Flip This House #3

Parent Cafe
2021

STALKER STORY

I am only sharing this long-winded ordeal in the spirit of fully disclosing the flipping business as we go through this journey. Trying to renovate homes for resale is a very risky business. There are some who are greedy and do shoddy work, but there are others of us who always try to do the right thing. There has to be some reward for all the risks, and it is very important to try to keep a good reputation. For some reason I seem to be at the bottom of the totem pole for return on investment and risk, but that’s a different story.

In late 2010 I had just finished my third renovation and I was having difficulty finding something in my price range at the foreclosure auctions because I had limited capital. A local general contractor (retired) brought me a deal I could not turn down. A mutual friend had purchased a home in the Pt Loma area for his retirement and, because of the financial crisis at that time, he needed to sell the home. They had changed their mind about where they were going to retire. This home had been rented to a bunch of bachelor Navy guys and was just trashed inside, but superior location and had ocean views. I gave him all the cash I had and he was very nice to ‘carry back’ the remainder of our agreed purchase price. This was all done between two parties with an escrow, no agents.

I knew I had two issues right away. One, the transformation was going to involve more structural work than I was used to. And, Two, I had no cash to do the renovation. So the retired general contractor agreed to be my silent partner for a cut of the profit. He was invaluable overseeing all the major structural and system changes, and he gave me sources for subs and workers because I didn’t have a full time crew then. We transformed the home and came back out on the market. Unfortunately it really was the bottom of the market at that time and we didn’t have too many potential buyers.

A local agent brought in a single man that had been looking for months. He was extremely picky. He came back 3 or 4 times and then made an All Cash Offer that was accepted. Then the fun began. This guy was very diligent about every possible type of inspection. He acted like it was ‘new construction’ and everything had to be perfect. First there was the regular Home Inspection. We agreed to fix every single thing that was remotely reasonable. Then he brought in a landscape drainage specialist and insisted that we had to install a French drain for heavy rainfall in the back of the house. He then brought over a landscape guy to give an estimate for the French Drain and I agreed to give a credit of $1,000 for him to install a drain after close of escrow. Then he brought an electrician and had a fit because the lights were ‘dimming’ every day at about 2pm. He made the electrician walk around the neighborhood with him and he asked every neighbor if they had the same problem. Yes, it was an issue with the electric company lowering the juice sporadically. On and on and on. But we had no other buyers so we endured this overkill to get our All Cash offer.

As part of the offered $1,000 credit we had the guy sign a special addendum that he was purchasing the house ‘As Is’ with no warranties or guarantees (which is standard in the Real Estate Contract but we wanted to drive it home).

2022

We used to live in North Pacific Beach (for those not familiar with San Diego, a few miles north of CB’s house) and had power lines in the view… it’s pretty much unavoidable in older neighborhoods. I noticed that they were converted to underground a few years back, which is the plan for all of San Diego, no?

Brings me back to my best memory of that house… CB, I’m sure you’ll be long gone by the time they start, but I’m going to make friends with the new owners to watch SeaWorld fireworks in summer. We’d let our (now grown) kids watch the fireworks in their 'jammies during the summer, then off to bed. Your house has a much closer view than we did.

2023

CB, that guy sounds like a PITA, but where does the stalker/attacker part come in?

2024

AFTER THE SALE

About 3 months after the sale my agent started receiving emails from his agent. I am pretty sure this poor agent was sick of this guy by now but she felt obligated to forward his complaints.

He sent the emails just to ‘advise’ me that the master bathroom faucets were low flow and they were not working well with the tankless water heater. Fine, turn them both on and you’ll get hot water faster (I didn’t actually say that). He was insinuating that ‘as a builder/developer’ I should have known better. And there was one other complaint that I forget right now.

9 months after he purchased the house he wrote to complain that the exterior paint was peeling off in the back of the house. I was out of the country when this came in and could not respond for about 3 weeks. I returned and sent an email reply to the agent that I would like to bring a painter over and inspect the issue. No response back at all. My agent even followed up with his agent.

12 months after he purchased, I suddenly received to my personal home address a crazy threatening letter from a lawyer. The lawyer was one of those ‘ambulance chaser’ kind of lawyers who specialized in bodily injury or something. Essentially the letter claimed that I was a ‘manufacturer’ of goods and had produced shoddy merchandise. Nothing that related to California Real Estate Law or Seller Disclosure or anything relevant. On and on about how I didn’t have a licensed bonded painting company do the work (really??? a million homeowners are out there painting their own house every day)

He demanded $15,000 cash to rectify the paint situation. What the hey??? I could gold plate the house for that amount of money. I had no choice but hire a lawyer (an actual real estate lawyer) who wrote a quick response back to his lawyer that basically stated I would be happy to get three separate estimates from three licensed painting contractors. I would take the average of the bids and give him cash to hire whomever he wanted. It is just so important that I maintain a good reputation, especially right in my own neighborhood. I do a lot of after sale fixes just to keep a good reputation.

