OY the DRAMA!

Ok - so we have FINALLY closed on the house. And oh what a drama it was. :) and truthfully none of the drama was caused by the bro. :) scary!

So... friday morning we head to settlement at the lawyer's office. (P) And my real estate agent (D) meets us there. the buyers of the old house are clients of his as well, so it was all a friendly happy situation. Making jokes, signing things etc. :) settlement on the new house was sched. for 9. Well, by 915 when we finished signing all the paperwork for the old house, the sellers of the new house had not shown up yet. So D calls them and finds out they thought settlement was still scheduled for 2pm. He reminds them of the new time and they say they are on their way.

In the mean time, we are discussing escrow issues. The electrical box had not been fixed prior to settlement and so we had requested $250 in escrow to cover repairs if the seller did not take care of it. Well at one point a few days prior, my brother was talking to the seller (J) and she told him that at one point she had decided to spray paint the firebox of the fireplace. (umm... not a good idea eh?) So we are suddenly scrambling to find out if this is toxic, if there's a problem etc. We put in a request that an additional $750 (total of $1000) be put in escrow to cover repairs if it was found to be a safety hazzard. Instead of responding, the seller's agent (ass) :) decided that the since the paint stores he called told him it would just flake off when a fire was lit, he was gonna go light a fire and test it. Fine by us really since if the house burned down, it was still J's. :) so heburned a fire for 3 hours in the FP and said there were no problems. We still asked for $$ in escrow to be there in case a professional fireplace inspection stated it would need to be professionally taken care of.

So around 1015 seller and her agent show up. Now, you have to picture this agent. He's HORRIBLE. He looks like a cross between a marine and Tony Soprano. He comes in dressed in khaki shorts and a tropical shirt with BAGRAM embroidered on the chest. The shirt is unbuttoned to the navel, with his full hairy chest poking out. And he's wearing the heavy gold chain with cross. He's the epitome of the sleezy defense lawyer. He wouldn't let J speak. and he was AGGRESSIVE!!! She sat there all cowed looking. Sometimes P would address mom and J and mom would answer and then he'd jump in and start talking for her. Most we got from her was a Nod or a head shake. It was insane. So we bring up the escrow issue again. They said that $1000 was extreme and way too much $$. (Please realize that this $$ was in escrow it wasn't a credit. if the fireplace company says 'no problem' the money goes back to J anyway) They only wanted to give us $250. Finally we split the difference at $750 total. 250 for electical and 500 for the FP. Then the argument over who would pay for the FP inspection cropped up. guy was saying OH NO!! this is part of typical homeowner inspection stuff you guys have to pay for it... rather than start an argument D said he'd pay it out of his own pocket just so we could move on.

THen more fun begins - mom is signing all the paperwork. In the meantime P is asking J if "this is her" on some documents. You see the house had been in foreclosure since may 20. (This was never disclosed to us.) We found out later of course, but figured the ass didn't disclose it so as to make sure his commission was higher. (figuring we'd lowball a foreclosure house.) Anyways she confirms it's her. At this point we've signed every thing so P let's us go. D stays behind to make sure everything else goes smoothly. He called me about half an hour later. Apparently, it wasnt just the disclosure. She had a $250,000 judgement against her for a failed business or something. A commercial venture. BUt our guess is the house was collateral of some kind. They never disclosed it, but the lawyer foundi t about 2 days before closing and really scrambled to get everything figured out so the sale could go through. So outside Ass corners D and starts laying into him. Yelling at him because D's clients were talking to Ass's clients and shoiuldnt' have been.. (what is this? a trial or civil suit? I live aroudn the corner I stopped to say hi.) what he was really pissed about was that J opened her mouth and told my bro about the fireplace and he couldn't just shrug it off or get away with it. Then started yelling at D about how the client got NO $$ out of the deal and it wasn't fair to her etc. I think they were trying to keep the judgement quiet so she would get $$ from the sale. But she got NOTHING out of the sale of her house and probably still owes more. Oh well, not our problem. We are in the house fine. THe flooring guys are doing a FANTASTIC!!! job of putting in the new laminate floors. (bellmanflooring.com)
and things are going well. :)

ON another note - I agree completely with minijaxter, it's sad when you can't say what you want for fear of reprisals, and that even when you use pseudonyms etc you feel restricted because of other people. It's a shame. But the new locales of certain folk are in my side bar - under their new names with no reference to their old... :) i'll stick around! :)

*HUGS* to all and thank the GODS that's over... :)