Rip Van Winkle Bear Is Back!

Welcome back Bear, I look forward to seeing you at York. Don't leave us hanging what happened next.

Scott Smith

"This can't end well." 

 

Mike, you're starting to get the picture of why the stress of this probably took five years off my projected life span!

 

But just like back in my fighter jock days, I had a "flight plan" that I had been working on for about 5 years in this instance with a well-defined target at the end of the tunnel (forgive the mixed metaphor, please), an enormous basement for the dream layout, a nice house on top of it, with a view that both of us could enjoy for the rest of our days. 

 

When you have a flight plan, the flight doesn't always get flown according to the plan.  Unexpected circumstances sometimes cause us to make some "minor adjustments" enroute!  In this case, the "Crash of '08" and a builder who got into a cash crunch and wanted to collect the best "lot premiums" before selling out their remaining land to another builder, caused me to make some quick decisions. 

 

The target was just coming into view, and although I was on fire, I didn't haul all these bombs out here just to jettison them in the ocean!  My gut reaction was to press on.  I'm a risk taker by nature and goal driven to the point of obstinance.  A sane person would have recognized reality and turned back to fight another day, but instead I altered course a bit and decided that if I had to "punch out" I would be able to plan for a soft landing as I was floating down in the chute!  And anyway, by definition, I'm not a sane person!

 

ThisCan'tEndWellBear

 

You got it backwards Bear. I'm the one who's being sued!

 

But you're doing a great job with the story. This is like the old Saturday matinees, where you had to come back next week to find out what happened.

 

We can probably shorten that process by a couple of beers next week (which I'm looking forward to and will be glad to buy).

 

Gerry

Brother Gerry,

 

I'll take you up on the beers!

 

The story gets better down the road and it involves a lawyer and some sweet revenge!  I know you'll like that part!

 

ThisCan'tEndWellBear

Scott,

 

I figured that eventually you'd show up for this party, fellow risk-taker!  Can't wait to see you guys at York.  Don't forget to pack your hat!

 

ThisCan'tEndWellBear

So Bear, are you still retired, or how many flights a week are you making?

I'm looking forward to the third installment...

Bear, a real risk would have been to drag Jophie to the new house after it was built!  But, although you may not be sane, you're definitely not dumb!   

Well...I can see that this has become at least a 2-parter in the pages of OGR. Shall we use your forum posts as the working manuscript? 

 

See you at York, Captain.

I figured that eventually you'd show up for this party, fellow risk-taker!

I am going to concede that I have been beaten. I have hidden a lot of trains. I have had to sneak in dozens of train purchases but I have never had to hide a 5 figure real estate down payment. We should call you KingBearRisktaker for that one.

Scott Smith

Jim,

 

I haven't been flying much.  Just don't have the time or the bucks to spend on it right now.  I am a member of the Soaring Society of Boulder, but I was so busy last summer, I didn't get to fly gliders at all.  Maybe this summer.

 

I've been back in the real estate brokerage racket since retiring from Continental-United 8 years ago, so that keeps me busy and out of my wife's house.  The business has been crazy since the first of the year.  I've been working pretty much 7 days a week since January, but unfortunately there's a lot of "wheel spinning" involved.  I work mostly with buyers but have a few listings as well.  This is a great time to be a listing agent here! 

 

Builders have been very inactive since the crash but are starting to move a lot of dirt again now.  The inventory of resale homes has been at per capita record lows for the past five years in the entire Denver Metroplex.  For the past year there has been a modest pickup in buyer demand, but the already low inventory has decreased by about 35% in the same time frame which has created an incredible "feeding frenzy" of supply-demand imbalance. 

 

I've worked with buyers recently that tried unsuccessfully to buy four or five houses, getting beaten out each time by competing offers, usually at well over full asking price.   It's gotten very common to receive five or six competing offers per listing and usually within a day of coming on the market.  This led to a lot of wasted effort writing offers before we were able to finally get one under contract!  That kind of feverish activity is typical on the west side of Denver in the under-$300K price point and tapers off slightly as you go east, away from the mountains.  Boulder is just as crazy and it's spreading up and down the Front Range with Loveland, Fort Collins to the north and Colorado Springs to the south getting caught up in the action.

