Rip Van Winkle Bear Is Back!

Brian,

I love that kind of happy ending.  "Hey, Jophie, keep buying those lottery tickets!"

I also like the sub-headlines that read:

"Happy Model Railroader Calls Hikel Brothers with the Good News"

"Owen Tells Famous Custom Layout Builders, 'Pack Your Bags, Boys' You're Coming East!"

"'Quandary Loop or Bust!' Sign Adorns Hikels' Shop on Wheels As It Departs Seattle for the High Desert of Front Range Colorado"

Well, I can dream can't I?!

DreamerBear

This story is pulling me away from all the other topics on the OGR forum.   Many times during the day, I need check this thread for updates on this interesting story.  Please conclude, so I can go back to my normal OGR routine.   

Thanks for the enjoyable diversion.

Actually, MyCousinVinnieBear, it looks to me like you missed your calling. I'm not a trial lawyer, but if you could string out a story like this in front of a jury I think you would do very well.

NotAsGoodALawyerAsErolGerry

Grrrrrrr.  I'm coming after you, Owen. . . . . . 

.....

OutofpatienceDennis

I've commented a few times already, but I just can't get enough.  Bear this is a great story and you tell is very well. 

Dennis et al:

If you think this is suspenseful, try to imagine what this was like for Bear's confidants as this story played out over a period of more than a year.

Craig Shelley wrote:

"Longwindedbear,

Thanks to the Two Mikes....I'm glad you find my suffering to be entertaining!  Actually I'm flattered and almost sorry that I may run out of material before we leave for York next week (sorry Dennis, more suffering for you too)!

By the way, Dennis, "....working hard at being a pain in the butt" seems to be paying off for you!  Kidding actually.  I wish you were coming to York next week, it's been too long, old pal.

Reliving this for you does have its down side, though.  Last night I had a vivid nightmare that I was back in the middle of this mess again and it woke me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with halucinations of levitation!

Stay tuned for news!

PaulHarveyBear

NotAsGoodALawyerAsErolGerry Morlitz wrote,

"Actually, MyCousinVinnieBear, it looks to me like you missed your calling. I'm not a trial lawyer, but if you could string out a story like this in front of a jury I think you would do very well." 

Are you lumping me in with Jody Arias and her counsel?  I certainly hope not.  Her client has succeeded in converting 18 days of testimony about what would otherwise be the hot topic of romance into boring drivel!  Of course, it's not a fair comparison to my story, because in hers, we already knew going in and by her own admission how that one ended!  It couldn't and didn't end well!

YourCousinVinnieBear

Pat,

Your comiseration was and is deeply appreciated!  There were many times during the ordeal that I needed someone to lean on, and you, Jean, Lynn, and Donna were there for me, although Lynn was the one who told me in the beginning that I was insane for building a house without Jophie's knowledge or consent. 

Of course he was right!

So, I guess I better get on with this or Dennis Bracey is gonna kill me if I don't get to the denouement soon!

InsaneSuspenseLadenBear

Bear,

i think your story can go for a few more posting.  Maybe you tell the final chapter at Fridays.  

As for scenarios, we still do not know if your wife said, I love the house, but it is too nice to run trains in it.   Hmmm, maybe that what Scott Smith would be hit with.  

Waitingforthenextchater,

Just when you thought things were getting better....Next episode in the runaway train room saga....

"When we last saw our hapless protagonist, he was seated at his office desk holding a freshly opened FedEx overnight envelope and staring blankly at its contents.  Paraphrasing Jean Shepherd from "A Christmas Story":  ....just when we think all is right with the world, disaster had struck!"

The document I held in my hand was signed by the builder's sales manager who had the very day before just signed the contract amendment which lowered the price of the house by $35,000 to match the low VA Certificate of Reasonable Value from the appraiser.  And now, a day later, across the top of this newly arrived document in bold print was the legend:  "Contract Termination Notice".

I was literally speechless.  And for those of you who know me well, that is indeed a rare occurence!  The guy that had signed this termination notice and FedExed it to me the previous afternoon was the same guy who had executed the contract amendment with me earlier the same day and had shaken my hand!  I was in shocked disbelief at how dishonest and two faced this SOB could be!  Look you in the eye with a smile on his face while simultaneously reaching over your shoulder to stab you in the back!  It was outrageous, but there it was in black and white.  The reason given was "failure to obtain loan approval by the deadline specified in the contract".  It also invited me to the sales office "between the hours of 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM to pick up a check for the full refund of my earnest money deposit!

