The Great Copper Caper

I’m better than I used to be. In fact, I used to have hardly any at all but I guess it just comes with the territory of becoming older and wiser. Sometimes you’d think I never had any at all and most of the time I wish I had even more but overall, I’m a heck of a lot better than in my younger years. Patience. Yes, for the most part, it comes with age and everyone can use a little more no matter what age we might be.

Within a week after arriving Denver, the waiting game began when we submitted a contract on the Laredo Way property. This house was an REO and working with a bank is nothing like working with a private seller. In fact, unlike a private seller who wants or needs to move right away, banks have no sense of urgency at all. Even though their inventory might hold dozens, maybe even hundreds of vacant homes all waiting for owners, for some reason, they don’t feel the need to hurry things along when they do have a submitted contract from a potential buyer. In fact, I’ve experienced the waiting process with some of my clients which can take up to 3 or 4 months just to hear whether the bank has accepted your contract or not.

We were lucky, or as I like to think, God answers prayers. Within 24 hours we had a counter from the bank. After going back and forth a few times with counters, and signing the mountain of contracts and paperwork required by the seller, on October 12^th, we were officially under contract. The house was soon to be ours but first, the inspections.

Being an REO property, we knew we were buying the house “as-is” and we were fine with that. The house is only 3 years old so we weren‘t too worried. The previous owners were fairly kind to the house when they moved out. In fact, the kitchen cabinets were still in the house. The plumbing was still intact. They didn‘t rip the wiring out of the walls. There weren’t holes in the walls from someone taking their frustrations out on the house when they moved out. Not to say the house didn’t come without any damage at all. The previous owners took the hardware off the majority of the doors including hinges. They took the light fixtures from most of the rooms along with the window coverings and for some reason, they took the door to the basement but other than that the house was in pretty good shape.

We had the usual inspections performed. We hired a licensed contractor to check the house for us. We hired an HVAC technician to check the air conditioner and heating. We hired a roofer to verify the roof was in good order and since it freezes and snows in Colorado and the house was vacant, the house was winterized which means the water was turned off and all pipes were completely drained. The bank de-winterized the property and we checked for leaks. Everything was perfect and moving along according to schedule until the day we closed.


It's Ours!!!

 Closing on our new home took exactly 23 days from start to finish which is some sort of record for an REO property, or again, I like to think it was an answer to prayer. The morning of October 21^st, we arrived at the title company with our check in hand, signed more documents and walked away with the keys to our new house. We were no longer needing to live in the 5’er, we had a house to call ours!!

First things first in our new home - we needed to de-winterize and turn the water back on. We figured we’d save ourselves a call to a plumber and the $150 they charge and de-winterize the house ourselves so we did a little research on line. Step One: Make sure all the valves to the faucets are closed. Check. Step Two: Make sure all the valves to the toilets are closed. Check. Step Three: Turn on the water at the main. As I’m upstairs waiting for the water main to be turned on, I hear Brian yelling from the basement.

“Where’s the water main?”
“It’s the pipe with the red handle.”
“What red handle?”
“It’s the pipe with the red handle in the corner of the basement!”
“I don’t see a red handle.”

Ok, now I’m starting to lose what little patience I’ve collected over the years and I head down the stairs to the basement.

“It’s the red handle on that pipe over… Hey! Where’d the red handle go? I’m going to call the guys who winterized the property and tell them we want our red handle back.”
Yes, the red handle was missing as we stood there wondering how we were going to turn our water on.
“I can turn it on with a pair of pliers but I’m not sure this is the water main. Look at this, these pipes don’t go anywhere.”

Sure enough, my eyes followed the pipe up the wall only to learn the pipe had been cut. As we stood there in a stupor, we discovered the rest of the copper piping in the basement missing. Sometime between October 15^th, when the house was winterized after our inspection to the time we closed on October 21^st, someone had come in and stripped the copper piping in the basement.

Great, what do we do now that we’ve already closed on the house???

