Thursday, November 28, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
Off to Sandy Island, June 27, 2012
June 27, 2012
To whom it may concern:
Today is June 27, 2012. Tomorrow I go and pick up my son Michael North of Santa Fe. We drive back on Friday, June 29, and on Saturday morning board a plane to Boston with daughter Michelle.
Off to Sandy Island!!
Steven is still on the Philmont Hike : (.
The tree trimmers came today and really chopped at the Mulberry's. The El Paso Zoo came over and picked up the branches to take to the giraffes!!.
The cat Sakura is crawling on the computer. Good night.
The Story of Buying the House on Emory Road
This is an amazing story. A little long, tedious, and sometimes boring, but I tell it often. Therefor, it's worthy of a Post.
One day, probably summer of 2000, my mother offered to treat Steve and me to lunch. We chose the State Line Restaurant, one of our favorites. Steve had been on workman's comp forever it seemed and we were expecting Michael's arrival into the world in the months to come. We've never been able to relax and watch the time tick away and of course, with Michelle and Steven at the daycare waiting to be picked up, this day was no exception. Being in the area, though, of my childhood dream houses, I had the bright idea of driving down Emory to see if there were any homes for sale. It must have been meant to be. There it was: 4343 Emory.
We admired the big white brick house, the matching, but smaller, little house in the back, the garages, barns, etc. It was the perfect house. I remember saying to Steve: "Lets see if we can buy it!" I jotted down the number on the for sale sign and off we went to pick up the kids.
Of course the next thing we did was call the realtor on the sign and ask if we could look at the house. What else were you supposed to do? I was working from 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Monday through Friday and Steve wasn't working at all so we could meet with the realtor anytime, really.
We loved everything about the house and our dreams of horses and tool barns were so close. We could see them coming true on that house on Emory Road.
Steve handled the purchase of Southwestern and I had never bought a house before so we had so many questions. That realtor, Barry Karch, was pretty patient with us I guess. So, the first question, was what do we do? How do we try and buy it? So he gave us the name of a Mortgage Banker (ugh, what a waste of money), but that woman gave us a letter saying that we qualified. Next thing we did was to make an offer. How much were we supposed to offer I asked Mr. Karch? He was representing the seller as well as us, the buyers, so he was trying to stay out of trouble and remain ethical so he couldn't give us an exact figure.
Somewhere along the line he showed us a copy of an appraisal that had ours and two other houses on it. The value of our house was blacked out. Anyway, we ended up bidding about 169,000 for it. Mr. Karch said that the other people bid higher. We went up to 172,000, we still didn't get it. Finally I told Mr. Karch that we could pay 172,500 but not even $5 more. It just wasn't in our budget. Well, low and behold, we got the house!! The fun just started.
We will never know what the other people bid on that house. What we do know is that Mr. Karch represented the seller and the buyer. For that reason he got both commissions. If the other people had bid more for the house, he wouldn't have made as much money because they had a realtor. I have my thoughts and I'm pretty sure he wanted us to get the house. Well, it all worked out. We're still living here 13 years later (minus the husband).
Well, things started moving pretty fast. Steve racked up the credit cards to over $100,000 in five years buying dumb stuff and some good stuff for this house. We bought the 2/3 of an acre of the lot next to us for $10,000 and of course put it on the credit card. he built a tree house that cost over $2000 to have it ready in time for Thanksgiving for the kids. Maybe it was over $5000, I don't remember, but he went all out. It's very sturdy and stands there today. He never put the doors on it though so I never really let the kids use it.
He built three beautiful horse pens. Pipe stalls and chain link. Put water troughs with floats and a sprinkler system that worked with our well. Funny thing is he got it all hooked up and ran it one time then never again. Eventually the cows, goats, etc., broke most of the pvc to it and isn't used anymore.
My favorite thing that Steve built is the 10 foot wrought iron fence that runs across the back of the property. It's beautiful to say the very least. A work of art that nobody except Steve Applegate could have built. I can still hardly believe he threw it all away.