The irony of it struck me right between the eyes!  Six months earlier with Jophie adamant about not moving and me getting a world-class case of cold feet, I would have gladly accepted the refund of my earnest money and started looking for a different place to build a layout.  But not now!  I had way too much time, emotional energy, suffering, frustration, blood, sweat, and tears invested in this house to let them just walk away from the deal as if nothing of importance had happened to me, especially when it was the builder's own in-house mortgage company that had screwed everything up!

I sat there, angry, frustrated, and feeling helpless, wondering what I might be able to do to stop them.  How could I, a powerless little David, stop a giant national homebuilding corporation Goliath from selling "my house" to somebody else?  I felt very small and alone.  I sat there, still and unmoving for so long that the motion detector in my office, not sensing my presence, actually turned the overhead light off!

My mind churned.  The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.  I thought, "These guys should know it's not a good idea to mess with a Marine!"  But, obviously, they didn't, at least not yet.  I began to believe that they had underestimated me and just how P.O.ed I would be when I got this perfidious letter from them.  They figured, "Hey, just give him his earnest money back and he'll walk.  It's a nice house and we can easily sell it for a higher price anyway."

As I sat there in a slow burn, fuming and spluttering internally, a diabolical little idea started to form in the back of my head, a way I could stop them from selling "my house" and forcing Goliath to wait a few more weeks until I could obtain loan approval for the purchase.  There was no doubt in my mind that despite the abyssmal lack of ethics and morality represented by the termination notice I held in my hand, the builder had the unquestionable LEGAL right to take this action.  It didn't seem to bother them that it was their mortgage company through incompetence and bad faith that had failed to properly process my loan and obtain its underwriter's approval in a timely and efficient manner.  But I had a trick up my sleeve, a great equalizer, that I believed might bring Goliath to his knees and I was plotting about how to employ it.

To be continued....

Bear,

If you had a key, you and your wife should have moved into the house ... under the cover of darkness, of course.  Then you could have claimed squatters rights and watched as they tried to evict you.

Man, this keeps getting better and better, LOL.

Stu

This is the curveball I was hypothesizing may happen.  I am looking forward to reading your next step. 

Stu,

That's an interesting idea, but I hate it when guys in uniform with big guns show up to evict me, that just can't end well for us prospective squatters!

Chris,

Yup, in retrospect, it was so obvious that I should have seen it coming.  Unfortunately for me, they were all so nice, and it looked to me like it would just take a little more time to get the loan approved.  The sales staff people were acting sympathetic about my loan application ordeal and like it was no problem to give me some more time.  I was fat, dumb, and relatively happy despite the loan process....unfortunately I had trusted them!  Lessons Learned:  Always get it in writing!

This was also during the period of time when I kept getting those phone calls and emails from the loan processors and hearing from my insider guy, that we "just need these three more documents and we'll be ready to close next week."  One of those many instances which I remember particularly painfully was when they asked for "just two more documents" guaranteed to tip the balance only to be followed a day or two later with an emailed demand for another NINE!  I felt like Charlie Brown with Lucy repetitively snatching the ball away at the last millisecond.  Charles Schultz must have applied for a mortgage a couple of times before he introduced that theme into his cartoon strip, Peanuts!

I guess someone in the builder's upper management finally looked at another monthly report of houses that hadn't closed yet, found mine in bold red print, and just flat ran out of patience.  Removed from the scene of the action, he plainly and coldly wasn't bothered in the slightest by the fact that I was all of the following, a member of the Realtor community upon which they depended for the sale of their newly constructed homes, a veteran, and a suffering victim of his own in-house lending institution that was so far, fruitlessly processing my loan! 

Making this whole fiasco even more starkly ironic, was the fact that they had offered me all these incentives and inducements to use their own mortgage company.  It was partly my own fault for getting sucked into that by the greed of saving about $20K in closing costs that I would otherwise have had to pay.  As an active Realtor, I could have applied to several trusted and efficient mortgage brokers whom I knew well.  Any one of them could have processed and closed my loan in January or February!  There's a little lesson in that for all of us....what initially looks like the best deal from a financial standpoint, may end up costing you more in the end than you anticipated at the outset!  In retrospect, saving my own sanity would have been well worth $20 grand!