 

I need a vacation!  I'll see you at York.

 

ExhaustedBear

Brian,

 

I lost a lot of sleep over that one!  Stay tuned to hear how that finally played out.

 

Rich,

 

I'm flattered, but I think we would have to "sanitize" a lot of it to prevent me from being sued by the builder or get in hot water with the [bureaucratic organization that protects us from ourselves]!  I feel comfortable telling it here on the Forum since we're all friends and nobody would testify against me, would they?!  Plus, Gerry and LocoLawyerErrolGurkinEsquire would surely take my case pro bono, right?

 

ThisCan'tEndWellBear

Scott Smith said,

 

 

I figured that eventually you'd show up for this party, fellow risk-taker!

"I am going to concede that I have been beaten. I have hidden a lot of trains. I have had to sneak in dozens of train purchases but I have never had to hide a 5 figure real estate down payment. We should call you KingBearRisktaker for that one."

 

Well, Scott, it was only a little more than 15 diecast articulated O scale steamers, and for you that's just "kids' play"!

 

I confess it was scarier than heck and I had a lot of sleepless nights.  The 5-figure earnest money deposit was only a small part of the stress, believe it or not.  Wait until you hear some of the other highlights when I see you in York!

 

StillInRecoveryBear

Bear we can't wait until York for installment #3 !!  We are already waiting for both the Lionel and MTH catalogs.. How can we take all the stress !

Glad to hear that this didn't force you out of retirement and back into the cockpit! Lol.

looking forward to seeing you in York

Right, Jim....throw me in that briar patch!

 

ThisCan'tEndWellBear

I'll take a stab at what happened next...

 

Bear designed and built the most expensive house in the history of Del Webb.  Then he finally worked up the nerve to tell the missus about the lost earnest money.  She got so mad at him, she threw a shoe at him.  But in the midst of the argument no one noticed the shoe landed on the gas stove, igniting a huge fire, destroying the entire house.

 

Unfortunately for Bear the insurance company determined the fire cause to be homeowner negligence and refused to pay for anything.  The whole event created an irreconcilable rift in Bear's marriage, leading to a divorce.  Citing the deceit by Bear, the judge awarded Mrs Bear significant alimony and directed Bear to complete the purchase of the Del Webb house so Mrs Bear would have a place to live - without him!

 

 

MitchMike,

You must be an optimist.

Scott Smith

Right on! Loco and I are your team. 

 

You gotta be scared when the lead partners name is Loco. 

 

You're on for the beers. My pleasure. 

 

Gerry

What boggles my mind, Bear, is all the planning for a new house without talking to your wife about it first.  There is no major purchase that my wife and I don't do together.

.....

Dennis

MitchMike,  is that the best you could come up with?!  That's boring compared to the real story!

 

Scott, you crack me up!

 

Gerry, that does give me pause.  I hadn't considered that aspect of this before, but when you look at the membership roster of the Forum, there are a lot of people on here who call themselves "Loco" something!  I guess if the shoe fits, wear it!

 

Brother Dennis....well, I humbly accept your veiled admonishment, but in my own defense, at least in the beginning of all this back in late '05, Jophie and I were in agreement about eventually moving to Anthem Ranch, and we were also of one mind about which floor plan we liked best, the biggest one (me for the train room basement, and she for the general layout of the house). 

 

We were in such harmonious agreement, that she even approved of my buying a smaller house in the same neighborhood in '07 as a hedge against rising future prices that are typical in Del Webb developments as they build out to the best lots last, and also as a rental property investment for all the reasons one would do that anyway (appreciation, building equity, income tax shelter, diversification, etc)  Incidentally that other house has proven to be the best investment of any kind I ever made, except maybe for buying that MTH Brute and cars set!. 

 

If you want the ideal rental property, buy a new house in an up-scale geezer community.  The tenants stay until they die, they always pay the rent on time, and they keep house like Better Homes and Gardens!  The real disagreement that prevented me from telling her about it proved to be the timing!  I know that's a weak defense, but it's the best I could come up with under the circumstances. 