Months go by and there is no reply to this letter. My lawyer calls his lawyer to inquire on our offer. Next thing I know, all my friends are telling me that they see XYZ Painting Company over at the house stripping everything and repainting the house. XYZ Painting Company is known as the most expensive overpriced painting company in the area. Of course I drive by and take a peek.

As soon as his house is repainted he starts calling my lawyer directly (ambulance chaser does not seem to be involved anymore) demanding $15,000 because he had to repaint his house. He refuses to acknowledge my prior offer and is really pissed. About this time I find out that he is a licensed Real Estate Agent who has lost his job working land contracts for a developer. So, his mentality is tract home development and builder guarantees.

My lawyer explains to him that he cannot just repaint his house without allowing us to inspect and rectify the issue. He cannot just call up later and demand that we pay his painting bill. He goes ballistic and starts ranting and raving and screaming. He tells the lawyer that he once bought a mattress from Ortho Mattress and they wouldn’t let him return it. He picketed them for months and we would be sorry. Hang up

2025

THE CRAZINESS BEGINS

So, my lawyer is now very worried that this guy is not all there. He warns me to be careful. Honestly, this guy had close to $900k in cash and appeared totally respectable.

About 1 week later the buyer shows up in the front of my personal residence and starts picketing. At that point I did not have a protective LLC and he could find my name and address in the records. I mean… with a real picket sign!!! At this point I am cowering in the house having a breakdown but my husband thinks it’s hilarious.

First, he has a giant sign that reads “Elizabeth Smith (not my real name) is a Thief”. Not one person in my neighborhood knows me as Elizabeth Smith, they know me by my nickname and my husband’s last name. So no one knew who he was talking about. Second, our home is high up off the street and I’m not sure anyone really knew exactly who was the thief. Third, a thief??? that just doesn’t make any sense.

So, my husband goes down to the street and plays the nice card. “Hi Joe (not real name), it’s a lovely evening. You picked a really good time to come down here because it is sunset and there’s a lot of people out watching the sunset. Can I get you any water or coffee?”

Joe freaks out and now starts running up and down the street but now he’s yelling at the top of his lungs at every car going by “Elizabeth Smith is a Thief” (as if the sign is not enough!). So, my husband goes into our garage and finds my daughter’s old Lemonade Stand sign and turns it over and writes “Joe for President”. He goes down to the street and just follows Joe up and down the street with the Joe for President picket sign. Soon he gets frustrated and leaves.

It was rather ingenious and hilarious

2026

OMG! Was that the end of it? Or did he continue to demand $?

Your DH is very patient. I might have painted a sign like one of those t-shirts that says “I’m with crazy” and an arrow pointing to the guy.

2027

I think your husband was brilliant! And I’m hoping this was long enough ago that you can find it hilarious too.

2028

I don’t think we’ve heard the rest of the story…

2029

SCARY STALKING

He returned only one more time at my residence. I thought it was over. But I had a long discussion with my lawyer about what I could do. I couldn’t do anything unless he actually did something illegal.

He called my lawyer again and started ranting and demanding the $15,000 dollars. My lawyer told him that he cannot harass me, and he was not going to get anything until he at least submitted the bill from XYZ Painting Company. The guy then started threatening that we did not reveal that there could be lead paint at the house. This guy is a Real Estate Agent, he knows better. I had to dig through all the files and find the exact document from the transaction that clearly states “Any house built before 1978 (I might have the date wrong) could contain lead paint.” I stated that I had not tested for lead paint. He had signed acknowledgement of the warning.

Then he threatened that we had not followed EPA guidelines for scraping and sanding lead paint. I had to dig out a photo of the painting crew in their special suits AND the new EPA guidelines did not go into effect until 2 months after the house was listed for sale. He was grasping at straws.

But then the worst nightmare happened. I had a new project that was not in my neighborhood (about 20 minutes away) and one day one of the workers came into the back yard and told me there was someone at the front door for me. He was at the front door and he just turned red and went ballistic and started screaming at me. I asked him to please go away. He then proceeded to go into the front yard and start harassing my plumbing crew that was digging a new trench.