StillSomewhatInsaneBear

Two things...

1) Don't hold out for York to finish this.  Not all of us will be there and we need to know how it ends!

2) I imagine the latest curveball has since been resolved, but had this been realtime, I would suspect Bear would have significant legal recourse.  Sending the termination notice just after doing the amendment doesn't smell right and stinks of bad faith actions.  To me, executing the amendment without issue reaffirmed there was no breach under the terms of the original contract.  Additionally, the fact that they returned the earnest money tells me they recognized they were in the wrong.  Had it been a legit termination under a valid contract term, they would have been in their rights to keep the deposit.  A lawyer could probably restate what I just said much better. 

My guess is the sales manager agreed to adjust the sales price without notifying the proper higher ups.  Then when he did the amendment and the higher ups got wind of it, he was torn a new one.  Somebody at DelWebb didn't like giving up the $35K.  I bet they figured they could find some schlub to by the house at a higher price and would direct him to the DelWebb mortgage arm and miraculously an appraisal would not be needed...

Mitch Mike,

You, my friend, missed your calling.  I don't think a lawyer could have stated the situation better!

I promise not to leave the conclusion to York!  So stay tuned!

You perceptively saw what must have actually happened behind the scenes.  Nevertheless, despite whatever wrath the site sales manager must have faced from some upper level VP, we can't let him off the hook too sympathetically. 

If he had possessed some personal sense of ethics, which he apparently didn't, he might have shown some personal courage and spoken truth to power by explaining the situation with the mortgage company to his boss.  Maybe that would simply have been asking too much of him.  

I like to think that my own urge to self preservation would not be worth the cost of sacrificing my personal sense of integrity in the process.  We can't know at this point what that cost would have been for him....loss of his job, or demotion?  He doubtless felt bad about what he had done, especially when he got my email the next day, but to save his own skin, he clearly caved to corporate pressure and stuck it to me. 

I don't want to overplay "holier than thou" here.  We can all ask ourselves what we would have done had we been in his shoes, but he could at least have warned me about what might be coming and suggested a mutually satisfactory solution for all concerned.  Instead he simply dropped the bomb and figured he could walk away and rationalize his actions later.  It didn't work out that way because he had clearly underestimated my potential for crazy obstinance under fire!  Marines don't give up that easily!

JarheadBear

Bear,

You have the audience coming back for more. I can't wait for the next installment.

To be continued....

Bear,

I might have taken the contract termination as a sign that it was not meant to be.  But it was you living through this emotional roller coaster, Not I.   Hopefully the coward learned a lesson in the end.  Thank you for promising to finishing the story here vs. York.  

Hey, Bill,

If you're driving to York by way of Ferrante's Winery, and have the time, would you please bring us a few bottles (3-4) of Vino Della Casa assuming you have room in the car? (For medicinal purposes only of course!)  But only if you promise to let me reimburse you immediately at York!  Also, please give Judy my best regards, that is if she's still talking to me after this saga!

VinoBlancoBear

Funny, each added response has a different bear by-line........ this guy apparently is gonna feel like every one of thse bears is nawing at his butt!

Mike,

I am not ready to say whether this was "meant to be" or not, you'll just have to keep watching here for the next episode when I can gather the strength to write it later today.

ExhaustedBearGnawingAtMyButtBear

...and thats when Kim Il Un and Richard Simmons entered the negotiations...

AlanBearNeedsHisOwnSubforum-Bear

Craig,

You cracked me up, buddy!

But if they gave me my own "sub-Forum" who could they get to sponsor it....Mike Reagan?

Har!

LMFAOROTFBear

"But if they gave me my own "sub-Forum" who could they get to sponsor it....Mike Reagan?"

Well, Bear,  Mike Reagan might be a better bet that a certain developer and his sales manager!

Good point, Jim!

