10 ~ God's Provision in Real Estate Deals Gone South

The next house was slightly more questionable than the last, but it was a 1914, brick craftsman on four acres in the middle of cows and corn for a killer deal. Sure it looked like a reject from the brotherhood of hermits, but the little I knew about real estate told my gut that this deal was one I wouldn’t regret if just for the value of the Colorado dirt alone. The long process was well underway, and as we lived inside, we naturally worked on the inside of the house, leaving the ghastly overgrown exterior for last.

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Warmer weather came as the interior was wrapping up, so Julia and I decided to focus our efforts on trimming 100 or so years of neglect and overgrowth from around the outside of the terrifying-looking little homestead. We were pretty accustomed to the lovely little messes that we turned into masterpieces little by little and paycheck by paycheck. We knew the eventual reward was worth the temporary pain. However, our insurance company in Colorado was not used to this “live and fix” lifestyle, nor had they been privy to our schemes up to this point, and I had likely brought the whole fiasco on my own head. What fiasco, you ask? Well, they were dropping our policy. And we had already been dropped by another agency a few months prior, and if I lost this policy, my mortgage would be in trouble. No big deal, but … I WAS FACING LOSING OUR HOUSE. No big deal. Really. All good.

You see, when we decided to trim back a century of overgrowth from around the old house, we uncovered arguably the most terrifying Hansel and Gretel-looking mess you have ever seen. Pine and cedar trimmings littered the roof that was half ancient shingles and half cedar shake, and by some miracle still watertight. The exterior was otherwise barren and just plain creepy. Our nice little mess that had been hidden nicely from any passersby by ages of overgrowth was now in clear view for all to see. What once looked like a mess of overgrown trees and bushes gave way to a horrifying-looking 105-year-old house in massive need of a sprucing up. Windows were only half done, so while they had been installed, the exterior had not been trimmed, and gaping unfinished spaced between new windows and old brinks was sketchy looking, to say the least. Our house looked like an HGTV show that had gone bankrupt. The house was just creepy. Did I know that insurance companies drive by properties with new policies to grab photos? Yep. Did I know this day was coming? Yep. Did I prepare adequately for this day? Absolutely not.

I am not trying to expand my creative writing style or stretch the truth here to keep you all engaged. The truth is that the house looked bad. So bad that my own mom, who knew the magic that we could work with real estate, hated that her grandkids lived there. The inside really was coming along, though, and I was able to sweet-talk my way into keeping our policy active until the office had an opportunity to review some interior photos that I would send over that afternoon. I also let her know that the house was receiving a brand-new steel roof ASAP. I let her know that we had already purchased all the metal, and it was lying beside the house, ready to be installed. She bit, and I had earned us 24 hours to send photos and pray.

A day after the insurance office lady received the photos of the interior, she called back to let me know that the house was lovely and that they would be happy to keep our policy, but just wanted to be sure that the roof would be repaired within a week. “One week?” I asked. “Yeeeeesss ma’am. It will be done,” I agreed but did so in full panic mode.

How was I going to get this thing done so fast?! Now all of the metal had been purchased and was laying in the side yard; this, of course, was one of my main bargaining points with insurance. How was I to know they would actually want me to install it so fast? I hadn’t thought that far ahead, really. My father-in-law agreed to fly out and help me throw the roof on, and about that same time, a cold front decided to move in, complete with high winds and freezing rain. Perfect.

Those who understand roofing will get a kick out of the fact that this was a gable and valley roof. None of the angles for the gables or valleys were consistent, and this was my first time ever attempting a metal roof install. There I was with my almost retired father-in-law coffee mugs in hand, wind starting to blow pretty good, staring at the oldest shingles I had ever seen, knowing that come wind, snow, hell, or high water, we had to get those 18-foot panels up and fastened like immediately. My boss, Eddie, knew what my house looked like and knew we needed a roof but couldn’t understand why I was taking PTO during a cold front for a roofing job. It was humiliating, but I had to level with him. He understood, granted the time off, and wished me luck with a chuckle and two thumbs way way up.

Dad and I, through a very unfortunate few days, managed to get all visible portions of the roof up. He got pretty beat up, took some metal shavings to the face due to my inability to run a circular saw with a metal cutting blade properly, and both of us nearly slipped and fell multiple times as the air grew cold and sleet turned to ice on the panels. It was an incredibly dumb move, but it made sense at the time, and the Lord was faithful to see us through it. There was still additional work to do, but all “visible” panels were installed, and the roof looked great from the road.

You thought this book was about a kidney donation. I know, I know, We’re getting there. Just hang with me.

