to lighten up a bit. The thing I found most endearing about Elle was that she mixed common sense practicality with an innate intelligence. She didn't lose herself in the weeds of philosophical purity; she got the job done with no-nonsense observations: "Happy people just don't shoot their husbands" and "the rules of hair care are simple and finite", hard work and a great pair of shoes. In my acquisition work, I am caught in a schism between opposing acquisition strategies that make me wish for some of Elle's Cosmo instincts that light the path from a wet perm to a murder conviction.

Remember when I wrote about the 2 battling acquisition strategies in our camp? There was one school of thought that wanted houses in great condition. These houses would cost a little more, but because they only required light renovations and were in desirable neighborhoods we could acquire them and heavily subsidize the purchase price for middle income families. The second school of thought wanted to leave the almost-ready homes for owner occupants to buy directly from the banks and asserted that the best use for government funds would be to buy houses that no one wanted, fix them up and return them to the market. We thought we could strike a nice balance and pick up houses that would satisfy both philosophies smorgasbord-style. That works in some areas, but not in the ones I am project managing. The market today is an entirely different animal than it was 6 months ago. In a race to cash in on the $8000 federal first time homebuyer tax credit, owner occupants have crowded back into the market. Investors smell the bottom and have come roaring back as well. The houses that are in great condition fly off the shelves like marked down Jimmy Choo slingbacks.

Thinking about all of the houses I have bid on or put offers in on only to lose makes me feel like Elle in Legally Blonde in the scene when she walks into the Harvard Halloween party underdressed as a Playboy Bunny: I'm doing all the right things in an environment that has totally changed and here I am wearing bunny ears in a shark tank. Just last week, I spent ALL DAY touring houses on Wednesday. I spent 2 hours on Friday preparing all of the prices for the 9 offers we wanted to put in. After I sent them to him, our agent told me that we had “missed our window of opportunity” for the week because we had taken too long to put in offers. Why didn't I give him the numbers on Thursday, you ask? Because on Thursday of that week I spent all afternoon touring another county with a different agent. I got her our offers on Friday too. One agent (selling a house that was so clean I could have slept in it that night) said that the Seller was awash in offers and wouldn’t accept anymore. The Seller stopped accepting offers?! What is this? 2005?! Fine. I haven’t heard back about the other houses yet, but our agent gently suggested that we increase our offers to listing price or better.

Surely higher offers would increase our success rate, but HUD’s regulations require that NSP participants pay at least 1% below appraised value. Without an appraisal, we have to rely on comparative market analyses to bid over the listing price and hope that we are still within range when an appraisal comes in. Yes, we do stipulate that if the property appraises for too little, we have the right to back out of the transaction but that makes our offer less palatable as well.

More importantly, if we are losing houses to owner-occupants who just got the deal of their lives, then so be it. I tried to be neutral about where I stood in the first post about this dilemma, but I think it's fair to say now that I am firmly aligned with the buy-busted-houses camp. We have never considered ourselves in competition with owner-occupants who don't mind giving a home a little TLC. However, my fear is that investors might be re-entering the market to buy and hold until the prices rebound. If they do that, the houses will remain vacant or may be rented to people who are not interested in being a stabilizing influence in the neighborhood. Not all investors are speculators with little regard for neighborhood health. Still, some of hardest hit neighborhoods have suffered deeply at the hands of unscrupulous investors and mortgage fraud schemes during boom and bust years (click here for an informative video on how mortgage fraud has destroyed communities in Atlanta, Georgia's West End neighborhood). However, the tightening of the market makes it increasingly more difficult for non-profits to meet the tight timelines imposed by HUD for the use of NSP funds. If you don't use it, you lose it and local governments are rightly exorcised at the possibility of losing federal funds that their neighborhoods desperately need.

No one has written the Legally Blonde version of low to middle-income housing rehab yet. The heroine will wear Puma, not pumps and I suspect she'll know her way around a wet saw (I'm talking to you, Paula and Angela). She'll be able to sweet talk ornery agents, quote mortgage payments off the top of her head, rattle off obscure HUD regulations and secure easy funding from commercial lenders with high loan-to-value ratios. Her love interest will be a struggling British primary mortgage lender with a heart of gold played by Colin Firth.