Anyway, along with our dreams, we started running into problems. Mainly, the taxes. We were told that the taxes on the property were about $3000 per year. That was not true, they were about $6000 per year. There was no way we were going to afford that. So here is the story:
I immediately started making phone calls. I wanted to sue everyone involved. Starting from that stupid Mortgage broker named Leslie Bergan. What a thief she was. Watch out for church going music majors who turn into a life of selling mortgages. We never needed her but thought we did. Anyway, then there was the seller, Greenwich Investors from somewhere in California, some company with neither names or faces. Then there was Barry Karch, and the two title companies. My theory was that all those people who claim to be professional should have caught that tax error. What had happened was that nobody realized that there were two property i.d. numbers with central appraisal district for this property. The taxes on one, which included just the front house, were about $3000, and so were the taxes on the other which included the rental and the acres.
Well, it took months of hard work, lots of tears and frustration, but in the end we kept the house and found out a way to pay those taxes.
First of all I had the entire place refinanced at a lower interest rate. Ms. Bergan didn't do us any favors and had charged us plenty and didn't get us a very good interest rate. We refinanced the whole thing for 15 years at a lower rate. Next, I went before the appraisal review board and cried. Begging those people to bring the value of the house down at least to what we paid for it and not a penny higher. I never knew I could do that but someone somewhere told me I could. It worked out. the value of the property got lowered. At one point, Central Appraisal had made a very big mistake by combining both property values onto one property i.d. number. Also, the picture they had of the house on the property didn't match the house we bought. After getting everything straightened out, the taxes on the house were a little closer to what we could afford.
Finally, after all the work was done, I found out something very interesting. About three months before we bought the house, the 1999 taxes were paid twice!! yep, about three days apart or so in June of 2000, two different title companies, in two different states paid the property taxes. Yes indeed. Juan Sandoval at the City Tax Assessors office, had an overpaid balance of almost $8000 on 4343 Emory Road. Now, the battle to get that money back to us started!
Long story short, I got the money. But oh, was it frustrating. I know this is not the thing that most people write stories about, but maybe they should. That way more people could find out ahead of time what is in store for them.
Of course, the first thing I did was ask the Tax Assessors office for the money but they said I had to show them a cancelled check if I wanted that money. So I dug deeper and asked for some help from the title company that sold the house to us. It turns out it was the California title company that overpaid. When I asked them for the money, they just told me that because I wasn't their customer they didn't have to talk to me. Really? I said. All you have to do is hang up the phone, but I have to deal with my frustration and time that I lost finding out that you people made a mistake. I was so mad, I finally went to Juan Sandoval, the county tax Assessor, himself. I also asked our Westside representative, Anthony Cobos, and my then husband, with his policeman's uniform, to go with me. That Mr. Sandoval, what a character he was. I wrote him a letter explaining to him that I feel we were over charged for our house because of somebody's error and that he should give me the money that was sitting in his account. After he read the letter, he asked, "who wrote this letter?", I did, I told him. And he said, "Mrs. Applegate, why did you go through so much trouble, you should have just asked me for the money." I was so mad!!! It was his staff who refused to give it to me because of some dumb policy requiring a copy of a cancelled check.
Well, when he told me we could have the money back, my frustration and anger were long gone. I now had $7000 to pay the taxes on 4343 Emory for at leas the next year and a half!!
Steve moved out in 2005. Since then I've continued to keep up the place but slowly. In 2006 or so I refinanced the house for $215,000. I had to pay off about 60% of the debt we owed. But today I only owe about $145,000. In 2007 all new roofs were put on both houses and both garages. I chose blue because I liked the way the blue roof and white brick looked together. A couple of years later I had both bathrooms remodeled. They are beautiful. I also had wood floor put in the office so my kids could all have their own rooms. About three years ago I had the wood floor in my room put in after living with cement for about three years. About two years ago JJ redid the kitchen. It's beautiful too. This year was a big deal. I had the entire barn in the back rebuilt. It cost about $12000 but it is beautiful. And also, my own little dream of a bathroom in the garage came true this year too. That cost about $2500. Now Guille and Tavo live there and work for me once a week in return for their rent. Tavo has done a lot to the yard including painting the wood fence and keeping up with all of the growth. Today he started painting the wrought iron and boy does it look nice! Slowly but surely we'll get there. JJ also did the kitchen cabinets that look brand new. Next year: The spider barn!
