Home Ownership - NOT!

As of this afternoon, I am no longer a home owner. It was a long and, at times, ridiculous path to sell the condo with more and more hoop jumping requested by the bank.

I've talked about my problems with the bank - classic one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing. And that continued until the very bitter end. 

When I had a viable offer and the bank had finished processing their paperwork (which only took from August to November!!), their lawyers notified me that the bank had ended the foreclosure proceedings and, if the pending sale did fall through, I would be able to do deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure. Deed-in-lieu is basically just giving them the keys.

Speaking of keys and one hand not knowing blah, blah, blah ... <outstanding transition, eh?>, I got quite the surprise earlier this month. The buyers were going to do a final walk-through with their contractor on November 11th. Brian (my agent) called to ask me if I knew what happened to the lock-box with the keys. It wasn't hanging on the garage door. Ironically, I had discovered it was missing just the day before, but assumed that he had taken the lock-box down because of the sale approval.

I told him not to worry, that I was going to St. Paul the very next day to do a final cleaning of the place (lots of odds and ends left in the condo as well as more than a few condiments in the fridge). I would get a new lock-box, put a set of my keys in it, and would leave it hanging on the garage.

The next day I looked around the complex to see if someone just put the lock-box on someone else's garage by mistake. Nope. So I headed into the building and up the stairs to my condo.

Just looking at the condo door, I immediately knew something was different. The dead bolt and door knob looked far too shiny. Well, my bank and/or their legal minions had cut off the lock-box and changed the locks on the condo door. They would later explain that they were worried about the place since no one was living there.

When I returned to Rochester, I gathered all the remaining keys - building key, garage door key and mail box keys - and sent them to Brian and he contacted the bank to get the new keys. It only took the bank two weeks to figure out which minion had the keys. Brian received them just this morning - the morning of the closing!

I know that I'll miss some parts of being a home owner - going to Home Depot to pick out paint and hanging pictures using whatever method I want - but I'm not going to miss the stress of mortgage payments and condo association dues and having financial decisions that impact me decided by a vote of association members. I'm not going to miss the neighbor who had memorized the association rules and would tattle if you broke any.

I'm done with being a home owner for awhile. Anyone need a room painted?