The joys, and legal pitfalls, of home ownership

My wife, Laura, and I closed on the purchase of our first home a couple months ago. Up until then, we had been perfectly happy renting a newly built condominium that required very little upkeep or maintenance. Not content to leave well enough alone, we decided to cobble together a significant portion of our savings and purchase a Victorian home built in 1888. Needless to say, our weekend activities and projects have changed quite a bit since the purchase. It's also given me the opportunity to experience the legal process from the other side of the table, with decidedly mixed results. First, there was the purchase itself. My local real estate market is incredibly "active" at the moment, and so we've gotten to know our real estate agent quite well. Over the course of several months, we've probably toured no less than 50 homes, and submitted formal offers on at least five of those properties. We lost some due to price, others to timing, and another because we simply changed our mind. Needless to say, everyone, but I think particularly our agent, was nearing the end of their ropes. Eventually, however, we found a house that my wife and I really loved. It needed a lot of work, but was in a great location and priced well below the comparables for the area. Due in part, we believe, to fortuitous (read: bad) weather and the area schools being out on spring break, the sellers didn't receive any offers in the first two weeks the property was listed on the market, which is unheard of for my local real estate market. We knew we had to act quickly. Before submitting the offer, we picked apart the house in an effort to find anything and everything that could give us leverage in the negotiations. I typed up a lengthy list of all the imperfections we could identify, complete with a narrative description of why said imperfections should result in a reduction in the stated price. I sent that lengthy document - the result of hours of non-billable work on my part - off to my agent, and told him to use it as he deemed appropriate given his professional expertise, fully assuming that he would simply forward it on to the sellers' agent. He called a few minutes later to thank me for my efforts and to politely inform me that he'd just deposited my letter in his office's shredder. He'd be using none of my carefully crafted script, he told me. He explained that such a letter, no matter how carefully tailored, would offend a seller in this market and he recommended, instead, a friendly chat with the seller's agent, whom he had worked with several times in the past. His rationale made sense, and I begrudgingly relinquished control over the negotiations. As a corporate lawyer who's used to running negotiations on behalf of clients, this was no easy task. I had to trust my agent to handle these sensitive negotiations on my behalf, with very little direct involvement from me or Laura. As the negotiations progressed, it became clear that this was the right approach. As it turns out, the local residential real estate market, and all the negotiating customs that go with it, were totally foreign to me and, had I been given leeway to negotiate the deal directly, I surely would have offended the seller's agent and bungled the deal. Often, in law and in life, it pays to recognize when someone else is more qualified to handle a task, even if that means giving up a significant amount of control, something that is difficult for many Type-A lawyers. Ultimately, our agent got us a great deal and we closed on the purchase in July. That's when the real fun began. As mentioned, our new, 130-year-old dwelling, needed a significant amount of work, which is part of the reason we could afford it in the first place. We had a month left on the lease of our condo, so we decided to use that month to have some of the major projects done. Through the help of my mother, who renovates and manages residential properties, we found contractors who promised to complete everything on our wish list within budget. It seemed too good to be true and, as I'm sure you've already surmised, it was. Despite my natural lawyer inclinations to reduce all agreements to writing, everything was on a handshake basis with our "good old boy" band of workers. The first couple of days seemed to go well, but things quickly started to veer off track. We would stop by and find no one working and projects progressing far slower than we had hoped. We had a conversation with them to walk through the issues, hoping that would solve the problem. Shortly thereafter, we received a text from the lead contractor that he and his team would be leaving the next day. Not just leaving the job, but leaving the state. Despite our protestations, they soon loaded all of their equipment into their truck and headed for the hills, leaving Laura and I staring blankly from the street at our half-finished porch. After a good bit of panicking and calling every contractor within city limits, we finally found a capable handyman to finish most of the work, though there remains to this day a laundry list of items (including the laundry room) left to finish. A couple weeks ago, it was finally time to move in. Having hired an agent and contractors to handle everything up until this point, I decided I'd do something on my own for a change. In this case, it meant installing an alarm system. I bought one of those "easy to install" systems from a trendy tech startup. The particular system has great reviews online and the advertisements assured me "anyone" could install it. The package arrived and, sure enough, it actually was easy to install. I downloaded the app, secured the motion sensors, input my custom code, and went to bed. My wife was traveling for work that week, but I went to bed in comfort, knowing that my new security system would protect me from all the evils of the world. That is, until around 2 a.m., when I was abruptly awoken to the sounds of blaring alarms, an indication that my alarm system's motion detector had been triggered. I sat up, frozen, sure that someone would be walking through the door at any moment to murder me. I grabbed the only weapon within sight - a traditional club used by the Maasai Mara tribe to ward off wild animals that I'd picked up on a trip to Kenya - and readied myself for battle. I even did a quick Google search on my state's "stand your ground" laws to make sure I'd be within my rights to defend myself. After about 20 minutes, I finally worked up the courage to walk down the stairs to confront my intruder. Not seeing anyone, I walked to the back door, where I immediately noticed my system's motion detector laying on the ground. As it turns out, I hadn't properly secured it to the wall, and the act of the device falling apparently constituted "motion" for purposes of my new sensor. Again, I was done in by my own shoddy handiwork. The joys of home ownership, so they say. ----- © 2019 Under Analysis, LLC. Under Analysis is a nationally syndicated column of the Levison Group. Contact Under Analysis by e-mail at comments@levisongroup.com. Published: Fri, Sep 20, 2019