House Hunting 101

Now, I’ve been a realtor for the past 15 years and have helped dozens of families move locally and long distance during that time but this was the first time since 1996 that I was in the position of actually moving myself. And this was the first time since I obtained my real estate license that I wasn’t in control of the transaction. Since my real estate license is held in Arizona and we’re buying in Colorado, I had to enlist the help of another realtor to process the transaction for us so I put a call in to my niece who used to be in real estate herself. “Dana, who can put up with me?” “Definitely Ryan, give him a call. I’ve known him for years and he’s the best."

So I gave Ryan a call and told him our wish list. Being a realtor myself, I can say I think Ryan had it fairly easy in this transaction and to tell you the truth, I wish all my clients were as easy. Maybe it was due to the fact I‘m familiar with the process. They say an informed client is an educated client. Hmm, something to think about for the future.

By the time we were able to meet with Ryan, Brian and I had pulled a list of homes that had peaked our interest and we had already driven by them so were able to narrow our selection down to a select few. Now, I’ve always had the habit of entering a home with my clients with the thought in mind, “Could I live here?” Don’t ask me why I do that. Just a little quirk of mine but now the shoe was on the other foot and I was actually a buyer, not just a bystander and I actually had to ask the question of myself, “Could I live here?” and be honest about it. This was totally foreign to me as we had lived in our last house on Gleneagles Drive for over 14 years and I really loved that house and neighborhood. I was doing exactly what I warn my clients, “Don’t compare houses.” Even though Colorado houses have a totally different style than Arizona houses I was comparing every house I saw to our house in Phoenix. Our first day of house hunting was a bust.

We did a lot of driving over the next few days. We’d pull a list of homes from the internet, drive by and either put them on our list to view the inside or delete them from our list all together because of location or neighborhood. It was on one of those “drive-bys” that we found our house.

I learned a long time ago never-to-say-never and this house proved that saying to be true. As we were driving through a neighborhood looking for another house on our list, Brian spotted the Laredo Way property. I have said many times over the years I would not even entertain the idea of looking, more less living in a house where the doors to the garage don’t empty directly to the street but empty towards the front of the house giving the front yard the look of all concrete. Picture Marty McFly’s house in the movie, Back to the Future. Now, you’ve got the picture. You look out your front window, and all you see are cars parked in the driveway because either someone is too lazy to park in the garage or you have more cars than space available in the garage. I wouldn’t even get out of the car to peek through the windows. “You’d really like the inside of this house,” Brian yells at me from the front porch. To appease my husband, but mostly out of curiosity, I grudgingly get out of the car and slowly walk up to the front porch and peek through the large picture window. Lessoned learned, Never-Say-Never as the Laredo Way property was the property we ended up submitting a contract on.

My next lesson? Being a patient buyer…

From Trailer Trash to Home on the Range, The Front Range that is

And I always thought AZ had the
best sunsets!!

I really thought our adventures would end when we arrived Denver, thus ending our blog, but we decided to continue for a bit since searching for a place to live has been an adventure in itself. Our first night in Denver was spent at Barr Lake RV Park not too far from where Brandon and Lindsey live. Now, I might have said this before about other RV Parks, and I really meant it at the time, but Barr Lake RV Park was by far, the worst RV Park we had yet to stay on this entire trip. We were placed in the middle of the long term residents which didn’t necessarily take care of their RV’s or the area around their RV’s. The trailer next to us, looked like it had suffered a fire at some point in it’s pathetic life and was held together by plywood, duck tape and bailing wire. He should have lived in his truck since it was a brand new Dodge Crew Cab Pickup. Much nicer than the dump he was calling home. As far as the rest of the long term residents? Picture cousin Eddie’s RV in Christmas Vacation and you know just what I‘m talking about. The park was located next to the freeway which was located next to the train tracks. And let me tell you, trains do not run on bankers hours and shut down promptly at 5pm everyday. No, they run all night, every night and they love to blow their horns through every intersection of the city. After a sleepless night, we got up the next morning and decided we had already had enough. Bright and early, we started looking for another place to “live.”

