One of the things I told my brother is not to get too wrapped up in the nonsense realtors and mortgage bankers spew. They want your commission, and they aren’t going to be hanging around when you can’t make your monthly payments. That doesn’t mean they’ll try to bankrupt you, but it also means that whatever magical number you’re “approved for” is what they’ll try to find for you. I’m here to say: take that “magical number” with a great big grain of salt. Most people assume that some sort of rigor goes into the generation of what you’re approved for, but in reality it’s just another company who is looking to get your money. You need to find out how much you’re willing to pay per month, and once you have that number find out if you are approved for that much. Don’t go and just see how much you are approved for and think, “well, I guess they think I can pay that much per month.”

The reason the article made my blood boil was because of a few choice quotes from assholes in the industry:

Subprime lender Jim Howe, also broker-owner of Real Estate Professionals in Racine, said most defaulting borrowers he sees are people who bought and borrowed beyond their means.

“It’s not the lenders. They’re just going by their (regulatory) guidelines and doing what they can do,” Howe said. “Now you’ve got the people who got the loans not living up to their obligations.”

No, in fact it is the lenders who looked at these people who obviously couldn’t afford at $500,000 mortgage and said, “We like the cut of your jib! Here’s $500,000!” If someone in the financial industry supposedly looks at your financial situation and says “We think you deserve this much money”, most people will think there is some justification in their determination. As someone who has gone through the ‘game’ I can honestly say that I got caught up in the lies and exaggerations, all in the name of finding “my home.” The real estate industry loves to play that up: you aren’t finding a house, you’re finding your ‘home.’ That obviously involves some serious emotional manipulation.  But all the platitudes about finding ‘your home’ don’t pay the bills.

For example, a radio commercial currently in rotation in Madison exhorts people to buy a condo because of “pride of ownership” (“you mean like I can paint the walls any color I like?” exclaims a super-excited young woman) and “tax benefits”.   The Don’t-Ever-Look-Behind-The-Curtain salesmanship technique when selling people into crushing debt is probably what bugs me the most about the entire real estate industry.

And so, I’ll leave you with a summary of my opinions.  I’m not some financial wizard who traces every up and down of the market.  But I am a regular schmoe who got caught up in the housing game and managed to extricate myself before it went south.  If you want to go buy a house right now, I don’t begrudge you that.  IF you have the means.  If you have money saved for a down payment, and you can get approved for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage at a monthly rate you’re comfortable with then you currently have maximal negotiating strength.  But, a few caveats:

1. DON’T take whatever the bank extends to you.  At the moment lenders are tightening the reigns because of the soaring foreclosures, but if you have good credit and healthy income they’ll still fall over themselves to throw money at you.  Instead, work out what monthly payment you’re comfortable with and see if you can get approved for that much.  If approved for more, who cares.
2. DON’T fall for the ‘it’s not a house, it’s a home’ emotional bullshit.  It’s a house. You will live there.  You’ll probably live in several before you die.  It’s a place to put your stuff.  It’s a gigantic financial commitment that you should look at rationally.
3. DON’T extend yourself into a crazy mortgage (by which I mean anything BUT a 30 yr fixed) at this point.  Your house will not appreciate $100,000 in one year with the rates tumbling so that you can flip it for a profit.  Again, keep in mind that you are about to engage in a transaction that’s a healthy percentage of a MILLION dollars.  Do you have a plan to eventually get it paid off in some way?

I’m just an idiot that almost got burned, and I don’t want to see any friends or family tumble into a pit of debt and bankruptcy if they can afford it.  It’s a house. That’s all.  Come stay at my place for awhile, homey.

Also: I was super busy yesterday but cannot use that as an excuse.  Happy Birthday Rumthumb!  Looking forward to The Magnus Der Magnussun tonight for booze and tapas.

Wednesday evening, I arrived back in Madison from California. I tried to get online to do something and my internet wasn’t connected. I fought with my computer for 45 minutes before I realized that hey, my phone didn’t work either. I went into the living room: my cable tv didn’t work either. It was late, so I resolved to call Charter (i.e., the worst motherfucking company on earth) in the morning.