With the small screen being deluged in reality rehab and design divas, Hollywood has got to give us a development doyenne who is fictional enough to be funny but real enough to inspire. The story could revolve around the protagonist becoming proficient in buying and rehabbing houses in a subdivision where all the streets area named after birds. Her love interest will be a primary mortgage banker with a heart of gold played by Colin Firth. It'll be called "Flippin' Birds" (get it? get it? ha!). All right, Hollywood, start writing. As I wait for the premiere, I'll be stacking up homes that not even the "we buy ugly houses" people want. Sigh. Comic relief, please!

And THEN, Y'all...AND THEN....

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:44:00 +0000

Well, let me just start at the beginning. I buy foreclosed houses. I don't always buy houses that I would want to live in, but houses that someone would want to live in. This particular house falls in the latter category. In my opinion, the floor plan is suboptimal, it needs a lot of work and more vision than I currently have, plus 2 yippy dogs live next door. We had been unenthusiastically going back and forth in negotiations over this house when the seller finally decided to accept our offer. I did not celebrate. But I did complete the rest of the post-acceptance process: ordered a work write-up and an appraisal and sent in the approval form to the County. By this point in the process, we have spent many staff hours and sunk costs into the property. This is also the house that befouled my Calvin Klein suit with spiderwebs. All so that the County can send me a curt email: "123 Crappy House Lane is in a flood plain." Huh?! BOOOO!!! We check for flood plains before we go to all of this trouble, but recent apocalypse floods in the metro area have altered all of the flood plain maps, so sometimes unpleasant surprises do still arise.

I instructed our agent to please pull the offer. We were well within our due diligence period and didn't want to sink any more time or money into this property. Our agent, who has put in far more work on this offer than the listing agent has, completely understood and told the listing agent, who is also the listing agent for another property we have an offer in on, to please pull the offer.

And THEN y'all, AND THEN the listing agent wrote our agent a superstank email and copied me on it (unprofessional!). Essentially, she expressed disbelief that the house could be in a flood plain (like we just made it up; like we'd have to make up an excuse to withdraw during due diligence, you silly woman) and then said that we'd have to have all government inspections completed on the 2nd property she is representing before she'll take the offer to the seller on that one. But here's the thing: that's a crappy house too. I'd have bought it if the seller had accepted the offer, but I'm not going to beg her to take the offer to the seller. That particular house is half-brick, half-cinder block, needs all new everything and is not in what one would call a desirable neighborhood. So boo to you, lady. Now you can sit on both of those clunkers. Let me know how those commissions are flowing.

I'm mostly bitter because her attitude was totally out of all proportion to the slight. Real estate is unreliable and fickle in these times, especially in the foreclosure market. To prove how much up and down we go through in a day, here is my house tally from this workday:

Offers accepted by the seller: 4
Offers accepted and then pulled by the seller: 1
(This was on a house I salivated over; and this is the second time the seller has pulled my winning bid on this house. The second time! But did I stink up the room with my reply? No, I sweetly gave thanks for the opportunity to be turned down again and asked to be held as a back up. Because I have home training.)
Offers accepted and then pulled by the buyer: 1
Net contracts for the day: 2

Real estate thing is a capricious undertaking in a small world, people. No need to get nasty; long memories cement bad reputations.

Post-script: the second house, the one the listing agent created all new hoops for us to jump through, has just gone through a price reduction -- to the price we originally offered. Are we going to reinstate our offer? No. See what ugly gets you? A big steaming bowl of nothing.

I Am Too Pretty For This....

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:18:00 +0000

Standing on the porch of an empty and foreclosed house after a government meeting that featured lots of yelling, I am staring at a lockbox that is so covered in cobwebs that I think it might be leftover Halloween decorations. I'm wearing a suit. It's Calvin Klein, people. I don't even like being out here in Calvin Klein. But here I am. Standing on a porch by myself in clear contravention of the boss of me's rules about visiting houses alone. With the time change, it's getting dark quickly.

