Cleaning, Cleaning and More Cleaning...

Given that the house was so dirty from having sat empty, I decided to hire some help and get it cleaned before we moved in.

I estimated it would take two people about three to four hours to do everything--clean bathrooms, wipe baseboards, clean inside cabinets and drawers, vaccuum, mop and wash the windows.

I've never lived in a house this large.  Silver Spur Estate is 4,400 square feet--that's A LOT of space.

It took the two women seven hours to complete almost everything.  They were here an hour when the lead told me they wouldn't be able to get everything done and we slashed the windows off their to do list.

I understand now why people with big homes have live in maids.  Cleaning this place is going to be a second job for me!

As I walked around the house, I realized I need to put together a cleaning schedule so I can do a little something everyday and it won't be daunting.

Eventually, I do want to hire some help, but right now, we need to spend our money on some essential and urgent home items.

Signing Day!

We met Ron at the house at 5:30pm to sign papers and take possession of our BIG new responsibility.

Afterward we stood in the driveway and watched the sun go down.

The Waiting and the Miracle

I'm cool waiting in line at a store.  I chill when waiting for friends who are late.  I don't even mind waiting in traffic.

However, for me there's nothing worse than waiting for something that was supposed to already have happened.  Getting the documents to move into this house fell into this category.

Being the planner that I was, I had worked out a schedule which would have us cleaning up the new place the first weekend, moving my items into it the second weekend of May and moving Todd's items in the third weekend in May.  This plan would get me out of my townhouse by the required date and get Todd out of his place and more importantly, his storage units before he was charged to rent them another month.

May 1 came and went.  I practiced patience.

May 7 came and went.  I practiced patience, but nervous energy was busting out everywhere.  I was tapping incessantly and tossing and turning and gritting my teeth at night.

If this think didn't happen the next week, there would be no way to meet our schedule, not to mention, if it fell through we had no back-up plan--nowhere to move.

The whole next week the seller's attorney had the paperwork.  We kept being told, he'll look at it tomorrow, then when tomorrow came, we'd hear that it would be tomorrow again.  This repeated from Monday until Friday.  On Friday, we were told he'd have it to us by the end of the day.

Since our attorney would still need to review it one last time, we were going to miss out on another moving weekend.

May 14 came and went.

Todd and I thought the attorney was just busy, but then we began to get paranoid.  We later found out it was because the guy who had foreclosed on the house wanted it, not for himself, but he apparently he had a buyer and was trying to keep her from renting it to us so it would go into foreclosure and he could take it and flip it.  The seller had needed the time to consider his offer, but in the end she chose us.

I know not everyone believes in divine intervention, but in this situation, I certainly do.  We had faith that the house was meant to be ours and we put all ou eggs in that basket even when it looked like there was no way it was going to happen.  We're glad we did.

Anxious in April

Everything looked good for us to be able to move in on May 1. 

However, every day in April that passed it seemed that Todd and I learned more about the actual state of the property. I'm not talking about little things, like there's a crack in the driveway, I'm mean BIG, important things like, the mortgage hadn't been paid for two months.

We just decided that it made sense to have a real estate contract attorney review our lease.  Then the seller decided hers should review it also. As the attorneys were hashing out the fine points--one of the note holders filed for foreclosure.

The jerk also sent some renegade to the house who drilled all the locks, broke a door and padlocked the fences.  Nevermind, the house was still listed in MLS, was up for sale, had a pending lease AND was only 60 days past due.

Either the agent or the seller called the loan holder and told him to call off his dogs and lift the illegal foreclosure and get their locks off the gates. 

They didn't do so, but someone bolt cut off the padlocks and we are having to replace all the doorknobs and locks.

Unfortunately it doesn't matter if the loan holder filed the foreclosure illegally since once it's recorded it takes legal action to get it removed (does this make sense to anyone?)

As all of this information is being revealed to us, we started to feel anxious and wonder if this was the right move for us.  However, so many things had lined up serendipitiously to this point, we felt that it was meant to be and forged ahead.

History of the House

I started referring to Silver Spur Estate as "our rescue house" (like a resuce dog) after I heard it's story.

It all started in 1988 when construction started on the 100% custom home.  The Spanish-Mediterranean home was completed in 1990. 

The gold fixtures and aqua carpet in a few of the bedrooms definitely date the home to the late eighties/early nineties. (Yes, I'll be switching those fixtures and the carpet out very soon.)

I don't know much about the first set of owners, but they sold the house in March of 2004 to a bull fighter and his girlfriend.

This lively couple upgraded the home by putting in the gorgeous pool \, hot tub and landscaping in 2005.  Sometime in 2008, they both quit working and decided to move to Arizona. 

They put the house up for sale and I'm not clear how long it was on the market before a couple from Northern California put in an offer that was accepted. Based on other pieces of information, I'm estimating that occured early 2009.  Just before escrow the woman of the couple who were to buy the home became sick and they decided to stay in Northern CA putting the home back on the market at the bottom of the housing slump.

Another couple came in and made a short sale offer that the bull fighter and his girlfriend accepted because they had already bought a foreclosure in Arizona.  While the loan holders considered the proposal, they moved ahead with their plans to move to Arizona in January 2010.

In the meantime, a very sad event took place.  The bullfighter died unexpectedly in March, leaving his now wife with the burden of two homes. 

Shortly thereafter, the loan holder announced that the short sale was not approved.

With no prospective buyers and huge mortgage and maintenance costs, the home was about to become another fatality of the down housing market when we came along and rescued it.

In many ways we feel that we were destined to have this home.

NOTE: All of this story came from third parties so if any of it is factually incorrect I wrote it not knowing so.  I also left out names to protect confidentiality.

The Second Visit

We met Ronald Brookshire, the seller's agent and friend, at the property.  It was more beautiful than I had remembered it.  Many of the flowers on the property were in bloom and he had gone through the house and knocked down most of the cobwebs. 

Shortly after we arrived, another couple and their agent arrived.  The man started cleaning the pool and spraying the weeds on the driveway.  The woman approached and asked me, "Why are you at my house?"

Confused, I looked at Ron, who explained, "This couple has an offer in on the house, but it's a short sale and the loan holder won't approve it."

They stayed for a little while and had some conversation with the seller's agent, then left.  It was an awkward situation, but we deducted from the discussion that their offer would short one loan holder almost completely.  Ron suggested that they make a counter offer which would pay all loan holder's off completely.  (We found out the next week that they weren't prepared to pay that amount and walked away from the deal.)

We left the home feeling confident that it was meant to be ours.

One Phone Call

After a weekend of looking at potential homes to rent that had been lived in hard--think stained carpet, banged up walls, worn-looking--our resolve to get into our own place was renewed. But we had no idea what to do next.

Thankfully, Todd made a phone call.

He had noticed that the Silver Spur Estate was still coming up in the MLS listing and that the price had been dropped by $50K, so he picked up the phone and asked the agent if the owner might consider renting the property.  He said she might and agreed to meet us out at the property to discuss the possibility.

That phone call that changed everything.