Thursday morning I called (CALL NUMBER 1) Charter (REMEMBER, THE WORST FUCKING COMPANY ON EARTH) and was told there was an outage in my area. I asked how long and they said someone had been dispatched to fix it and it shouldn’t be long.

Friday morning: still no service (tv, internet, or phone) so I called back (CALL NUMBER 2). This time the utterly fucking idiot “cable tv tech support” person dispatched a technician to come look at my TV & Internet setup. The date and time for the service call? Saturday, between 1p and 5p. This becomes important later on, folks. She then transferred me to the Phone Division, where they set up a separate, Phone service call for the same day (Friday) between 8a and 5p.

Friday comes and goes, no one ever shows up or calls (MISSED SERVICE CALL 1). I would later be told that someone came to my house but I wasn’t there. Funny, I work from home; I was there all fucking day. My cell phone has this feature where I know if someone called. No one called.

Friday night I stayed at spacebee’s, because I didn’t have to be back home until 1p (when the service window was supposed to start) on Saturday.

Saturday I awoke at 11a to find 3 messages on my phone:

9:30a – “This is charter, we’re trying to confirm your service call today. The tech will be there in 20 minutes.”

10:10a – “This is Bob, the charter (the worst motherfucking company on earth) service tech, I’m outside your building.”

10:20a – “Sir, this is charter communications. You were not home so we are canceling this service call. Call back to reschedule.”

(MISSED SERVICE CALL 2)

I was about 4 shades of fucking enraged purple. However, I also know that “customer service” reps these days are trained such that if you yell and scream, they just say “Sir, I don’t have to take this abuse.” and hang up. So I called up (CALL NUMBER 3) charter (the worst motherfucking company on earth) and was angrily saying how badly I’d been treated and how this and that (no swearing, no yelling) and the guy interrupted me, put me on hold, then disconnected me. Motherfucking fuckwads at charter communications (the worst fucking company on earth). My call back was picked up, handled by a lady in South Carolina. I was then transferred to the Madison office, I was then transferred to someone in the repair department. She informed me that I had missed my appointment on Friday (news to fucking me, I was sitting in my apartment the whole day) and the one that morning (never mind that they said “in between 1 and 5″ and, where I live, TEN FUCKING O’CLOCK IS NOT BETWEEN ONE FUCKING O’CLOCK AND FIVE FUCKING O’CLOCK.)

In the end, after 60 minutes and 5 transfers or hang-ups, the repair department woman said she would schedule an appointment for me between 8a and 12:30p on Monday. So, I dutifully wake up this morning and start my now-tiring hobby of WAITING FOR MOTHERFUCKING CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS (THE WORST FUCKING COMPANY ON EARTH) MOTHERFUCKERS THAT NEVER FUCKING SHOW UP. At 12:56p I called (CALL NUMBER 4) charter (the worst fucking company on the planet) and inquired when a service tech would be at my home. I mean, they wouldn’t wait at my home for hours until I got there, but apparently I should wait all goddamn day. The woman (in North Carolina this time) looked at the service order and asked, “They aren’t there yet?” I responded “No.” She said, and I fucking quote, “Well, I suggest you just wait a little longer, they be running late. Call us back in an hour.”

Wait for it… wait for it.

(MISSED SERVICE CALL 3)

I just called back (CALL NUMBER 5) and was told that my appointment wasn’t for today! It’s for tomorrow, Tuesday! It says it right there on the order! It must be true if it says it right there on the order! What? They told me it was on Monday? No, no, no sir, I must have heard them wrong. It couldn’t be the fault of charter communications (the shittiest fucking service in the entire industry!) (and the employer of some astoundingly stupid fucking humans).

So what will I be doing to tomorrow? Sitting right here, HOLDING MY FUCKING DICK and waiting for someone at charter commui-fucking-cations (i.e., the worst company I’ve ever had dealings with) to walk in and say “damn, you don’t have any cable, phone, OR internet.”