Now he’s excited because he has ‘found’ me and he’s planning to ruin everything. He shows up at least twice a week and ‘pickets’ the project house. This is a total nightmare, I am beyond stressed out and scared. Sometimes he would just come and park the car across the street and stare into the windows. I had to put sheets up on the windows because it was so creepy. I had to go visit every neighbor and apologize and explain the situation. They were all on my side and would ignore him. He tried to talk to them when they were in their driveways. Once two neighbors walked into the middle of the street and just stared him down and he left.

Meanwhile, I had a set of buyers that were coming with an agent to view the house (before it went on the market… BTW they purchased before I finished). We had to call the agent and warn him that there might be a crazy person in the street yelling. Agent said “Don’t worry, I’ve seen it all”. Luckily stalker left about 8 minutes before the buyers showed up.

This happened about three times. The fourth time he stood in the front of the house and just started yelling obscenities and really mean things. My workers were very protective of me and they told him to leave. He got angry, got in his car, raced down the street yelling “I’m going to go get all my friends and we are going to have a demonstration in front of your house”. My workers were laughing “Where is he going to find any friends”

But then the unbelievable happened

2030

Don’t lave us hanging!! I know you are typing, but this is better than anything on tv or my doing my taxes!

2031

“Essentially the letter claimed that I was a ‘manufacturer’ of goods and had produced shoddy merchandise”

What a load of crap!!! Lawyers like that pour dirt on the entire profession.

Wow, just wow. I’m sure Mr B would have been happy to join your hubby following “Joe” with that turned over lemonade stand sign. :slight_smile:

2032

CB, you should be doing an episode per day to keep us in suspense… “Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode!”

:smiley:

2033

THE ASSAULT

I won’t leave you hanging… but I will draw it out in installments.

I guess at some point this guy snapped because we were not giving in to the $15,000 blackmail. He had no legal recourse because we were not going to deal with him in any manner at this point. I was keeping a very detailed log of the harassment and reporting each incident to the lawyer, but Joe started to be careful about not coming onto the property.

Now he started coming at about 4pm every couple of days when he knew that the workers were leaving to their cars. He tried to talk to the workers and they just ignored him or told him to go away. He would pull up across the street and just stare. I think he knew which car was mine and he knew the worker’s cars.

I was a basket case because we were trying to get the project done and trying to sell the house (not easy with a lunatic screaming obscenities outside)

One afternoon I was sitting in the living room at my makeshift table. I could feel the hairs go up on the back of my neck and I turned around and sure enough, there he was in his car staring in the window. This was the first time that he had actually seen me since the visit to the front door (I would usually melt into a hopeless mess of tears in the back of the house every time he was outside). I put the sheet back up over the window. The car left.

My workers were leaving and going out to their cars with their tools. My carpenter was there - still with me today - this was his first full time project with me. This should have scared him away :slight_smile: He came back in and warned me that Joe had pulled his car around the corner and was staring through the trees at the house. Did I want him to stay with me? Well Joe didn’t know that my brother was visiting from Oregon and had come with me to help. Joe didn’t recognize my brother’s car because it was never there. He was inside, but my brother didn’t really know the whole story. I said No, my brother is here.

Ten minutes after everyone left, there was banging on the door. Joe is really going crazy, screaming, yelling, demanding that I open the door. I’m in the garage crying. Before my brother can get to the front door, Joe starts breaking the window next to the front door. At this sound, my neighbor across the street looks out his window and he knows something is not right. He walks out and witnesses the whole thing standing right behind Joe.

My brother walks up to the door and yells “You need to leave right now, we are calling the police”. He screams “Call the police, they need to come arrest @#$#@^ Elizabeth because she’s a thief”. My brother calls the police and makes sure he can hear it through the door. He continues breaking in the window and reaching in. But, now he realizes that my brother is really calling the police and the neighbor is standing right there witnessing it all. He runs back to his car and screeches down the street.

Evidently he was madly calling my lawyer from his car as he was exiting, but my lawyer didn’t get to talk to him.

The neighbors come rushing in, I am a total basket case. Meanwhile, I had forgotten that there was still a yard worker in the back (who heard the whole thing also) so my brother had to leave to take him home because I usually give him a ride home.
They take me over to their house and I am just blubbering. I waited at their house until the police came. It was very important that I filed a police report because the whole situation was getting out of hand. Policeman was polite, he could tell that I was really scared and very shaken. He said that under no circumstances should I be at the workplace alone anymore.

I don’t know how I drove myself home that night. I had tried to call my husband a million times but he was out surfing or something. I had several drinks at the neighbor’s house (they kept offering). I spent the whole night on the phone with the lawyer. I kept drinking that night to try to calm my nerves and got very very sick.

Stay tuned for the FINAL EPISODE

2034

All I can think about to this day is ‘What if my brother was not in the house’.