I thought of another potential sponsor in the interim....Joe Hayter, CEO of Weaver Qualitycraft.  He always told me he hated to get up in front of all of us Forumites and talk to us in the grandstand at York.  I was on him for years to go join a Toastmasters International club so he could learn to speak to groups comfortably, but to my knowledge, he still hasn't taken me up on my advice.  Maybe he would be happy to sponsor the LongWindedBear?!

ToastmasterBear

There is another possibility, Bear.  It may be the sales manager agreed to the 35 grand cut because he planned to terminate the contract and new he would not have to live up to it.

.....

Dennis

Actually, Dennis, I confess that had not thought of that possibility.  However, I think it remote for the following reason:  If they got me out of the picture and put the property on the market for the higher price that I had originally agreed to, ie. incorporating all my top of the line upgrades, they would still have had to deal with the problem of yet another appraisal, assuming the next buyer needed a loan to consummate the purchase.  Even in geezer communities, all-cash buyers don't come along that often!  I think they just looked at the odds, and decided to cave.  Of course they were only giving up their cost of the upgrades, and like most retailers (not train retailers who are in a category of lunacy all their own) they mark that stuff up 100%, so all they were walking away from was their profit on my upgrades when the agreed to renegotiate the price.

Recall that at the time I upgraded the house to the rafters, I didn't believe that I would ever own it.  But as things changed and I decided that I did want to go through with the deal and do it with a low down payment VA loan, I realized that the builder might have a problem with the appraisal, and turns out I was right.  In the final analysis, the low appraisal became a fait accompli and the builder had little choice but to drop the price to match the appraised value.  In a situation like this, you win a few and you lose a few.  In the instance of the appraisal, I won that one, but there were other battles ahead before we could find out who would ultimately win the war!

FightingMadBear

Who needs reality TV when you have "Bear's House Wars"

Hope to run into you and shake your hand at York!

I know who can sponsor the subforum.  The builder.  We will not tell them and send the bill to them via FedEx. 

Hey, Charlie,

I look forward to meeting you at York....I'll be easy to find, just look for a geezer....oops!  Almost everybody at York is a geezer.

Okay, let's do it this way....OGR's Thursdays at Friday's or at the OGR Forum Grandstand meeting Friday afternoon.

LookingForwardToItBear

Good one, Chris!  I literally laughed out loud.  Thanks for making my day!

See you at York,

HibernatingBear

I have Orioles tickets Thursday night, no Tgif for me. I will be in the dusty halls of York all day Friday, but wont be in the Grandstands.

Spill it here...please.

Charlie,  Look for a white haired handsome dude in a leather flight jacket.  Bear always wears it if the weather is less than 72°.

.....

Dennis

By this time we have affirmed that he's "Smarter than the av-er-age bear!" and will win this battle of wits (against the nitwits).

That is how the story ends. They moved to Jellystone park.

Bear,

Ferrante's is about 68 miles north of us. We head East to York. It would not matter anyway because according to their web site they are currently out of stock. If I remember correctly they bottle it later in the year.

How about a few bottles (3-4) of "Vintners White"* from San Sebastian Winery, St. Augustine, FL?

If I know you are going to be at York in October, I will make sure that my wife and I make a trip up to Ferrante's this summer and stock up for you and her.

*Vintners White: Slightly sweet this wine is full bodied and packed with fruity character. After all that is what the Native Muscadine is known for. Enjoy this wine with any highly flavored meal or with your favorite fruits and cheeses.

We will see you at York.

TransporterOfBearsWineBill

This saga is a little bit like "The Canterbury Tales".

Norm

Hey, Craig!

I can't believe that you would rather go to an Orioles game than Thursdays at Friday's with us, your loyal train goober buddies!  That is akin to treason!  You should donate those tickets to charity and head for Friday's on Thursday....here, let me get you an address to send those tickets to....oops, I almost ruined the climax of my story.  Okay, send them to my office, I'll see to it that they go to a deserving recipient.

NotExactlyAnOriolesFanAnywayBear

Dennis,

Har!  I'll take the "handsome" part.  That was politically expedient of you! 

They say that some fighter pilots will even leave their flight jackets on in the shower, especially if there's a mirror somewhere in the room! 

But I do take exception to the "white haired" part of your description....there's still some pepper in all that salt if you look close enough.  Hope it's under 72 degrees at York so Charlie will be able to pick me out of the crowd!!

FiftyMissionStareBear