Denver, we quickly learned, was a lot like Chicago in the fact there are virtually no RV Parks to be found anywhere. There are two kinds of RV Parks in Denver, those in questionable areas of town, which were most of them, and the only other one which was in a decent area but cost $900 a month, plus electricity!!! $900 a month?!? That was more than our house payment in Arizona!!! It was only noon and our frustration level was soaring at this point. One last RV Park on our list and if this one didn’t work out, we’d be forced to pay the $900 a month. We arrived at what our GPS said was the exact location only to find the RV Park we were searching for was now a Chick-fil-A. I suppose camping in the Chick-fil-A parking lot wouldn’t have been so bad. We like Chick-fil-A and breakfast, lunch and dinner would always be available, but I’m not sure the manager of Chick-fil-A would have appreciated us boon docking in their parking lot for more than what it would take to down one of their chicken salad sandwiches and their to-die-for ice cream cones. No, as good as it sounded, we had to move on.

Frustrated and not knowing where to go from here, Brian started aimlessly driving around. “Checking out the countryside,” is what he said. Now, I hate just driving around with no agenda. As a young kid, we used to pile in the car every Sunday afternoon and “go for a drive to check out the countryside.“ I got to where I’d sleep through the entire drive but what the heck? We didn’t have anything else better to do and after a sleepless night, I needed a nap. We didn’t get too far when just before closing my eyes, I spotted the tops of a group of RV’s in the far distance. “What’s that? Check it out.” So off we go, headed to what we hoped was an RV park.

As it turned out, it wasn’t an RV park exactly but an RV storage facility which happened to have 6 RV pads which was rented on a monthly basis. The monthly rent of $450 included water, electric and sewer and also included free laundry. And the best part of it all was they had one spot available with a beautiful view of the Colorado Rockies. Score!!! We paid our rent, drove back to Barr Lake RV Park, which by the way, was no where near a lake, hooked up, drove back and set up our temporary home.

The minute we set up camp, Brian pulled out his computer, I pulled out my computer and we started looking for a house. As much as I wouldn’t have minded staying in our new location, we had the view of the Rockies and was close to shopping, but the 5’er is not an all season RV which means when the temperature drops to freezing, so does our water pipes and since it was now the end of September and the average first snow fall for the Denver area is October 19th, we needed something and fast.

Our original plan was to rent for a year or so, then buy when we had a better knowledge of the area and knew where our jobs would be located but somewhere along the Eastern coast line, I started looking at the price of rent in the Denver area and quickly decided I wasn’t crazy about giving $20,000 to $25,000 a year for someone else’s mortgage so after some coaxing on my part, talked Brian into buying a house instead.

So off we go. Day one of house hunting...

Colorado or Bust!!

Now I know exactly how flight attendants feel when they announce over the loud speaker on the final descent, “Thank you for flying Fly With Us Airline, we hope you enjoyed your flight and want to welcome you to… Where are we again?” That’s exactly how I was feeling on the final leg of our journey. Once we left Chicago, we practically flew through Iowa and Nebraska and I never knew where exactly we were on the map.

At this point in the trip, we were tired of traveling and constantly being on the move and were anxious to arrive Denver but since we were not only mentally exhausted, we were also physically exhausted so decided to stop for the night in Omaha. It was getting late and we had been battling a side wind most of the day so as many times before throughout this trip, I threw on my navigator’s hat and started commanding directions to the nearest RV park.

“Exit this intersection and turn right.”
“Ok, left at the next light.”
“Keep right at the fork in the road.”
“No. I said right, not left! Just follow that 5th wheel in front of us. They look like they know where they’re going.”

Sure enough we were both heading in the same direction to the same RV park “Brian, look. They’ve got AZ plates and they’ve also got a CCV sticker in the back window of their 5th wheel.” Ok, a note here for some of you who do not know. Christ Church of the Valley, or CCV, is the church we attended in Phoenix for many years.. The interesting fact is, CCV has over 10,000 attendees on any given weekend so to see a CCV sticker on a vehicle is not all that uncommon but to see a CCV sticker in Omaha, Nebraska was something else.

