Get comfy, the ride's a long one.
It seems the Big Autumn Project has wound up pretty much on schedule with the winding up of Autumn.
Since there is enough tension, suspense and stress in the world, I'll skip ahead to the end and let you know the result: It's a'ight. Not the huge Scrooge McDuck torrent of coins and currency that I envisioned when I nodded assent to this way back in July, but not the professional cataclysm I feared back in September. It's just OK. Which is fine. I'm cool with not having mine arse, in the career sense, handed to me. There should be a very handsome payoff a couple of years from now, and I'll derive a few bucks over the next few months, which is nice.
That said, let me tell you the whole story, abbreviated-style.
Sometime last summer a client schedules a meeting with me. At this meeting is a guy new to my client's organization. This client has been, up to now, making a very comfortable living selling parcels of land in parts of FL as the begin to boom with our growing population of Snowbird Tax Refugees. But empty parcels are growing ever scarcer and he hired this new guy to help him diversify into affordable condo conversions (not the mega-luxe stuff that's taking a beating). Anyway, this client and his new condo guy show me a project they are working on.
Basically a brother-sister act inherit this apartment complex and they are getting socked with the Death Tax based on the market value of the property. The gummint only wants cash, pretty please, so Donnie & Marie have to drop the apartment complex, and quick. In real estate, quick usually means "at a ridiculous price." (Mind you, even at a ridiculously low price they are still making a TON of money, so weep not.)
But there's a catch, the complex can't be converted to condos until the mortgage is paid off and the mortgage can't be paid off before 2009 without a hefty penalty. So the usual condo developer crowd is studiously avoiding the project. This further drives down the price. Better yet is the fact the mortgage is assumable and is at a piddly 5.5%! The rents pay the mortgage and taxes and all that and there's still $$ left over. Cool.
The hook is that my client wants to get me and my other clients to invest. If I say this is a good idea, my client will send a contract to the seller. I say yes. (In hindsight, I should have fled the room as if my hair were afire.)
So I mention this to my clients and they all get excited and a few of them pony up coin. One of the ones who has verbally indicated he's in goes and visits the place and (thinks I) noticing these are working-class apartments and not the Trump Really Classy Gold Plated Tower bails out. This leaves our plans about 25% short with a month until closing. I begin to sweat.
Now I have to scramble to make up the shortfall because if I don't my other clients who put up the deposit money will lose it if we default. We're talking a LOT of money they'd be out. And I'd lose my three biggest clients, too. So I have to hustle because we're in a hole and time is running out. This is where my guardian angel (played by Chris Eigemann) shows up.
The attorney my client hired proves to be a godsend. Forever on vacation, pugnaciously refusing to join teleconferences or return calls, he drives the lender mental. The lender is another unalloyed blessing. This bank wants all kinds of ridiculous documentation and, in what must be my Patron Saint in action, inexplicably fails to give us all their requirements at once. Instead, they prefer to have us turn in a document, turn it in again after they are horrified there are TWO commas in sub-paragraph iv of paragraph b in subsection III of section G, wait another week and complain we haven't returned something they have omitted to send/request. This kind of ineptitude was gold, baby. This bought me almost 3 months to find the additional investors.
Eventually we get the investors we need, sorta. But the vexation didn't end there, no. We then had to gather all the monies into one bank account, so that at closing we could wire out to the escrow agent. Only there were confusions with some transfers and one HUGE check bounced. Then, yesterday, another series of checks, which were supposed to be converted into a single cashier's check by 2pm EST come Hell or high water was held up pending approval by the branch manager was I perspired freely into my finery. The eleventy gazillion dollars wasn't the problem. No-o-o-o-o-o-o. The problem was they were unsure if to charge us SINGLE or TRIPLE fees for the cashier's check. Really. A deal worth 3 cubic acres of money might've gone down in flames over $15 vs. $45.
But we got it in (at $15, too) just in time and the bounced check was fixed. So I was breathing by this point. Then I get a call to go into the attorney's office. Either the inept bank forgot to send me something to sign, or the inept lawyer forgot to tell me to sign what the inept bank sent or--most likely--both. So I go to sign and, while I'm at it, figure out what the wire transfer amount is. This is at 4pm.
By 4:30pm we start noticing small things in the closing statement and we begin to tweak and adjust. Then comes the great spanner in the works. We are missing the certified statement of renters, their status and the status of their security deposits. While this might only impact us a few buck up or down, we can't do JACK until we have that exact number. We call the seller's attorney and the real estate broker...and we still can't get a soul to give us this. By 7pm I was good and fed up, and I walked out and headed home. The inept lawyer said he'd fax me the final amount as soon as he got it. It's only because I knew he'd never get it in time that I didn't call him an inept, lying doofus. If he had gotten it he'd have managed somehow* to not get it to me. So I went home.
By 1pm I figured I had let them sweat enough and I could be bothered to make a wire transfer (I was also giving it time to make sure all our $$ were in). Eventually, Our Condo Guy texts me the final number and off I go to the bank. Partly because I was having lunch with my Argentine client, and partly because I was nowhere near the bank, I arrived around 2:45ish. The rep guy tells me to sit because wire transfers this size must be approved by the manager. Who, oops, just left for lunch.
There are perks to being a bank manager; the only person who can do X or Y. Arriving around 4pm is high on that list. FINALLY at 4:15 our wire goes out and the matter becomes Someone Else's Problem now.
All I have to worry about is adrenalin hangover.
-J.