 

You know me, I just like to live dangerously at times!  When I told our favorite niece what I had done, she screamed, "She's gonna kill you!"  I confess, along with all the other stress you'll read about in the next installment(s), I was losing plenty of sleep, literally, over all this!!

 

SweatingAsIReliveThisBear

I see.  We all know it is women's prerogative to change their mind.  Little did you know that the "interim" house was going to become her favorite.

.....

Dennis 

Dennis,

 

Exactly!  The "interim house" we built new in 1993 had two things wrong with it, it had a basement that was too small for my dreams of O scale empire grandeur, and it was a 2-story floor plan with all the bedrooms and full baths upstairs.  We can still go up and down stairs with the best of them, but when you're a geezer, even if only "on paper" you have to plan ahead.  Nevertheless, when I was dangling the bait about moving, it was always about "having a better view", never about "we're getting older and maybe we won't be able to negotiate the stairs at some point", dontcha know?!  Hey, I'm reckless but not STUPID!

 

ThisCan'tEndWellBear

the greatest thing about saying nothing at all is that it cant be used against you.. oh welcome back..but please tell us the  " rest of the story"

Cmon, don't keep us hanging.  Some of us might not be going to York.

Duty calls, like shoveling the walks and driveway so I can get to my next appointment!  (It was 63 degrees yesterday afternoon and by 2:00 in the morning it was 13 and snowing hard!  Welcome to springtime in the Rockies!) 

 

I'll get to the next installment in the next 24 hours, I promise, so just be patient.  This is therapeutic for me, but my main motivation for this is that the vast majority of us train guys are always looking for more "layout real estate" to build or re-build in.  I'd been looking for the big basement in this story ever since I got back into the hobby in the mid-'90s.  For most of us, obsession with buying a basement with a house for your wife up above as an afterthought can and will have unintended consequences, even if you don't have a wife! 

 

In my story, I think you can all picture yourselves in various aspects of the same "pickle", so I tell this yarn not just because it's a good one, but because it might be a cautionary tale for many of my fellow Forumites as you struggle to find the ultimate perfect basement, attic, extra garage bay, or spare bedroom in which to expand your railroading empires.  So listen up, I'll be right back....

 

ThisCan'tEndWellBear

Bear... you certainly have my interest.......I am literally on the edge of my seat!

 

Peter 

Bear,

 

If you were at the York are this week, you would enjoy sitting outside without jacket in 80 degree weather.  Hopefully, next week will be nice as well. 

I guess to get "the rest of the story" we'll have to call Paul Har...., oh wait, he isn't with us any more.

.....

Dennis

Bear,

 

Before Gerry Morlitz and I defend you in a libel suit, I am going to sue you FIRST for making this story at least a three parter and making us continue to wait.

 

And next time, please spell my name right (see below)

 

Erol Gurcan

O gauge train legal expert and a better lawyer than Gerry Morlitz

MTH Railking Imperial expert

Modest guy

 

 

You gotta love it.

 

Gerry

Oh, Erol, advocate extraordinaire and even greater practitioner of the law than your colleague at the bar, Gerry Morlitz, please accept my humble apology for misspelling your august name!  Hail, Erol!  ("Et tu, Brute?")  I owe you a beer, oh Great One!

 

Okay, time to get on with the next installment, so where did I leave us....

 

ZeroDegreeWindChillInAprilColoradoBear

In the beginning of this saga, a day or so after I won the drawing for the right to build the dream basement and dream house on the dream view lot, and when I discovered that Jophie didn't want to move, at least not yet, in panic I came up with a hare-brained idea on how to make it all work.  Figuring that eventually she would want to move to Anthem Ranch as originally planned, I decided to drain almost my entire retirement IRA and pay cash for the house, keeping it as a rental  in a self-directed IRA until the 5-7 year time frame for the origninally planned move rolled around.  Then I could refinance and back out my IRA investment, converting the property back to our personal use.  I know that sounds a little complicated, and it was, but it was a plan, hare-brained or not. 