Honestly, I haven’t been this enraged since The Steve Misrack (The Worst and Scummiest Landlord on Earth) Incident. This one is going down in the record books, folks.

1. The school doesn’t sell single game tickets. Period. Every ticket is a season ticket. They say they do this to preserve the school’s 71 game sellout record. Hoo-fucking-ray. I suppose I understand this. OK. Fine.
2. As an aside, in case you wanted to buy season tickets you can’t just buy them. You have to donate a certain amount of money to the athletic program just to have the opportunity to buy them. And, from what one of spacebee’s co-worker’s husband told me $500 doesn’t get you the opportunity, so it’s somewhere north of that. Fine, they needs to get their monies somehows.
3. BUT, there was a link on the page to the UW Ticket Marketplace, where season ticketholders can sell unused tickets to single games. “NICE,” I think, “I’ll just pick up a ticket on there.” only to find that…
4. YOU HAVE TO DONATE MONEY JUST TO BE AFFORDED THE OPPORTUNITY TO BID ON A SINGLE GAME TICKET. You can’t even enter the Ticket Marketplace unless you have donated at least $50 to the athletic department.

Motherfucker, I just wanted to watch a single fucking basketball game against You-Double-You Fucking Green Bay and I have to be motherfucking Andrew Carnegie just to do it?! Fuck that, I’ll watch the game at the Main Street Depot.

I know wwhazz hates donations to the university; I got a tongue-lashing just for donating $250 to the Computer Science Department, but I thought it was OK to support the department I got my degree from. Hell no I’m not giving the university athletic department $500 just to be able to buy a ticket to watch the Badgers slaughter fucking Buffalo. All that to buy John Stocco a Cadillac Escalade? No.

RAJ OUT.

RAJ OUT.

[soon to be a picture of my triumphant check]

However, with every win comes a loss, as he made the check out to “Zach + Erin Moneypenny AND Michael Kristopeit”. As those who have dealt with banks can attest to, I am going to have one pain in the ass of a time trying to deposit this goddamned thing. I’m sure Steve is laughing in a corner somewhere about how he screwed us over, Vince McMahon-style. I think we’ll find a way to cash the thing eventually, but in the meantime I’m glad for the following reasons:

1. He now can’t send our names to the collection agency for $1237.81 and ruin my credit rating.
2. He is not getting a single additional penny out of us.
3. We actually get to see some of our money returned to us.

The only bad thing is I wish I could have been in court to see him get reamed by a judge for dicking us over so badly. Eh, you take what you can get. I consider this equal to a $1423.99 swing in poker or craps, and you can’t get much better than a roughly $1500 gambling swing in your favor.

An additional benefit is that I am now quite knowledgable about California Tenant/Landlord Law, so come to me with your questions on procedure when you get dicked out of YOUR security deposit.

–whazz on, and on and on and on

I included a list of the items that I thought were unreasonable and will upload that when I have some spare time. The bottom line was that I added up $1,423.99 in unreasonable charges (including the crazy floor estimate). If you subtract that from the $1,237.81 that Steve says we owe him, it leaves $186.18 due to us.

I sent it Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation. I didn’t want to have him sign for it because in all likelihood he will refuse any further mailings, thinking that he is being served with a lawsuit.

So, next steps: if he pays us our money everything will be right in the world. I doubt this will happen, so the question becomes: how will he respond to the threat of litigation in small claims court. My best guess is that he will ignore the letter and send the amount to the collection agency anyways. If he thought he could win in court, he would have just threatened to sue us for the balance anyways. The fact that there was no explicit or implicit threat of court action (he instead just said that he would turn over the amount to a collection agency if we didn’t pay) means that he probably knows his bogus “estimate” wouldn’t get far in front of a judge. I’m guessing he will not respond in any way to the letter, leaving the onus on myself to initiate court action. If that is indeed the case Mr. Misrack, I’ll be seeing your fat ass in court.

