That's Entertainment

I have mentioned previously that we like watching the “House Hunters”shows on HGTV. St. Pauli Girl likes to check out houses while I get a kick out of the people on it and their constant complaining about needing an open floor plan. But what really gets on my nerves now is that every couple proclaims something along the lines: “But we entertain a lot” or “we really expect to entertain a lot and that deck is too small” or “I really wish we had friends because this would be a great house to entertain in.”

I understand what they mean. They like/want to host dinner parties or plain old parties or just have friends over for drinks. Just say what you mean. As far as I know, I've never received an invitation to a night of entertainment, but that could be because I'm very boring. I've been invited to parties and dinner parties and although they have been fun, I wouldn't necessarily consider myself to have been entertained.

So in case you are not sure if you are entertaining or just having friends over:

A good rule of thumb is if you think you could charge a cover charge or guests should bring a wad of dollar bills, then yes, you can consider yourself an entertainer.

If you sing some songs, you're friends will probably smile and politely applaud. If you put out a tip jar, you're an entertainer.

If you give a ten minute monologue of jokes, it just means you waste a lot of time on the internet. If you provide a backing laugh track, you're an entertainer.

Hosting a game night is not entertainment. I'm a sore loser so if I win, I might have been entertained; if I lose, I've just wasted a night of my life. And I probably won't come back.

Cooking dinner in an open kitchen does not make you an entertainer, especially if it involves Brussels sprouts. Flipping food in a pan over massive flames, hand tossing pizza dough, and/or juggling bottles of liquor does not make you an entertainer unless you charge me $100 to sit there and watch you. And I'll probably want a refund at the end of the night.

Now that we've settled the difference between entertaining and having friends over, I would like to announce my new career: Power Broker!

We were lucky enough to watch a new show on HGTV last night called “Power Broker.” Now I'll admit we missed the first fifteen minutes of the show, but essentially the Power Broker is a guy who gives a list of homes for sale to a young couple and helps them pick an offer price. Now this may vary by state or country, but the thing that's still great about realtors is that they handle all of the contact with the seller or buyer so you don't have to.

But the Power Broker doesn't do that. He tells the buyers to make an offer and let him know what happens. When the offer isn't accepted, he tells the buyers to write an emotional letter to the sellers. After the deal is done and the contractors start remodeling the house, he stops by and takes the head contractor out to dinner.

This would be like calling myself Power Surgeon then going into the operating room and telling the real surgeons: “yeah, the appendix is somewhere down there in the gut. You might want to start with a scalpel. Good luck. Hey, who wants to go out for pizza after this?”

But why be a Power Surgeon when I can just be a Power Broker? So if you're looking to buy a house, give me a call and I will:

• Give you a list of three houses in your price range. And they just might be somewhere in the area you want.
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• Suggest a good starting offer after examining the market and randomly picking a number out of my head.
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• Wait for you to let me know what happens with your offer
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• Tell you how stupid the sellers are when your offer is turned down.
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• Forget to tell you that you'll be on television and maybe you should take a shower and wash your hair (this would have been good advice for last night's episode)
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• Advise you to go vandalize the house as the sellers will then have to lower their price.
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• Advise you to write and record an emotional song plea to the sellers then tell you to stand on their lawn with a boombox over your head blaring the song over and over until they break down.
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• Take your contractor out to dinner.
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• Collect my fee from you including reimbursement for taking the contractor out to dinner.

The show wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't call it Power Broker. That guy's about as powerful as my cat picking out houses by deciding where to poop on the newspaper. But I guess it was easier than calling it “Some Guy Off the Street Whose Bald Head Makes Him Look Powerful and Once Bought a House so He Sort of Knows What It's Like.”

A Tale of Two Real Estates (Part I)

So I’ve been on hiatus for a bit. After a couple of crazy months in August and September, turns out we are moving again which brings me back to one of my least favorite things: Adventures in Real Estate! We recently closed on a new house after enduring 4 weeks of ineptitude by the worst mortgage lender of all time. This of course brought back memories of selling our last house which leads us to a 2 part blog entry.