 

Nevertheless, during all those sleepless nights as the back-hoes and front end loaders were excavating the basement on Quandary Loop, I calculated and recalculated the economics of using the new house as a rental property, I grudgingly came to the realization that not even Ben Bernanke, unlike me, using other people's money, could live with that kind of negative cash flow!  I also came to the simultaneous conclusion that it was never a good idea to put all of one's eggs in one basket, even if that basket were real estate, despite the fact that, as a Realtor, I believed as an article of faith in the wisdom of investing in real estate.

 

That was when I decided to throw in the towel and back out of the deal, leave the earnest money on the table, stick [redacted] with some of the pain, lick my wounds, and drown my sorrows with Gerry Morlitz and Erol Gurcan at Fridays in York!

 

So, that's how it came to be that I was there in the design center with the delectable "design counselor", Christy, as she furioiusly scribbled down my grandiose finish choices for a new house that I secretly believed I would never own....

 

"So, what is that amazing stone flooring in your entryway?  It looks just like the cathedral floors in Europe."

 

"Oh, that's travertine, Mr. Owen"

 

"Can I have that in my house?  I think it would go well with the natural cherry plank floors and that classy granite we picked for all the countertops."

 

"Well, it's very expensive."

 

"Remember, Christy, I said 'money is no object'"

 

"Oops, I forgot, let me check with my manager, I'll be right back."

 

And so it went.  It was really fun!  I figured that since I was walking away from an obscene amount of earnest money that could have been spent on some really nice trains, that for an hour or so, I might as well enjoy myself!  It was like actually being rich!  It was akin to renting a Ferrari for an hour or two and almost feeling like it was really mine. 

 

Then I did the same thing with the subcontractor who installed all the built-in electronics and incidentals like central vacuum systems in the house.  I went for broke....best ceiling-mounted speakers, even above the covered deck, pre-wired for security including cameras (!), central vac, enormous wall-mounted flat screen TVs, HDMI (whatever that is)....well again, I think you get the picture here.  Nothing but the best because "money was no object". 

 

If it was available, I ordered it for the house.  In the process, I had to meet with a representative of the electronics subcontractor at the house.  Since I figured I wouldn't actually be buying the house, I had avoided watching it being built, it just stung too much to think how near but how far my dream's fulfillment had been....  Nevertheless, I met the guy at the construction site.  It was October and the completion date was projected to be just before Christmas.  The floors were in, and more gorgeous than I had imagined when I picked the stuff in the design center.  The granite counters and cherry cabinets were installed, the plantation shutters were being hung on every window as ordered.  It was a very impressive house, even in its as yet unfinished stage of completion.  I began to waver. 

 

About that same time, I knew that if I changed my mind and went ahead with the purchase, I wasn't going to do it as a rental property and pay cash....dumb idea for the reasons stated before.  So I started to wonder if I could actually get a big enough VA loan to limit my cash exposure in the deal to something more sane than draining my IRA.  The builder had offered to pay all my closing costs if I used their in-house lender.  Some quick calculations indicated that it could amount to another 5 figures paid on my behalf by my pals in the sales office if I could qualify for the loan as a self-employed borrower.  Add to that my commission and things started to look more interesting. 

 

I was introduced to the loan officer from the builder's mortgage company.  He seemed like a nice guy, young and eager to please.  When I asked him about doing a VA loan, he started asking me about my military service.  Despite my telling him the truth, he still insisted on thinking I was some kind of hero or something.  I think he must have watched "Top Gun" too many times!  Regardless, I now had an ally working hard for me on the inside at the mortgage company!  (He actually was promoted to regional manager during the time he shepherded my loan through the sticky wickets of the application process) 

 

So, I took a deep breath and began to negotiate what had become the frustrating thicket of applying for a loan in the post-Crash of '08 world.  But now, there was a glimmer of hope that I actually might be able to own this over-upgraded tract home sitting on a big basement with a gorgeous view!  I was afraid to hope for success, but I started to take my financial clothes off for the lender in earnest, hoping against hope now that they might be dumb enough to give me the loan.