That is the story of 4343 Emory Road and how I live in a beautiful house.
One day, probably summer of 2000, my mother offered to treat Steve and me to lunch. We chose the State Line Restaurant, one of our favorites. Steve had been on workman's comp forever it seemed and we were expecting Michael's arrival into the world in the months to come. We've never been able to relax and watch the time tick away and of course, with Michelle and Steven at the daycare waiting to be picked up, this day was no exception. Being in the area, though, of my childhood dream houses, I had the bright idea of driving down Emory to see if there were any homes for sale. It must have been meant to be. There it was: 4343 Emory.
We admired the big white brick house, the matching, but smaller, little house in the back, the garages, barns, etc. It was the perfect house. I remember saying to Steve: "Lets see if we can buy it!" I jotted down the number on the for sale sign and off we went to pick up the kids.
Of course the next thing we did was call the realtor on the sign and ask if we could look at the house. What else were you supposed to do? I was working from 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Monday through Friday and Steve wasn't working at all so we could meet with the realtor anytime, really.
We loved everything about the house and our dreams of horses and tool barns were so close. We could see them coming true on that house on Emory Road.
Steve handled the purchase of Southwestern and I had never bought a house before so we had so many questions. That realtor, Barry Karch, was pretty patient with us I guess. So, the first question, was what do we do? How do we try and buy it? So he gave us the name of a Mortgage Banker (ugh, what a waste of money), but that woman gave us a letter saying that we qualified. Next thing we did was to make an offer. How much were we supposed to offer I asked Mr. Karch? He was representing the seller as well as us, the buyers, so he was trying to stay out of trouble and remain ethical so he couldn't give us an exact figure.
Somewhere along the line he showed us a copy of an appraisal that had ours and two other houses on it. The value of our house was blacked out. Anyway, we ended up bidding about 169,000 for it. Mr. Karch said that the other people bid higher. We went up to 172,000, we still didn't get it. Finally I told Mr. Karch that we could pay 172,500 but not even $5 more. It just wasn't in our budget. Well, low and behold, we got the house!! The fun just started.
We will never know what the other people bid on that house. What we do know is that Mr. Karch represented the seller and the buyer. For that reason he got both commissions. If the other people had bid more for the house, he wouldn't have made as much money because they had a realtor. I have my thoughts and I'm pretty sure he wanted us to get the house. Well, it all worked out. We're still living here 13 years later (minus the husband).
Well, things started moving pretty fast. Steve racked up the credit cards to over $100,000 in five years buying dumb stuff and some good stuff for this house. We bought the 2/3 of an acre of the lot next to us for $10,000 and of course put it on the credit card. he built a tree house that cost over $2000 to have it ready in time for Thanksgiving for the kids. Maybe it was over $5000, I don't remember, but he went all out. It's very sturdy and stands there today. He never put the doors on it though so I never really let the kids use it.
He built three beautiful horse pens. Pipe stalls and chain link. Put water troughs with floats and a sprinkler system that worked with our well. Funny thing is he got it all hooked up and ran it one time then never again. Eventually the cows, goats, etc., broke most of the pvc to it and isn't used anymore.
My favorite thing that Steve built is the 10 foot wrought iron fence that runs across the back of the property. It's beautiful to say the very least. A work of art that nobody except Steve Applegate could have built. I can still hardly believe he threw it all away.