 A Tale of Two Real Estates (Part I)

In October, 2009 we put our house on the market so (as it turns out) we could live closer to a meth house. Given the uncertainty of the housing market at the time, we had an appraisal done so we could accurately price it and let buyers know how fairly priced it was (i.e., we probably weren’t going to come down a whole from the appraisal). Amazingly, the first family that looked at it, made an offer. Amazingly, a really low offer. But then they backed out because they thought they might be moving elsewhere.

Fast forward to February, 2010. Things have changed, and that same family made another offer slightly better than the first one. After going back and forth slowly bringing them up on their lowball offers, we dug our heels in with our final counter-offer: take it or leave it. Yet they still countered lower. No thanks. Looked like the end of the deal.

The next day I got a message from their agent who I will henceforth refer to as Dr. Evil, "It’s a new day and after thinking things over, we still have another low offer for you."

“No thanks, see previous statement about our final offer,” I said.

Finally, they agreed to come up to our demands, but I had a sense of foreboding. We received the contract, and there’s a special provision about "roof must be insurable by insurance company of buyer’s choice or will renegotiate." I wasn’t too worried about it, as the roof was fine, but that ambiguity scared me. Plus in Texas, the buyer has 10 days to get out of the contract for any reason whatsoever during which time they can order house inspections.

They arranged an inspection, and we waited for the results. Then waited some more. After three days, (Day 7 of option period), Dr. Evil finally sent us the inspection report and said, "Fix everything the inspection report says needs fixing."

I prepared my best Bill Clinton voice and told our agent, "Okay, because the inspection doesn’t actually say anything about repairing anything. It just lists so-called deficiencies. So we’re done."

But our agent more reasonably demanded that they come back with a real list. And they did; a list of 7 or 8 items. I said we’ll fix 2. But of course there’s all sorts of ambiguity on just when is something repaired, so at agent’s suggestion, we offered them some cash to fix whatever they wanted.

Meanwhile, the inspection report said the roof should be looked at more closely by a roofing expert. So a guy came out and walked across the roof for 30 seconds. He then sent a report that the roof is in great condition, but the shed roof could use replacing and he’d be happy to do it for $800. Our agent asked if we wanted to do anything about the shed roof.

"Hell no! It’s a bloody shed, the doors are in worse shape than the roof!"

On a Sunday, our agent told us the option period would expire at midnight. Dr. Evil called back and wanted us to extend the option period by 2 days so they could get estimates for all the repairs they wanted.

"No way! You guys sat on that report for 3 days!"

Later that night, our agent called and said Dr. Evil said the option period expires on Monday.

"What do you think of that?" she asked.

“Hmm, well, I find it unbelievable that two experienced agents using the same contracts used in every Texas real estate sale don’t know when the option period ends.”

So I googled it myself and found that Dr. Evil was right, which made my agent a liar or stupid.

On Monday, a bunch of repair people came by to get their estimates. Finally, they sign off on us giving them cash. Woo-hoo, it’s a done deal. At the same time, a roofer no older than 15 came out to look at the roof for their insurance company. We are informed later that night that Dr. Evil just sent us a letter from the buyer’s insurance company stating that the roof is uninsurable and the whole front needs to be replaced. She wanted us to call our insurance company.

Our insurance company won’t even look at it unless we file a claim which we had no reason to. Plus their own inspector said it looked great. But since we technically had to re-negotiate the contract, we gave them our terms: sign off or the house goes back on the market at midnight and we’re scheduling an open house for this weekend.

Dr. Evil freaked out. No, they don’t want to back out. They proposed adding $2000 to the purchase price which we would refund to them at closing costing us nothing and that way they can finance their repairs in the mortgage.