I feel like I am only kind of breaking the rules since this is actually a visit to a house we are in active negotiations on. I'm only here to make a bulleted list of the upgrades we want that might not be obvious to the person doing the rehab estimate such as new entryway flooring, new cabinets, new bathroom vanity, take down the dated arches in the dining room hallway, etc. I'm still going to be chastised for being out here, but the real problem is this ridiculous spider web. I don't even have a tissue or a branch. And it's getting dark; and there are snoopy neighbors about so I can't stand on this porch forever. I whisper heartfelt regrets to Calvin, tell myself that I am too pretty for this, and work the lockbox through the spiderwebs. What's worse is that I'm wearing a thick tacky lip gloss that reaches out for all airborne debris and plasters it across my mouth. Even though my mouth was nowhere near the door I felt like the entire web was draped on my lips. I am writing this hours later and I am still wiping my mouth.

As I walk into the house, I remember that there is no electricity so if I close and lock the door for security, I'll be standing in the dark. I hate foreclosed houses. I go back to my car for my flashlight, see the work gloves which I foolishly left in the car during the cobweb battle and go back to the house. I switch on the flashlight, close the door, and the place suddenly wreaks of wet carpet. Every room now seems to have been recently occupied by squatters. Why are there branches on the floor in one of the bedrooms? Who left clothes in the bathtub? My bravado is melting away into swirling visions of me and my Calvin suit being tortured to death over long days in this stinking dark house. Ack! I started to walk more quickly and make my rehab declarations out loud in an effort to make some noise and to remember what to write down when I was back in the safety of the car, "New flooring in the downstairs hallway, all new light fixtures, clean up the ceiling in the hot water heater closet, all new interior doors..." .

Back on the porch, I felt more secure but I was faced with the trauma of replacing the webby key in the lockbox. Oh, Muhammad Ali, I am too pretty for this.

Crime is Cramping My Acquisition Style

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:49:00 +0000

You can probably tell from some past posts that when I have a few hours available, I will sometimes hop in the car with my HUD key, list of addresses and GPS to take quick tours of 5-7 hours at a time. I find this is an efficient method of reviewing houses because it doesn't require me to spend time calling listing agents and begging them to grant me access to their properties and it doesn't require that I coordinate my schedule with several other over-committed people so we can go out as a group. I can just go, check out the houses and go home to play Deal or No Deal with HUD. Easy.

As usual, it seems as though things can never remain very easy for very long. A spate of random shootings is putting the cabosh on my impromptu solo viewings. A co-worker sent an email with 4 or 5 scary headlines about random shootings to the CEO and copied the Development Divas. Our director immediately replied that we were all banned from visiting houses by ourselves. I argued that although the shootings were unexplained they were not particularly random -- what was some dude doing shuffling around in front of a gas station at 2:30am anyway? That's certainly not when I do my house hunting. Also, when I go look at houses by myself I lock the door behind me instead of leaving it wide open as so many agents do. With her patented "Toddlers" argument style from the Great Pool Debacle of 2009, my director told me that locking the door was of little utility because if someone has been squatting inside of the house then I wouldn't be able to make as quick an escape if the door were locked. Preening from that tautological victory, she then laid out in detail the unexplained double murder last year of 2 on-site agents at a new subdivision in the metro region.

I don't take these dangers lightly, but statistically it's more dangerous for me to drive to work every morning than to go see vacant houses alone. So I told her I'd think about it. She said she'd tell my husband and see what he thought about my risky behavior. I exploded, "He's not the boss of me!" Sometimes the most juvenile response is just the most appropriate.

That evening, I told my husband the story. At the end, when I was expecting support, he just blinked and said, "You do realize that she actually is the boss of you, right?"

Smack down.

I told my boss about my husband's reaction the next day. She dissolved into laughter and did the cabbage patch right there in my office. I'll be safe, but I'll be salty.