 

I won't drag you through everything that could and did go wrong in the frustrating ordeal of trying to get approved for the VA loan.  Despite the efforts of my hero-worshiping loan officer, the lender's processing and underwriting staff were incompetent and what should have taken weeks, dragged on into frustrating and agonizing months of lost paperwork and a chain of broken promises of "just three more documents from you and you'll be approved". 

 

Meanwhile, the house reached completion and final inspection in the middle of December 2011 with me still not approved for the loan!  Now I found myself  in the greatest dilemma of all....when and how to break the news to Jophie?  I still wasn't confident at all that I would get the loan, so if I revealed the house to her and she liked it, I didn't want her to get excited only to have her hopes dashed if the loan didn't go through.  As Christmas approached, I wasn't getting much sleep, and I was so distressed that I didn't even put any trains around the tree, for the first time in 15 years!  Stress was building to enormous proportions.

 

Back in October of 2011, about the time I started to think that maybe I could actually pull of a purchase of the house, the sales staff "back at the Ranch" finally noticed that I had substantially jacked up the sales price of the house during my little visit to the design center!  Dark storm clouds started to form on the horizon.  The sales manager called me to say that due to the cost of all the upgrades, I would have to pony up a much larger deposit!  Oops!  Were they on to me?  At that point, I now wanted to buy the house, but was far from sure that I would be able to get the necessary loan.  They were demanding another $20 grand deposit for the upgrades!  My stress ratcheted up another few notches.

 

So what do you do when you find yourself galloping up a box canyon with the posse in hot pursuit?  You call your lawyer!  You do this especially in this case, since he is a partner in the premier real estate law firm in the state!

 

Since the delay in my loan approval was arguably the fault of the builder's own (incompetent) lender, my attorney convinced the builder that we would only put up an additional deposit if it were fully refundable in the event the loan didn't get approved.  The sales staff grumbled a bit, but backed off.  So, we won that round.  The pressure cooker had eased off a bit for the moment.

 

However, the scariest moment of truth was fast approaching.  Everyone in our family was pressing me to break the news to Jophie about the house, loan approval or not.  Nonetheless, the question that was keeping me awake at night was how to do it?  Fate intervened. 

 

I'm sure you other married people out there will understand this.  When he's in the shower and she's in front of the mirror fixing her hair, life-changing conversations can take place over the top of the shower stall without warning, right?  Here's how this one went one morning between Christmas and New Year's....

 

She said, "Ya know, this house is almost 20 years old, and it's starting to need a lot of work."

 

"Yup."

 

"We really need to remodel the kitchen, put in new baths, add new windows, and maybe even a new roof...."

 

"Yup"

 

"And it needs a new furnace and probably a hot water heater, and weren't we talking about replacing the deck with Trex?"

 

"Yup....and now, I want you to really think about this....are you sure you want to live here while four or five contractors take three or four months to tear the place apart and put it back together again, living in the mess, with plastic sheeting hanging all over the inside and outside of the house, and dust and trash everywhere?"

 

Long pause.

 

"No, not really."  (Wow! She was nibbling at the bait!)

 

"Well, let's do this.  If you'll keep an open mind about it, let's go to lunch one day next week and then go over to Anthem Ranch and take a look at that sales model we both liked so much and see if we might want to move out there after all."

 

Long pause.

 

"Okay, I'll keep an open mind about it, but I really don't want to move.  I like it here."

 

She took the bait, the stage was set for my denouement or painful downfall....

 

To be continued....

 

 

Well now you've got me hooked on thus story.

Bear-  Have you ever thought of writing for series television?  I can't wait for the next episode!  Are you sure your name isn't Cliff Hanger?

 

And I'm curious about your wife's name.  Is that an alternate nickname for Josephine?

wow better than anything on tv.. wait this could be made into a mini series. we will call it. the house at the end of the road

This would be the point my wife would say "great I will bury you on the site".

Scott Smith

I was telling my wife Kathy about this and she wants to know it this is really Bear Owen posting or is this really Jophie that had the Bear buried in house foundation after she found out.

Scott Smith