Anyway, along with our dreams, we started running into problems. Mainly, the taxes. We were told that the taxes on the property were about $3000 per year. That was not true, they were about $6000 per year. There was no way we were going to afford that. So here is the story:
I immediately started making phone calls. I wanted to sue everyone involved. Starting from that stupid Mortgage broker named Leslie Bergan. What a thief she was. Watch out for church going music majors who turn into a life of selling mortgages. We never needed her but thought we did. Anyway, then there was the seller, Greenwich Investors from somewhere in California, some company with neither names or faces. Then there was Barry Karch, and the two title companies. My theory was that all those people who claim to be professional should have caught that tax error. What had happened was that nobody realized that there were two property i.d. numbers with central appraisal district for this property. The taxes on one, which included just the front house, were about $3000, and so were the taxes on the other which included the rental and the acres.
Well, it took months of hard work, lots of tears and frustration, but in the end we kept the house and found out a way to pay those taxes.
First of all I had the entire place refinanced at a lower interest rate. Ms. Bergan didn't do us any favors and had charged us plenty and didn't get us a very good interest rate. We refinanced the whole thing for 15 years at a lower rate. Next, I went before the appraisal review board and cried. Begging those people to bring the value of the house down at least to what we paid for it and not a penny higher. I never knew I could do that but someone somewhere told me I could. It worked out. the value of the property got lowered. At one point, Central Appraisal had made a very big mistake by combining both property values onto one property i.d. number. Also, the picture they had of the house on the property didn't match the house we bought. After getting everything straightened out, the taxes on the house were a little closer to what we could afford.
Finally, after all the work was done, I found out something very interesting. About three months before we bought the house, the 1999 taxes were paid twice!! yep, about three days apart or so in June of 2000, two different title companies, in two different states paid the property taxes. Yes indeed. Juan Sandoval at the City Tax Assessors office, had an overpaid balance of almost $8000 on 4343 Emory Road. Now, the battle to get that money back to us started!
Long story short, I got the money. But oh, was it frustrating. I know this is not the thing that most people write stories about, but maybe they should. That way more people could find out ahead of time what is in store for them.
Of course, the first thing I did was ask the Tax Assessors office for the money but they said I had to show them a cancelled check if I wanted that money. So I dug deeper and asked for some help from the title company that sold the house to us. It turns out it was the California title company that overpaid. When I asked them for the money, they just told me that because I wasn't their customer they didn't have to talk to me. Really? I said. All you have to do is hang up the phone, but I have to deal with my frustration and time that I lost finding out that you people made a mistake. I was so mad, I finally went to Juan Sandoval, the county tax Assessor, himself. I also asked our Westside representative, Anthony Cobos, and my then husband, with his policeman's uniform, to go with me. That Mr. Sandoval, what a character he was. I wrote him a letter explaining to him that I feel we were over charged for our house because of somebody's error and that he should give me the money that was sitting in his account. After he read the letter, he asked, "who wrote this letter?", I did, I told him. And he said, "Mrs. Applegate, why did you go through so much trouble, you should have just asked me for the money." I was so mad!!! It was his staff who refused to give it to me because of some dumb policy requiring a copy of a cancelled check.
Well, when he told me we could have the money back, my frustration and anger were long gone. I now had $7000 to pay the taxes on 4343 Emory for at leas the next year and a half!!
Steve moved out in 2005. Since then I've continued to keep up the place but slowly. In 2006 or so I refinanced the house for $215,000. I had to pay off about 60% of the debt we owed. But today I only owe about $145,000. In 2007 all new roofs were put on both houses and both garages. I chose blue because I liked the way the blue roof and white brick looked together. A couple of years later I had both bathrooms remodeled. They are beautiful. I also had wood floor put in the office so my kids could all have their own rooms. About three years ago I had the wood floor in my room put in after living with cement for about three years. About two years ago JJ redid the kitchen. It's beautiful too. This year was a big deal. I had the entire barn in the back rebuilt. It cost about $12000 but it is beautiful. And also, my own little dream of a bathroom in the garage came true this year too. That cost about $2500. Now Guille and Tavo live there and work for me once a week in return for their rent. Tavo has done a lot to the yard including painting the wood fence and keeping up with all of the growth. Today he started painting the wrought iron and boy does it look nice! Slowly but surely we'll get there. JJ also did the kitchen cabinets that look brand new. Next year: The spider barn!