CONFIDENCE: Thank you, Muhammad Ali

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:04:00 +0000

Usually when I am feeling low I like to think of \lyrics from "Sound of Music": "I have confidence in sunshine/I have confidence in rain/I have confidence that spring will come again/besides which you'll see I have confidence in me!"

But yeah, this whole work overload/nervous breakdown thing is getting to me. So I had to turn to a slightly stronger character for inspiration: Muhammad Ali. Whenever I feel like the world is closing in, all eyes are on me; all accusing fingers are pointing at me; I'll never close on another house again and my perfect little birthstone will sit vacant forever I just channel The Greatest. And he says:

"There's not a man alive who can whup me.
I'm too fast. I'm too smart. I'm too pretty.
I should be a postage stamp. That's the only way I'll ever get licked."

Hells yeah. I AM too smart. And too fast. And too pretty. I will buy houses, make them desirable, safe and code-compliant. And I will SELL THEM. And then the USPS will have to put ME on a stamp. Because that is the only way I'll ever get licked.

Back to the grind. I have 15 offers pending. 2 houses under contract and about 70 houses under review in 3 jurisdictions. I closed three condos in an unNSP-related program on a Friday evening 2 hours after everyone else had left the office. I am overseeing the resale of 11 condos in that same program and marketing 11 more for sale. I closed refinancing on 3 houses and need to arrange financing for the 2 I have under contract. I am helping to organize a meeting about a county's code rewrite, a roundtable with a Congressman and am assisting in the sale of a multi-family property. But I'm feeling pretty good. I may just float like a butterfly...and sting like a bee.

The Enemy is Me

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:39:00 +0000

For instance, a senior associate called me into her office one afternoon to go over some documents. I brought the documents with me all paperclipped because the partner we were working for hated staples. After making me sit in her office while she finished her personal call for 20 minutes, she grabbed the documents from me, threw back her head and started cackling, “Ha, ha, ha, you’ve never worked for me before. I hate paperclips!” all the while ripping off the paperclips and throwing them around like confetti. “Hate them! Hate them! Hate them!”

I kind of just stared at her blankly because this kind of nonsense was par for the course (and actually quite mild in comparison to other antics) in BIGLAW during my tenure there. But the point is this: I just had a similar experience but the crazy person was ME!! An inspector brought me beautiful full color rehab reports on a few properties to review, but as I started to sift through them I realized that in his haste to give me these beautifully packaged reports he put the pictures for House A with the report for House B. I just started laughing, took the reports apart and starting flinging the report covers and bindings around my office. Now I slip on plastic report covers as I move around my 10x10 office.

I think the stress is getting to me.

3 Jurisdictions + 3 Launches = 1 Exhausted Project Manager

noreply@blogger.com (YG&B) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:43:00 +0000

Warning: My frustration level is about THIS HIGH. So, if reading someone ranting and raving, complaining and whining on a Friday is not your idea of a good time, check me next week when perhaps I will be a little more Mary Poppins because right now I am feeling more Ursula than Ariel.

Today's Calculation of Frustration: 3 Jurisdictions + 3 Program Launches + 2 Stroppy Bureaucrats)/2 Well-meaning Micro Managers = 1 Exhausted Project Manager on the War Path.

No sooner than I write a post about liking workaholics that I darn near have a weeklong nervous breakdown from work overload. And a real estate agent we work with to buy houses just called to see my "workaholic" and raise me a foreclosed home tour from 3pm to 8pm on Monday night. I folded.

As you know, we were finally given the go ahead to get started buying houses. And about 2 weeks after getting the "clear to launch" our local government partners have already jumped out of pocket, starting running around the room and generally riding herd. They were requesting face-to-face meetings and calling before 10am with idle threats. Please, if you want to effectively threaten me, wait until after 11am. Before then, I can only sort of listen and nod with the vague understanding of someone whose mind is still in the morning mush stage.