We both pulled into the KOA campground at the same time. Brian jumped out of the truck and took off for the registration office leaving me in the truck waiting in suspense. He jumped back in the truck and announced, “We got a spot for the night! But see that guy over there with the CCV sticker? Does he look familiar to you?” As I sat and watched him for a little while, “Nope. Not at all.” As it turns out, the camp host parked us next to each other. I don’t know why he thought we needed to be camped next to each other. There were plenty of other spots available. In fact, there were more than enough spots available for our two rigs but the entire time we were both setting up our rigs, Brian kept insisting the gentleman looked familiar.

“They’re coming over later,” Brian announced. Great. I was tired and all I wanted to do was to fix dinner, eat, and go to bed but there it was, that dreaded knock on the door. “Hi! I’m Diane.” As it turned out, I didn’t recognize Diane’s husband, Gary, but I did recognize Diane. The four of us used to attend the same bible study at CCV quite a few years ago. In fact, it was almost 10 years ago we were all in the same bible study and this was the first time we’d seen Gary and Diane since the class ended. We spent the next 3 to 4 hours sitting and talking and catching up on what had been happening in our lives. God really has a sense of humor because the funny thing about all this is, they were heading in the direction we had just come from, Illinois, and we were heading in the direction they had just spent the last week enjoying, the Ft. Collins and Loveland area of Colorado.

We've arrived!!!



The Colorado sunset which welcomed us home

We really had a good time with Gary and Diane and our time with them was way too short but move on we must, so the next morning we said our goodbyes and headed west for Denver. It was an extremely windy day which really made for bad gas mileage but we finally pulled in to Denver late that afternoon. We set up at Barr Lake RV Camp and headed over to Brandon and Lindsey’s for the wonderful, homemade Gnocchi dinner that Lindsey had spent all day preparing for our arrival. Although we thoroughly enjoyed the last 3 months on the road, it was good to finally know that we would be settling down again. Which brings me to our next adventure… Trying to find a place to live!!!

Chicagoland

With the truck fixed, we headed south to Chicago. We had the most difficult time trying to find an RV park in Chicago. Apparently there aren’t any within the city so we ended up staying at one just outside of Rockford about 50 miles northwest of Chicago. At this point in our trip we were both getting tired of traveling so we mostly spent our time in Illinois hunting for Brian’s ancestors. We hunted at libraries, cemeteries and courthouses. We hunted in Rockford, Joliet, Chicago and Marengo. We also drove by the house his great-grandfather lived and died, the house his grandfather lived and the house where his dad lived as a young boy. We spent an afternoon driving along Lake Shore Drive and visiting the Navy Pier. Everywhere we went, people were so friendly and extremely helpful with directions.


Photo taken at 9:35 AM!!!
And there was no accident anywhere to be found
causing this bumper to bumper

The only problem with Chicago, other than the fact there weren’t any RV parks within a 50 mile radius, was the traffic. I don’t care what time of the day we drove through town, the traffic was bumper to bumper. It made Toronto look like a walk in the park. And since Chicago is an old town, originally founded in 1833, the streets can be fairly narrow especially when you’re trying to get around in the downtown area. And one thing we learned while trying to navigate through the downtown streets is because the buildings are so tall and fairly close together, GPS doesn’t always work making it extremely frustrating at times. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I almost went in to cardiac arrest when they told us it was $40 for an hour and half of parking!! The moral of this story??? When traveling to downtown Chicago, let someone else do the driving and take the “L”!!!


Downtown Chicagoland
Photo taken from the Navy Pier


Chicago is definitely another place I’d like to visit again. There’s a lot of history in that city and I’d like to visit some of the places Brian’s grandmother used to play her saxophone. As it turns out, Mildred was a member of Ada Leonard’s all girl band back in the 40’s. From what I understand, Ada Leonard was a real beauty. She started her career as a stripper and knowing this, men of all ages would pack the theaters in hopes she would disrobe. They were disappointed in one area but not in another. Her music was wonderful! I found this video of Ada Leonard and her all girl band on YouTube. Even though Mildred is not in this particular video it’s fun to watch Ada moving gracefully around the stage as she commands her girls. She was labeled "the most elegant" of the women's bands and I can certainly understand why. This particular clip was taken about 1943. Check it out!!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnkR0szHerg