Now this ordeal was bad enough but the real stress was coming from the fact we had made an offer to buy a different house in a far away town with the option period closing fast, and we needed to sell our house before we could complete that sale.

Next came a new catch: the roof needed to be fixed (even though it’s not broken) by the buyers before closing for their mortgage approval. Normally I would have said, “why don’t you just go jump off the supposedly shoddy roof”, but we really needed to make this deal work.

Two days later, they had a new plan. The insurance company would let them buy the house as long as they had the roof replaced within 30 days. Fine, but now we won’t sign anything until we see proof from the same insurance company that wouldn’t insure it a week ago. Eventually, we received their insurance binder.

On the next Monday, an older gentleman pulled up in a pickup truck. We thought he was the man coming to pick up our old garage freezer (otherwise we wouldn’t have answered the door.) Nope, he’s the grandfather of the woman buying the house. He wanted to walk through and look at the house. Then he asked if we’d be picking up the pecans from our pecan tree.

Bwah, hah, hah, hah, are you kidding me? That’s the best reason our house sold right then so we wouldn’t have to pick up pecans nor trim the rose bushes!

He said he wanted the pecans. After thinking about it later, the sheer gall of him and his family just pissed me off. I vowed to pick up the pecans and throw them in the dumpster. Hmmm, no wait, that would be too much work. Instead, I’d just walk around and stomp them to bits.

Wednesday morning, I was working in my home office at 9:00 a.m. when I heard a bunch of trucks pull up. I went out and saw a roofing company getting ready to tear our roof apart! I talked to the foreman (who incidentally laughed and wanted to know what’s wrong with the roof, it looked good to him). Finally, I talked some sense into him and they left.

The scary thing is if they had come a day later when I was out of town, they would have put a new roof on. The deal finally did close, and we found out that Dr. Evil was the cousin of the buyer and just wanted to ensure the buyer got a good deal. The buyers did partially replace the roof so that it became multi-colored and looked like crap. But they sold the house and moved out after a year. I’m guessing that by now someone has stuffed Dr. Evil into a wood chipper somewhere.

Better Homes and ...

Recently, St. Pauli Girl complained of my habit of watching the Cartoon Network in bed. She had a point; we both know “We’re off on the road to Rhode Island” from memory. So in a magnanimous gesture, I now flip the channel to HGTV after my cartoons are over where we watch a show called “House Hunters.” The show features various couples trying to move out of their clustered apartments/homes to something bigger and nicer. The drama is heightened as they view three homes, and in the climax, they tell us which one they bought.

I believe all of the shows must have been taped three or four years ago, back before the housing meltdown and when sub-prime mortgages were hot rather than toxic. My favorite part of the show is when the couple announces their budget, the size of which always amazes me, and after I give them the benefit of the doubt that they maybe just won the lottery or inherited a fortune, they proclaim they bought the house with no money down.

And so here is an example of how an episode gets developed:

(HGTV producer is invited into a small, rundown house in an old area of town where he meets young couple Joe and Sheila Smith)

Producer: Your home is a lot nicer on the inside. We’ll probably stick with exterior shots.

Sheila: This really isn’t our home. It’s my mom’s. We live in the garage.

Producer: Great! Let’s check it out.

(Sheila leads the group to the garage which holds a bed, couch, small table and microwave oven next to a large empty space.)

Producer: Hmmm. When you said garage, I thought you meant bedroom converted from a garage. But, there is lots of space here.

Sheila: That’s because my mom is at work. She parks the car there when she comes home.

Joe: Makes it tough to sleep in on Saturdays when she gets up early to go the market.

Producer: Good one, Joe. We can use that line. Let me make a note that we’ll want to film some when your mom is here. Next, let’s talk about budget. Tell me about your income.

Joe: Well, I work the graveyard shift at the Grab-n-Go and Sheila has her own business. She’s a substitute home-school teacher. If someone home-schools their kids and needs a day off, they call Sheila.

Producer: Wow! There’s a demand for that?

