Did you ever watch Saturday morning cartoons as a kid? I mean when cartoons only came on saturday morning, and werent on a channel 24/7 for you to watch anytime you want...
Well there was a character.
remember him?
Yes, thats right Speedy Gonzalez...
Now, do you remember his cousin..
I'll give you some time to think
(pretend the theme to Jeopardy is playing in the background)
OK, I'll give you a hint... He was the opposite of Speedy...
THATS RIGHT!
Slow Poke Rodriguez...
Speedy was always saving him from the cats and getting cheese for him because him was slow...
What does this have to do with todays story? Stand by, we will get to that, but first, some back story.
The Background
For the last 2 years or so, D and I have been looking for a place to expand out in. Someplace to setup a shop for me, a place for M to run around, hunt, run, fish, run, play, run, and generally get away from city life. (Did I mention, run?) We were looking for something with a few acres of land, nothing that big (yet) I wanted it to have a house or shed or something already on it so the power, septic, water, etc was already done (as that is expensive to have done yourself) I really didnt care if it was old and beat up, and would honestly prefer something beat up so it has some history behind it. It also had to be close enough that we would go there but far enough away to get away from what I wanted to get away from. (I know, I dont ask that much do I?)
D has a automatic search that dumps listings into her e-mail. Each week she would look through them, some we would drive by, some we never did, but never found one that we thought was worth looking at. I mean, we never called a realtor and made an appointment for any of them. Most of them, once we did the drive by, we realized it wasnt what we wanted. (Recently I had even decided that we werent going to find it and started pushing D to look at just pieces of land we would build out ourselves, assuming we could get a screaming deal on the land.)
ok, so now you are somewhat caught up to a couple of months ago, here is what has happened since then.
D and I were sitting in the living room and she is surfing on her IPad when she says to me. "how about 7 acres with a 60x60 metal building"
What did you say? Was my response.
She showed me the listing. 7 acres of land, just in the right area we were looking in, It had a 60x60 airplane hanger on it, inside the airplane hanger was a loft apartment with a workshop underneath. Also had a couple of storage units on site.
yes, I said, Airplane hanger.... Yes, Love it, lets go to a drive by, umm how about now? can we go now? (yes, I sounded like a dog right then...)
Needless to say, I was interested. We ended up doing a drive by the next day. We drove out there, loved the location, nothing there told us anything bad, so we decided we needed to see the inside. Of course, I was going out of town, (no surprise there) so we decided D would go see it, take pictures and we would decide what to do from there. (this was Friday) We contacted Bert and Ernie (its a joke, but thats what we call the realtors we deal with because when M was young, thats what he called them) about D going to see the place and what was going on.
Monday, M was out of school, so they met up with Bert and off they went.
I got a text from D while they were looking at the property that said "We found it"
My answer was "of course you found it, we've been there already"
Her answer "not the little it, the big IT"
My answer "AHHH"
She took a bunch of pictures and uploaded them to our flickr acct so I could go through them. I called her when I had a few minutes of peace and quiet and she took me through all the pics, what was there, etc. I loved everything I saw, to me, it was perfect.
We get all the paperwork you get from a seller, find out the scoop. Its an estate, the man who owned it has passed on and it has been vacant for about 2 years, its as-is where-is, you get what is there kind of deal
D meets with Bert and Ernie and work out where we are going to start at for offers and all that stuff. It was a little past out comfort zone, but we had been putting some money away for this and decided that as long as we negotiated properly, we could make it happen. I texted D while we were going back and forth about the pricing and told her I would glad to give up drinking, gambling and hookers for us to be able to afford this
thats a joke for those of you who are going to take that too seriously....
Friday morning they start the back and forth. Luckily, negotiating is one of the things the LOML does naturally (which is why I have never, ever, ever won an argument with her)
We are negotiating with a group of 3 people (dont ask why, it would make this whole story even longer than it already is) At the end of the day, we were really close, but not quite there, so we waited till monday. Monday came and we agreed on terms for the sale. All is good, All is well, the world is a wonderful place. Let me also say now, that all the terms of the deal were laid out in the first offer and the only thing that was negotiated on was the dollar figure. We did not do anything sneaky, not did we try and low ball the deal, we negotiated fairly and got what we considered to be a fair deal on the property.
that same day, I fly home,
I had just gotten to the airport to come home when D texted me and said...
"Guess you will have to give up Drinking and Gambling and Hookers"
My answer to her
"YESSS!!!!!"
(now how many wives have ever told their husband that and got that answer back....)
I tell her i want to go see the property myself, and not just the pictures.
Tuesday we get up and head out there, go through the property, yes I love it, its perfect, this is what I have been looking for. It is off a grass runway and there are a couple of other buildings out there, but not much. There is also just a lot of framland out there. Exactly what I wanted. The power and water are both turned off, shut off, etc, so we cant really check the place out. We let the seller know we need those things turned on so we can do a proper inspection and we start moving towards a plan of getting the things done we need to get done before "D" day
Wednesday evening we get a call, there is an issue, the attorney for the estate wont sign the deal (and apparently it isnt a deal without his signature,) He doesnt like the fact that the deal states the minerals transfer, he doesnt want to sell the minerals. They will sell it to us for that price without the minerals..
My answer, no go. I dont want someone else having access to this land that supersedes mine. (And it was part of the first deal paperwork, we didnt do anything shady, it was there from the beginning)
A Damn Lawyer (sorry D) decided he needed to butt his head in there and make sure that he was showing people he was worth something, or something like that
Did i mention the man who owned this property was a yankee, and hence so are all the people involved in this deal? As the LOML put it, someone has been watching too many Beverly Hillbillies and think that every scrap of land in Texas is worth a million dollars in black gold.
Friday They come back and tell us its no deal, they wont sign it. Basically, they backed out of the deal we made.
My answer - This is a bunch of BULL CRAP!!!
so we walk away, Needless to say, I am upset. But just because I am upset I am not going to go make a bad decision that will affect us in too many ways. I dont necessarily believe that there is a better opportunity out there, but as I have said before, I believe everything works out in the end, so you take the good with the bad and keep moving forward.
They come back to us the next week with wanting us to make other offers or something. We dont do anything, we are not going to out negotiate against ourselves. Told them they need to come up with a new offer for us that includes minerals and we will look it over.
2 weeks go by with nothing.
Then they call with a updated offer, verbally. The first one I laughed at, the second one wasnt as bad. We told them we needed it in writing, we werent doing any more of this verbally
a week goes by, we finally get a new, revised offer
Over the next week or so, we work out a deal with them that we are still happy with and apparently they are willing to accept. (and it includes transfer of the mineral rights, just like the original deal)
then it still takes days for them to officially accept it
now, lets go back to Speedy Gonzalez's cousin. I can tell you what he does now for a living... cause we have been dealing with him over the past couple months, and he aint in any hurry to do nothing for nobody.....
So THEORETICALLY we have a deal now... although I aint counting any chickens till we sign the final paperwork.
Still have to work on inspection and a few other things...
We will see how it goes...
Oh yeah, you want to see a picture?
Did I mention, 7 acres with a 60x60 airplane hanger?
In family tradition, we are going to call it "The Allin Place"
For those of you who got this far, thank you very much for sticking with the story. We learned a lot of Patience over the last couple months. Hopefully you learned some Patience getting to the end of this story.
Of course, its not the end, its only the beginning, I hope.
DD
Great news!!
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