Julia and I were driving Dad to the Denver International Airport to send him off back to Albuquerque, and about 10 minutes from the airport, I had an astonishing thought, “Why not move to New Mexico?” Your mind can do quite a bit in ten minutes, so I worked out all the finer details and was pretty set on uprooting our family, changing careers, and settling in the desert by the time we were pulling up to the Southwest doors for passenger drop off. By now, I was just biting my tongue, waiting for Dad to get out of the swagger wagon so I could tell Julia what I had so brilliantly concocted in the last few minutes.

I jumped out of the van to help Dad with his bag, shake his hand, and wish him well, just hoping that Julia wouldn’t belabor the situation with a long emotional goodbye to her dad, who had just taken off work and risked life and limb to bail his dumb kids out of a bad situation. Have I mentioned that I struggle with selfishness? Well, there you go. No sooner had Julia clicked her seat belt than I was rolling away, choking up on the gas pedal, looking for a room to merge into the flow of traffic and ready to transition immediately into this next topic with all of the grace and gentleness that it deserved.

Julia was looking over her right shoulder at the terminal, enjoying some loving thoughts of her selfless dad. “Hey Julia,” I just started right in. It’s a great way to communicate, really. You all should try it. “Hmm?,” she hummed questioningly. “Let’s move to New Mexico. She whipped around so fast I’m pretty sure I heard her head make a “shoosh” sound like Xena, Warrior Princess turning to catch her Frisbee thing in a fight. “Wwwwhat!? Where did this come from?,” she half asked and half exclaimed. Really, I was annoyed that she hadn’t caught on to the greatness of the idea yet, so as we exited passenger drop-off and began the airport exit route towards E-470, I began to walk her through the details that she knew intimately well but were worth repeating. “We are selling our house once it’s done, real estate in Colorado is stupidly expensive, I need to make a change in my professional life, we want to buy and hold rentals in an appreciating market, but can’t afford Colorado. Our only rule that we created for ourselves is that we have to be close to the parents so that our kids will get to see them often. My parents are really only 2 1/2 hours south, but the GAP project to widen the highway between Monument and Castle Rock makes that drive more like 4 hours. If we moved to New Mexico we would only be 15 minutes from your parents, and still close enough to my parents to visit often.” I was almost down the circular ramp from passenger drop-off, and she wasn’t on board yet.

She processed that information logically and thoroughly in approximately 7 seconds. She looked over at me with an expression that told me she was far away in thought, but I could tell that far away in thought here was a good thing. She was turning a page in her book to match where I had tuned about 15 minutes ago. She gave a “why in the world not” shrug and agreed. We were headed to New Mexico, and we hadn’t even exited the airport to the Tollway yet. We took some time to discuss what neighborhood we wanted to look for a house in and enjoyed laughing at the absurdity of how fast we make life-altering decisions.

Nothing would be set in stone until we sold the fixer-upper we were working on. We hadn’t intended for it to be a flip. We loved that house. We wanted to raise our kids there. The 4-acre property had a massive grain silo, the 1914, brick farmhouse that we were fixing, an old Sears kit house, and several dilapidated small cabin-type outbuildings that we could never figure out what there used to be. My favorite part about the property was a snow owl that would perch in the silo from time to time. The four acres had alfalfa fields on two sides, cattle across the street, and a family-owned business on one side that stayed very quiet. We loved our one set of neighbors, Gail and Steve, and saw ourselves living on that property while our kids grew up. One slight issue that presented itself, however, and convinced us to sell and move on, was that the farmland behind us was sold to a concrete block manufacturing company, who would eventually build a massive state of the art manufacturing plant directly behind our house, our little brick farmhouse, … in the middle of what we thought was farmland.

We were incredibly bummed about the whole situation. We purchased the property because it was a great deal for what we thought it was, and those plans were all being flushed down the toilet, and we stood there helpless watching. We thought we had purchased in the middle of agricultural acreages but learned late that our little spot was the last agricultural plot, and all of the farmland and cattle land surrounding us had already been zoned industrial.

The town hall meetings were like something out of a sitcom. Angry locals who didn’t want manufacturing moving in each taking a turn at the mic to yell at self-important politicians and developers who assured us all that we would barely even see the massive four-story factory being built… in my back yard.

I left one such meeting very disappointed after understanding that there was literally nothing that I could do to keep this plant from moving in and setting up shop. The land had already been rezoned, and everything was in alignment. These proceedings were just the last portion of the process before they could break ground and start laying underground utilities. On my way out of that town hall, the city planner stopped me and asked what I had paid for the property. I told him, and he offered to pay me that amount right then and there. “You’re sitting on a gold mine, young man.” He mentioned, “I would rezone that thing and double my money,” and wished me a good night.

