The Drama of Prime's House

Gather round my children and I shall tell you a tale... A tale of frustration, woe, victory, and triumph. A tale of a man and his quest to acquire the ultimate American dream: home ownership. God, how boring does that sound? Well, this one was a month in the making, but it runs kind of interesting and has a decent ending to it.

Optimus Prime, the geek who I work with at the computer job, has been looking to purchase his own home for the last few months, and has been looking around town for a good realtor and then a good house. He's actually been in the area for a couple years having moved from Missouri after losing / quitting his job there. That process was a drama in and of itself which involved him having to sell of his last house, losing his Mustang, etc., which made his wife rather unhappy with him.

They've been living in this apartment complex owned by Case and Associates. Remember the name. I've never heard anything good about these people. Optimus describes his apartment as a dungeon, even though it's on the second floor, because no natural light can make it into this apartment. The only window is the door to the balcony and there is a tree right there that blocks the sun. He has had problems with pretty much every faucet in the place, and no matter how many times their "maintenance staff" comes out to fix it, the problems remains. This is because they either can't fix it, or won't due to this next problem.

Cockroaches. Ew... You see, this complex used to have five more buildings than it does now, but due to a fire, those burned, and the cockroaches who were inhabiting these buildings all migrated into the remaining ones creating a veritable infestation that management doesn't seem to want to do anything about. He tells me they were going through a can of Raid about every day or day and a half, and the roaches were just laughing at them.

Recently, they had someone spray and he has complained much less about them, but the head maintenance guy refused to work on their sink once because there was (ew!) a roach under there. What a wuss...

Another thing that bugs them quite a bit is the laundry facilities. Apparently when they have time to do laundry, so does everyone else, especially this one Mexican lady who commandeers every single washer and dryer in the place for hours on end, not allowing anyone to get anything done. Imagine the deluge of people once she is finally done.

So they're ready to move, nevermind the obvious fact that there is not enough room in that little place for them. They can't keep anything out of the hands of the little one since the place is so small that he can get into everything and management won't allow locks on any of the doors.

Well, a little over a month ago, they found a place they loved. He raves about it daily...or rather, did rave about it daily until the offer letter was signed and accepted and the dreaded "process of buying a house" set in. Now, I remember some of these woes because when I bought mine, there were a few pains to deal with, and most of them...no, all of them...were the mortgage company. He had a couple of extra woes, which added to his drama.

The initial dickering was nothing extremely special. He wanted to make sure he got this one year warranty with the price of the house so that anything major that went wrong could be fixed for $50. Not a bad deal. We didn't have anything go bad in the first year, but that's a good thing to know about if we ever go for another house (no, we're not even remotely considering thinking about beginning to look; we're happy). So they gave in to his requests and offer done.

Then, his wife got into a car accident and totaled their one and only car. He asked his realtor about this predicament since they needed to get another car. They were told with their prior car loan in its good state of being nearly paid off, there would have been no problem, but a new loan would look bad on the credit in getting a house since they'd be at 100% debt. This means if he wanted the house, he was forbidden to get another car until the house closed.

Well, not completely forbidden, of course. He could have gone for a used car for less than the payoff he received, but he wanted the warranty, etc. of a new or nearly new purchase, not to mention the piece of mind that comes from getting a vehicle from a reputable dealer, so he was stuck renting a car on the weekends and hitching a ride with another guy here during the week, and he's been doing that faithfully this whole time.

This gave them the opportunity to try several different vehicles from the rental company and they actually like the Ford Focus, though it is the cool hi-tech features that appeal to him. I mean, built in MP3 player that responds to your voice? Yeah, geek paradise there.

So, with no car except rental action, they set up the inspection for a week where he could fork over the $800 to everyone to inspect the property, etc., and the house got a mostly clean bill of health except for one tiny hiccup. Apparently, the electrical wiring on the second floor was a weekend warrior kind of job, and it failed miserably. The list was so long of electrical problems that all they asked the previous owner to do was bring the electrical up to code. Seems fairly straight forward, right?

The previous owner spent a week getting estimates before they officially agreed to do it. During that week, Optimus was fretting daily over losing the money in the inspection, but finally said if he didn't hear back from them, he'd have to back out and start over since the first on the month was coming up, and he had to know whether he was giving notice or not. He wasn't interested in paying another month of rent if they were moving. He laid it all out for his realtor. They agreed the following day.

So things are back on, and he's getting excited. He could close any day, right? Heh. Well, the water heater wasn't 18 inches above the floor, and it had to be moved up. This was done fairly quickly, but now the loan company has to go back out there to visually confirm it. You'd think this would be a quick process...

Another week goes by, no firm closing date, and then the storm comes. If there were anything more to make them want to get the heck out of there, their bedroom ceiling bursting forth with its own indoor waterfall ruining everything in sight might do it.

Naturally, the complex got some people out to fix the roof the next day so it wouldn't leak again. Well, come the next storm, it was if nothing was done at all, and it leaked just as it had originally. So yesterday, the complex got some people to replace the carpet. That makes sense, right? These people are full of sense, but what kind of logic do you expect from a guy who's afraid of cockroaches?

They showed up with the carpet people without any warning at all, and only Prime's wife was there. They expected her to clear their bedroom so they could replace the carpet. Now this is a housewife taking care of a three year old being expected to move the bed frame, wet mattresses, a dresser, and everything else a typical bedroom has...and oh yes, you have fifteen minutes cause they're on the clock.

Needless to say this didn't fly. What finally happened there was (after Prime talked to her, he talked to me, and I threw out an idea or two) she told them off for that day, and to come back tomorrow after they had a chance to move stuff for them. They came back today and replaced the wet portion of the carpet without bothering with the dresser. I shake my head...

For today, Optimus is completely useless since he is distracted by an impending closing date, a week of vacation, and the prospect of getting out of that apartment "possessed by Satan." He said he'd had a priest come over to bless the place, but he was told that he was "too old" to be blessed fully and to walk it off when it was over. And he's been walking it off ever since...