My clien
Since there is enough tension, suspense and stress in the world, I'll skip ahead to the end and let you know the result: It's a'ight. Not the huge Scrooge McDuck torrent of coins and currency that I envisioned when I nodded assent to this way back in July, but not the professional cataclysm I feared back in September. It's just OK. Which is fine. I'm cool with not having mine arse, in the career sense, handed to me. There should be a very handsome payoff a couple of years from now, and I'll derive a few bucks over the next few months, which is nice.
That said, let me tell you the whole story, abbreviated-style.
Sometime last summer a client schedules a meeting with me. At this meeting is a guy new to my client's organization. This client has been, up to now, making a very comfortable living selling parcels of land in parts of FL as the begin to boom with our growing population of Snowbird Tax Refugees. But empty parcels are growing ever scarcer and he hired this new guy to help him diversify into affordable condo conversions (not the mega-luxe stuff that's taking a beating). Anyway, this client and his new condo guy show me a project they are working on.
Basically a brother-sister act inherit this apartment complex and they are getting socked with the Death Tax based on the market value of the property. The gummint only wants cash, pretty please, so Donnie & Marie have to drop the apartment complex, and quick. In real estate, quick usually means "at a ridiculous price." (Mind you, even at a ridiculously low price they are still making a TON of money, so weep not.)
But there's a catch, the complex can't be converted to condos until the mortgage is paid off and the mortgage can't be paid off before 2009 without a hefty penalty. So the usual condo developer crowd is studiously avoiding the project. This further drives down the price. Better yet is the fact the mortgage is assumable and is at a piddly 5.5%! The rents pay the mortgage and taxes and all that and there's still $$ left over. Cool.
The hook is that my client wants to get me and my other clients to invest. If I say this is a good idea, my client will send a contract to the seller. I say yes. (In hindsight, I should have fled the room as if my hair were afire.)
So I mention this to my clients and they all get excited and a few of them pony up coin. One of the ones who has verbally indicated he's in goes and visits the place and (thinks I) noticing these are working-class apartments and not the Trump Really Classy Gold Plated Tower bails out. This leaves our plans about 25% short with a month until closing. I begin to sweat.
Now I have to scramble to make up the shortfall because if I don't my other clients who put up the deposit money will lose it if we default. We're talking a LOT of money they'd be out. And I'd lose my three biggest clients, too. So I have to hustle because we're in a hole and time is running out. This is where my guardian angel (played by Chris Eigemann) shows up.
The attorney my client hired proves to be a godsend. Forever on vacation, pugnaciously refusing to join teleconferences or return calls, he drives the lender mental. The lender is another unalloyed blessing. This bank wants all kinds of ridiculous documentation and, in what must be my Patron Saint in action, inexplicably fails to give us all their requirements at once. Instead, they prefer to have us turn in a document, turn it in again after they are horrified there are TWO commas in sub-paragraph iv of paragraph b in subsection III of section G, wait another week and complain we haven't returned something they have omitted to send/request. This kind of ineptitude was gold, baby. This bought me almost 3 months to find the additional investors.
Eventually we get the investors we need, sorta. But the vexation didn't end there, no. We then had to gather all the monies into one bank account, so that at closing we could wire out to the escrow agent. Only there were confusions with some transfers and one HUGE check bounced. Then, yesterday, another series of checks, which were supposed to be converted into a single cashier's check by 2pm EST come Hell or high water was held up pending approval by the branch manager was I perspired freely into my finery. The eleventy gazillion dollars wasn't the problem. No-o-o-o-o-o-o. The problem was they were unsure if to charge us SINGLE or TRIPLE fees for the cashier's check. Really. A deal worth 3 cubic acres of money might've gone down in flames over $15 vs. $45.
But we got it in (at $15, too) just in time and the bounced check was fixed. So I was breathing by this point. Then I get a call to go into the attorney's office. Either the inept bank forgot to send me something to sign, or the inept lawyer forgot to tell me to sign what the inept bank sent or--most likely--both. So I go to sign and, while I'm at it, figure out what the wire transfer amount is. This is at 4pm.
By 4:30pm we start noticing small things in the closing statement and we begin to tweak and adjust. Then comes the great spanner in the works. We are missing the certified statement of renters, their status and the status of their security deposits. While this might only impact us a few buck up or down, we can't do JACK until we have that exact number. We call the seller's attorney and the real estate broker...and we still can't get a soul to give us this. By 7pm I was good and fed up, and I walked out and headed home. The inept lawyer said he'd fax me the final amount as soon as he got it. It's only because I knew he'd never get it in time that I didn't call him an inept, lying doofus. If he had gotten it he'd have managed somehow* to not get it to me. So I went home.
By 1pm I figured I had let them sweat enough and I could be bothered to make a wire transfer (I was also giving it time to make sure all our $$ were in). Eventually, Our Condo Guy texts me the final number and off I go to the bank. Partly because I was having lunch with my Argentine client, and partly because I was nowhere near the bank, I arrived around 2:45ish. The rep guy tells me to sit because wire transfers this size must be approved by the manager. Who, oops, just left for lunch.
There are perks to being a bank manager; the only person who can do X or Y. Arriving around 4pm is high on that list. FINALLY at 4:15 our wire goes out and the matter becomes Someone Else's Problem now.
All I have to worry about is adrenalin hangover.
-J.
My clien
Comments
The babies are every bit as much work, but I LOVE them.
My Clients?
Not so much.
Oh, and congratulations!
Short answer is "yes." Furthermore as teh supply increases over the next 8-10 months the beating will only get worse. About this time next year would be perfect to steal one.
-J.
And hey, don't worry that you aren't as flush as you might be--remember, I'm a cheap date.
-J.