Now I have had time to absorb all that has happened. And here are my generalized responses:

Dear Jurisdiction 1, you have a lot of nerve. You have given me a sliver of the toughest, most crime-plagued neighborhoods in the city with a housing stock that is older than the Union itself and asked me to turn it around in the blink of an eye. With 5 dollars. You are delusional. You have also requested that I only sell, not rent, the houses. Oh my dear sweet partners, I would love to take you on a daytime tour of these neighborhoods where an unfamiliar car draws young men out of their houses, where young women are actively marketing their wares and where a news van just hangs out waiting for the next story.

Rehabbing for neighborhood stabilization reminds me of gardening. Although I may think begonias are beautiful and have a deep desire to have them in my garden, if I just plunk a few down in my hard, weed-choked soil and walk away, they will die. I have to prepare the ground. I have to pull weeds, mix nutrients in the ground and make sure the plant will have the right sun/shade mix so that it will thrive. It's the same with scattered site rehab. We do not have enough money to buy out entire blocks or neighborhoods and change the very nature of the soil, so we have to choose ground to sow that is somewhat ready for planting. I drove through neighborhoods earlier this week that were heartbreaking. Most of the houses were abandoned, vacant, boarded up or in deep disrepair. It was in the middle of the day, but no one seemed to be at work or at school. There was a sense of listlessness and isolation tinged with menace. What am I supposed to do over there, dear readers? Buy 3 of the 10 empty houses I can see without turning my head? Let's say I could get them rehabbed without having to replace everything in the house multiple times due to theft. Now they are ready for sale. Who will buy them? In my town, lucky "urban pioneers" get robbed when they are not at home; the unlucky ones are assaulted in their homes, pistol whipped in front of their children and then robbed by roving bands of dysfunctional and untethered young men. The jurisdiction is apoplectic about the possibility of renting the houses, so what then? Shall we let them sit empty for 12 months or more? Is pretty blight better than ugly blight? I think blight is blight. Here is my suggestion, Jurisdiction 1. Let me work in a slightly wider sliver so that I can get into neighborhoods that are actually tipping point neighborhoods and not tipped over neighborhoods.

Dear Jurisdiction 2, please do not tell me about how I need to be buying more houses more quickly when you have a 30 day minimum approval period for acquisition. It is not 2008. We are not the only people out there buying houses. There is no such thing as a 30 due diligence period in a residential home sale. That sort of nonsense just kills deals. The banks could care less that we are a non-profit working with the county's NSP program. You may have heard the phrase "money talks, bs walks." It's still true.

Dear Jurisdiction 3, bless your heart. You are so in earnest to get everything right with crystal clear "processes" that you will ne-e-e-e-ver get started. Never. AND because you are passive-aggressive, you COLD IGNORE the emails I send you that contain clear-cut action items in them. Action items that we previously agreed to. I have spent/wasted about 35 hours hunting for houses, putting in offers on houses, sitting in conference calls and meetings and writing 11 million different lists and spreadsheets for you. I am all out of effort in this relationship. I need you to put your back in it, too. Until you can meet me halfway, I am putting you on ice.

So yeah. Working for governments is like being bound up in red tape, dropped into the English Channel and being told to swim for the shores of Calais. Fast. Or being in a 3 legged sack race -- too many limbs, too close together with too little coordination. We get to the finish line, but we don't get there quickly and after making so many stumbles on the way to the goal, our hair is a mess, our clothes are filthy and the people who opted out of the race (the investors) went and ate all the cake while we we were madly hopping about the fairground.

On days like this I feel like a flailing swimmer, flapping about in the ocean with a life jacket on spending way too much energy just to keep her head barely above water. Add to that the fact that I have been having fond memories of my former life at the law firm when at 8:30pm I would be preparing to order a sashimi dinner on the client, here I am digging into my bottom drawer to make saltine and peanut butter crackers. It's a lifestyle choice that I consciously made and through all of the irksome obstacles, I am much happier here in this ocean of hyperactive ambitions than I was there in that cesspool of dashed dreams. But still. No one told me I was signing up for a 3-legged race.