As an aside, I was walking through the Oakridge Mall parking lot when I saw a cream Lexus SUV with gold trim. Steve drives a car like that. In addition, the car had a license plate that said “REALTOR”. Steve is a realtor. I was very close to kicking a large dent in it for good measure, but chose to keep on walking.

offtopic: i will be posting a video game review of Donkey Konga real soon. the short take: it is awesome as awesome can be.

–whazz on

Suggestions on revisions for tone and rationalness are requested. I want to ensure that some of my outrage comes through, but I don’t want to harm my case by making completely outrageous statements. Please comment with any suggestions.

–fuck everything, we’re going to five blades

The big news story of this update, though is that I finally got a chance to see a copy of the estimate for $3,300 in repairs to the damaged wood floor. I can see now why he didn’t send it originally and why he is fucking us around so much. As an aside here, I was wondering why he didn’t sue us for the money he felt was owed and instead just told us it would be sent to a collections agency if we didn’t pay. I’m thinking now that he knows his shit wouldn’t stand in small claims court so he tried to work around it via the threat of collections. Uh-uh Steve. Silly monkey, you don’t fuck with me to the tune of $1,237 and expect to get away with that shit. But back to the “estimate.”

The first line of the estimate said the following: “as per description & measurements taken by Mr. Misrak [sic] here is the estimate to replace laminate in the above jojb location.” It took me several casual readings before I realized what was being said there. I called Step Ahead Carpet & Flooring to speak with the gentleman who did the “estimate” for Steve. Edward was very nice and answered all of my questions definitively. As it turns out, no one ever went to the house and inspected the floor. No one determined that it was “not repairable damage.” No one (except for Steve) decided that to replace a 6 ft x 6 ft area of damage, at least 330 sq ft of floor would have to be replaced. Steve looked at the floor and decided himself that it couldn’t be repaired. Then Steve, himself, decided that the only way to fix it was to replace 330 sq ft. Then Steve went to Edward at Step Ahead, and asked something along the lines of, “Hey, if I were to replace 330 sq ft of hardwood floor, how much would that run me?” Edward gave him the estimate that I have now in my possession, and Steve halved it and sent us the bill with no intention of ever having the work done (by his own admission).

This will not stand. This asshole thinks he can get away with this shit? Fuck this. I’m drafting a letter which will directly tell him to give us back the money from the security deposit that he owes us, and it will go out soon. Then it’s fucking on. No abdominal stretches, no irish whips, no sleepers: just a fucking Dudley Death Drop through the Table of Small Claims Court for Steve Misrack. He ain’t gonna no-sell this one.

–fuck everything, we’re going to five blades

To summarize where we are at this point: Steve Misrack sent us a bill for $3,237.81, minus our initial security deposit of $2000, which leaves us “owing” him $1,237.81 within 30 days. He claims $3,237.81 is the total cost of cleaning and repairing damages to 1371 Norman Drive. Personally, I claim two things:

1. He was a horrible landlord who was lax to attend to things we brought to his attention (such as cockroaches in the house).
2. We did a helluva job cleaning up the place before we left. I sat on my ass for hours and scrubbed the walls clean, fer christ’s sakes. I swept and mopped multiple times in the week leading up to the move out. I touched up spots on the walls with the paint provided in the garage. I spackled nail holes and touched up with paint afterwards. I scrubbed the carpet for hours before my wife steam-cleaned it. After all this work Steve Misrack has the gall to charge us $810 in cleaning fees and $500 in repair fees for such things as “sweeping the side entry”, “cleaning the fireplace”, “changing exterior light bulbs”, etc.

In response to his mailing, I sent him a letter demanding the missing estimates and receipts that he never provided to me. The letter went out certified mail yesterday, which means he received it today. I have had no calls or emails yet today from him.

ps– All day numbers in this series of posts are dated from the date I received his orginal letter demanding payment (i.e., Day 0 was Friday, December 10th, 2004).

–fuck everything, we’re going to five blades