That is the story of 4343 Emory Road and how I live in a beautiful house.
California Vacation 2012
July 19th: The day after Michelle's 17th birthday. By the way, she got a volkswagon bus, 1972, from her dad. We drove straight through to the Venice Breeze Suites. Only after backing up into John's jeep. : (. 12 hours to get to San Diego and two more hours to get to LA. No other problems though, thank God.
July 20th: Day #1 of our vacation: Went to the beach in the morning, shops along Venice Blvd., in the afternoon, and checked out Santa Monica Pier in the evening. Great first day!
July 21st: The reason we are here. Ringo Starr and the All Starr Band at the Greek Theatre. What a great show. Joe Walsh even played Rocky Mountain Way! At the end Micky Dolenz, Edgar Winter, Peter Frampton, Gary Wright, and the All Starr Band sang "With a Little Help From My Friends." Drove to the music center and took pictures of a fountain.
July 22nd: Rented bikes and rode them to Marina Del Rey. Very great. Even had an antique car, boat, and motor show. In the afternoon we drove to Hollywood and Mann's Chinese theatre and saw the Dark Night Rises at the Arclight Theatre. Best Pretzel ever! Back to the fountains and found the colored ones. Still none like that in Lansing.
July 23rd: Monday: Knott's Berry Farm and the Hollywood Sign. Enough for one day.
July 24th: Beach at Venice, shops at Venice, drive to Redondo, dinner at Captain Kidds, and See's Candy.
July 25th: Remains to be done as of now.
10/28/13: Lots has gone down since that beautiful trip to California and living like the locals. Michelle graduated from High School in the top 10%. She moved to College Station, Texas. Steve moved to Anthony, Texas, and our life has changed. Just another phase I suppose. Nothing but great memories of my kids though. Michelle loved Venice Beach. Hopefully, someday we'll go back.
July 19th: The day after Michelle's 17th birthday. By the way, she got a volkswagon bus, 1972, from her dad. We drove straight through to the Venice Breeze Suites. Only after backing up into John's jeep. : (. 12 hours to get to San Diego and two more hours to get to LA. No other problems though, thank God.
July 20th: Day #1 of our vacation: Went to the beach in the morning, shops along Venice Blvd., in the afternoon, and checked out Santa Monica Pier in the evening. Great first day!
July 21st: The reason we are here. Ringo Starr and the All Starr Band at the Greek Theatre. What a great show. Joe Walsh even played Rocky Mountain Way! At the end Micky Dolenz, Edgar Winter, Peter Frampton, Gary Wright, and the All Starr Band sang "With a Little Help From My Friends." Drove to the music center and took pictures of a fountain.
July 22nd: Rented bikes and rode them to Marina Del Rey. Very great. Even had an antique car, boat, and motor show. In the afternoon we drove to Hollywood and Mann's Chinese theatre and saw the Dark Night Rises at the Arclight Theatre. Best Pretzel ever! Back to the fountains and found the colored ones. Still none like that in Lansing.
July 23rd: Monday: Knott's Berry Farm and the Hollywood Sign. Enough for one day.
July 24th: Beach at Venice, shops at Venice, drive to Redondo, dinner at Captain Kidds, and See's Candy.
July 25th: Remains to be done as of now.
10/28/13: Lots has gone down since that beautiful trip to California and living like the locals. Michelle graduated from High School in the top 10%. She moved to College Station, Texas. Steve moved to Anthony, Texas, and our life has changed. Just another phase I suppose. Nothing but great memories of my kids though. Michelle loved Venice Beach. Hopefully, someday we'll go back.
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