Sheila: Not as much as I had hoped.

Producer: Fine. We’ll put you down as entrepreneur, and we’ll say that Joe is in retail. Any rich relatives that can help you out?

Joe: Just her mom. She’s kind of nudging us out. Every day she parks a little bit closer to the bed.

Producer: No problem. I think we can safely assume a $600K budget.

Sheila: Dang! Is HGTV giving us all that?

Producer: No, we can’t do that. We can give you a nice house-warming gift though. Maybe a fern.

Joe: We only have about $400 in savings. Is that going to be enough?

Producer: Oh yeah. I know a guy who will take good care of you. Yoshii. He’s a mortgage dealer. They call him Samurai Mortgage Broker because he’ll slice your mortgage about a hundred ways and then sell the parts to investors.

Sheila: That sure is nice of those investors to give us a nice house like that.

Producer: Well, of course you’ll be paying the mortgage. But the good news is that not only do you need no money down, Yoshii will also give you a $2,000 refund.

Joe: Wow! How can he do that?

Producer: Because investors love this investment. Plus your interest rate will be 4%. Now it is variable, but one thing we’ve learned in the past 15 years is that mortgage rates always go lower and house values always increase. Buying a home puts you on the road to wealth.

Joe: And to think I just wanted a man cave.

Producer: Now let’s talk about show specifics. First, we’ll be showing you three houses to choose from.

Sheila: Do we get to pick out those three?

Producer: No. HGTV does that for you, with some help from Yoshii. Actually, with a lot of help from Yoshii.

Sheila: Doesn’t that limit our options?

Producer: Look, do you want the $2,000 or not? Anyway, as you look at the houses, remember, America is looking with you, and you are the entertainment. So you’ll need to be commenting on the house. We’ve got some standard lines to help. When you can’t think of anything else to say, use one of these. First, there’s “I really like the open floor plan.”

Joe: What does that mean?

Producer: It just means that you can see the living room television from the kitchen. But don’t say that. You’ll want to say something like “we can keep an eye on the kids from the kitchen.”

Sheila: I still don’t understand open floor plan.

Producer: Well, notice how right now, you can see the lawn mower all the way across the garage. That’s an open floor plan. When your mom gets home and parks her car here, it becomes a closed floor plan. Another thing to say when looking at a kitchen or patio: “This will be great for entertaining” followed by “we do a lot of entertaining.”

Sheila: But we really don’t do much entertaining with Joe working nights.

Producer: Do you ever eat dinner with your mom?

Sheila: Every night.

Producer: That’s a lot of entertaining. And if you can’t think of anything else, you can always say, “It’s a little small” or “Needs to be updated.”

Joe: But what if that’s not true?

Producer: It’s always true. You can never have a house that’s too big or that doesn’t need updating. What is the number one, most important thing you’ll be looking for in a house?

Sheila: A big private master bathroom that we don’t have to share with anyone.

Producer: Great. We’ll tell everyone you really want a big backyard.

Joe: But we don’t. I hate mowing.

Producer: This is to fool America. Lately, they’ve gotten pretty good at guessing which homes people buy and quite frankly, they’re losing interest. So we put a little red herring out there to make it trickier. They think you’re going to choose the house with the biggest backyard, then bam! You actually end up with the big fat master bath. See how it works? Lastly, remember you are on television, and you are essentially performers.

(He gazes at Sheila for a minute)

You’ll want to dress nice. Maybe something lowcut. Also, do you have any slutty friends that might want to be on tv, I mean, could help you in your house hunting?

Sheila: No.

Joe: What about Gayle? Remember that one time--

(Joe is cut off by Sheila’s icy glare.)

Joe: Okay, so, what about me? Should I wear a sports jacket, maybe a tie?

Producer: Nah, you won’t matter. Everyone knows it’s the woman who picks out the house. Besides, by the time we’re done editing, you’re going to look like a doofus anyway.