I drove home and must not have even registered what the city planner had mentioned to me. I was too busy replaying what one city council member who looked like a caricature of Colonel Sanders said in a very southern voice: “Those people who live in that house” (speaking of me not knowing that I was sitting 30 feet in front of him) “They won’t care what we do. They won’t even really notice it if they don’t use their back porch. They can sit on the front porch instead.” What if I don’t want to sit on my front porch, chicken man? What if I wanted to sit on my back porch and look for my snow owl perched on my silo? What then? None of that mattered. It didn’t matter to the city council, and it certainly didn’t matter to the incoming facility managers. I needed to grow up and figure out what I was going to do.

Who was going to buy a beautifully remodeled 1914, brick farmhouse next to a four-story brick factory? I’m not sure how long it took me to register what I had heard the city planner say, but one evening Julia and I were sitting at the table, having one of those two-sided half-paying attention conversations couples have. She was happily scrolling her phone, and I was going through work messages. Our mostly disengaged conversation led Julia to look up “industrial property for sale near me” on the Google machine. I was skimming work emails while Julia typed for properties. Her eyes started bugging out, and she started typing and scrolling faster. “You need to look at this, babe,” she muttered, never taking her eyes from the screen. My eyes were glued to my own screen as they often were in the evenings, as some install somewhere was inevitably about to ruin some poor homebuyer’s life, and my immediate attention was required to resolve the unsatisfactory work, or wrong tile, or wood floor with a funny looking knot. These daily and relatively small mishaps were absolutely unbearable for at least one buyer in the thousands that we serviced, and therefore unbearable for their builder, and therefore apparently worthy of my every waking moment. I continued to scroll, skim, reply, and defer emails. “What?” I asked, half asking and half signaling that I wasn’t present as I was working. Julia, ever patient with my evening emails, wasn’t having it that evening. “Come look at these prices, babe.” Julia’s tone wasn’t angry, and it wasn’t forceful, but it was such that I knew I should come to take a look if I valued my life as I knew it. I looked on as she scrolled a few properties within a stone’s throw of our little farmhouse. The city planner’s words, “You’re sitting on a gold mine, young man,” came back and stuck this time. We were going to rezone and sell the property as industrial land.

Now, how can I summarize the two roller coaster years in this house without adding additional chapters and taking you down endless rabbit trails? Can one add bullet points in a book? Let’s see if the editor kicks it shall we?

Elation with amazing “forever” property

Slow remodel

Kidney testing (see below)

Insurance threatens to pull homeowner’s policy

Kidney donation postponed (what?! Plot twist! Keep reading)

Brick monstrosity comes to town and takes over 100 acres of farmland

Depression

Despair

Anxiety

Realization that I’m an idiot

Elation again

Unsolicited offer

Very bad people

Deal gone wrong

Sadness

Rezone complete

List

Sovereign grace bestowed

Competing offers over asking

Cash in hand

New Mexico bound with both kidneys.

SEO Type jargon. Move along ... Hello, and welcome to my not a blog blog! So, I wrote a book, and I want the message of that book to get out regardless of whether or not anyone buys a copy of the book. A blog, so I hear, is a great way to take advantage of SEO and make sure that people who WANT to find content that my book covers will have a clear path to it’s happy little home in the Amazon marketplace and should then be able to walk away with a hard copy, kindle version, or Audible copy of said book. To that end, I will be releasing sneak previews and portions to each chapter over the next several weeks. Can I buy the book today? No, sorry. While it is completed, edited, and proofed, the audio version is currently being recorded by a guy with a much better voice than my own. I have no idea what I am doing in publishing, but I think I want to release it all at once. How did you get your book on Amazon? Well, I am a brilliant author, but I also used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) that allows me to manage and upload my own manuscript(s), audio, and artwork. So what is the book about? Sovereign and Gentle is a window into my happy little family for those of you who don’t know us as well as a deeper look for those who do. The book will even be informative to some of my closest friends, as I don’t talk about much of this content often. The book opens with the prospect of either Julia or myself donating a Kidney, follows that painful journey, and then backtracks to cover some of our struggles with infertility, multiple miscarriages, foster care, and adoption. I even sprinkled in some real estate investing horror stories for you guys. The story is framed by key passages from Scripture that have been especially meaningful to me, and the climax of the book seeks to honor and praise God, who has gifted us in all things to be able to serve him in and through our struggles. Did I discuss the big church from college days that laid me off on multiple occasions and kicked us out of a house after the pastor went up the river? I did, and I don’t think I’m bitter… I think... I’m a work in progress there, but I hope that I framed that experience in such a manner that others who have been beaten up by institutions can find comfort in the one who is sovereign over all things and in His ultimate plan.