Housing Market Postcard

Yesterday afternoon I was happily reading some news websites when the doorbell rang. Because I hate people (or maybe because people hate me) I do not ordinarily have guests. Because I don't ordinarily have guests I don't usually expect the doorbell to ring. I react to the doorbell the same way casino gamblers react to a fire alarm: pause briefly, arch an eyebrow, and then go right back to what I was doing.

Because I don't expect the doorbell to ring I never open the door when the doorbell does ring. This, even though the function of the doorbell is to inform that there is someone on the other side of the door seeking an audience. Living in NYC for almost fifteen years contributed to that little neurosis. We don't open the door unless we're expecting someone.

Yesterday, however, I was expecting some DVDs and thought the person on the other side of the door might be the mailman/woman/person leaving the DVDs on the front step. Instead when I opened the door I was greeted by a short troll of a woman with a wizened, harried face. Her thin, ratty hair was tucked under a lime-green baseball cap and she was carrying a clipboard.

"Lur... ma... na Talia?" she asked, looking up at me hopefully.

"Sorry," I replied. "He owns the house but I'm not him."

Her face brightened. "Oh, well I need to give you this then." She removed a sheaf of papers from the clipboard. Having worked in enough law offices in my time I knew what to say.

"I can't take it," I said, holding up a hand and backing away from the door threshold slightly. "I'm not authorized to accept anything on his behalf. I'm just a renter. He's the landlord." I paused a moment, then added, "Anyway, he's dead."

[Funny story: The last time the doorbell rang unexpectedly it was the landlord's adult son Richard, come to tell me that his dad had a heart attack and dropped dead. Richard's mother also had a heart attack when she heard the news. She lived. Of course, I didn't open the door for Richard anymore than I open it for anyone else and as a result didn't learn those nuggets of information until much later.]

"Well, I'm going to have to tape this to the door then," the troll told me, tapping her papers.

I realize that process service is a necessary job in our society but I can't muster up much love for the people that do it. They are messengers of ill will, bearers of bad tidings. Nothing good ever comes from the appearance of process servers in your life. They're like the wife or girlfriend who fixes you in the eye one day and says, "We need to talk." This is not a good thing. The subject-matter of the talk is not going to be that the wife or girlfriend feels she's not giving you enough blow jobs. Thus I was quite curt with the troll.

"Do whatever you need to do," I told her. Then I shut the door.

After the coast was clear I went back to see what the troll had taped to my front door. It was a foreclosure notice informing the owner that the house would be sold in 60 days.

Back before he died, "Dave" (as he called himself) told me that he was trying to get his home loan modified. Although I didn't know it for certain at the time, the house had to be underwater. Dave paid $420,000 for it back in 2004 but comps in the neighborhood were on the market for anywhere from $225,000 to $275,000. With the diminished equity in the house and interest rates markedly lower, Dave was hoping to get some leeway from his bank. The bank, however, was making him play a silly game.

See, because Dave was current on his mortgage payments the bank didn't see any need to grant him any loan modification. They believed that his "current" status meant that he was theoretically able to afford his payment, no matter the changed housing circumstances overall. Thus in order to get the bank to even talk about loan modification Dave had to stop paying the mortgage for roughly six months. Once the mortgage was in arrears the bank was only too happy to discuss modification since, by not paying for six months, Dave demonstrated that he can't afford his current payment. Brilliant.

The two parties apparently negotiated new loan terms that everyone could live with. But before he received the bank's final approval for the loan modification, Dave died. His estate has been in probate since then with nobody yet having the appropriate powers to finalize the loan modification. Meanwhile, because the loan modification isn't in place payments still aren't being made on the existing mortgage, now in arrears for ten months. Red flags automatically go up at the bank, setting in motion the foreclosure process, beginning with the taping to my front door of a foreclosure notice by an unlovable troll in a lime-green baseball cap.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is bureaucracy that would have made Douglas Adams proud.

As for its effect on me, the current lease is up on November 15, just inside the 60-day window. I'm not really sure yet what the next step is but I do know that staying in this house wasn't part of the picture even before this latest turn. It's just another wrinkle in what has been an interesting few months. And I mean "interesting" in the Confucian sense of the word.

Dave's son Richard is maintaining his sense of humor in the face of all of these challenges. "I'm sure my dad's FICO score is shot to shit," he said, "but I don't think he really cares anymore."