But in reality, I probably would have gotten right on the phone to 911 and made the same call.

2035

I hope he is in the slammer.

2036

FINAL EPISODE

My lawyer is now ecstatic. In fact, he’s so happy and gung ho that it kind of bothered me. Since he was a real estate lawyer he had never ventured into the ‘criminal’ world of Restraining Orders and other things. By 8am the next morning he is filing a Restraining Order at the courthouse - he must have stayed up all night because he had never done one before. He is loving this entry into the criminal world.

This is where I learned everything you could ever want to know about a Restraining Order. You can only file a ‘Temporary Restraining Order’. It stays in effect for a limited amount of time and the defendant has a right to come to court and fight it. A judge will decide if it becomes a permanent Restraining Order. The interesting thing is that ‘Joe’ doesn’t even know there is a restraining order until someone can ‘serve’ him.

At this point no one is letting me be alone anywhere and I can hardly get any work done. I pretty much knew he would never show up again at the project so I was feeling OK.

But, I guess because I am a female being stalked by a male, and we had documented history, the judge really set the court date quickly. I am happy to report that the court took it seriously.

But this is where it gets weirder. The marshall kept trying to ‘serve’ his residence (obviously I knew his address) but he was never home, could not get served. Then they left a note that he needed to ‘call’. I guess he ‘called’ from some pay phone somewhere (like we don’t know where he is???) and, if you can believe this… he makes an appointment to meet the Marshall in a parking lot on Rosecrans. Maybe he doesn’t want the neighbors to see these police cars or marshall cars coming to his house? It was the oddest thing ever. It took weeks to get him served.

Now he is really humbled and scared. He knows he crossed the line. The next thing we know he has hired a specialist lawyer to try to ‘negotiate’ out of the Restraining Order. I’m guessing that he did not want a Restraining Order on his record. I researched the lawyer and he specializes in removing Restraining Orders for clients. Finally he has hired a real lawyer. So, the lawyers get together and draw up a stipulation where Joe will stay more than 500 ft away from me for 2 years. This is filed at the court and I cannot remember what the recourse is if he breaks the stipulated order. The judge accepts it and the trial date is cancelled. Thank God, I would have just been a basket case facing him in court and being interrogated about how I was a thief or something. How he ever came up with the whole ‘thief’ scheme is beyond me. What did I steal???

But, the best part is he now has to pay all lawyer fees for the whole ordeal. I had already forked out $2,000 in legal fees over the couple of months.

So in the end he has to pay:
$$$ to most expensive painting company in San Diego
$$$ to original ambulance chaser lawyer
$$$ to his Restraining Order laywer
and $$$$ for all fees to my lawyer

I’m guessing that he was out about $12,000 in a fight to try to get $15,000. And he could have had his house painted with money I was willing to give him if he had just been reasonable in the beginning. What an absolute idiot!!

The two years were up awhile ago, I have never seen him. But, the house is only about 8 blocks from my residence and I shudder every time I have to drive by. Once we were invited to a party at the house right next door and we had to decline - within 500 ft. I often wonder what happens if I walk into the neighborhood grocery store and he’s there. Does he have to drop his grocery basket and leave? Do I have to leave because he was there first? I spent months agonizing on whether I would see him somewhere. In the last four years I have never seen him anywhere, so all the scenarios I was thinking about didn’t happen.

Even weirder, is that his buying agent sent me several emails about a year later “I heard you are looking for a new agent, I would love to be your agent”. First, is she crazy? Second, it is very unethical to try to steal a client from another real estate agent. She knows I work exclusively with my agent. I shared this with my agent who is pretty upset about it. This agent walked through the Broker Caravan last Thursday. I have no idea if she knows what her client did.

Oh… I forgot to mention that crazy Joe even went down the street where my silent partner contractor was working on a house and told the owners about ‘shoddy work’, and lots of other stuff. The thing that worries me most after it all is my reputation. I just don’t know how many people in Pt Loma he has been ranting to.

2037

I guess the ally is retained to maintain those wires, the city won’t release those paper ally until the power lines are underground. I have an ally near one of my properties, over that ally are high tension wires and towers, its as wide as a home lot, over 50 feet.

2038

Good point about the alley. In fact when we were building the nuclear retaining wall some SDGE guys came over and wanted to make it very clear that we needed to stay out of the public right of way.

2039

That’s creepy and scary, coralbrook. (The stalker, not the SDG&E guys.)

I guess it takes all kinds.

2040

Heck of a story, coralbrook. Gotta say, your husband is absolutely a gem. One of the funniest things I’ve read on the Internet in a long time.