Closing The Deal on 3016 6th Street North

I didn't want anybody to steal the incredible bargain I found. So that's why I didn't reveal, up until now, which house I was buying. In fact, it is the house at 3016 N. 6th Street, the one which "bottomed out" on the MLS, offered at $9,000.

That screaming sound I heard was the market losing even more of its inflated value, as I offered $8,500 and the seller accepted. We set a closing date of March 31, but it looked like we'd be closing earlier. Juley Viger called me the very morning we were set to close, telling me it couldn't happen that day...the seller needed some kind of quit claim deed.

This worried me. Bugged me. As the closing date loomed, I told Juley, "We have a closing date. What happens if they don't meet the date? If I tried to pull that shit in my position as a buyer, they'd walk off with my earnest money, as sure as God made little green apples." I began asking, pointedly, what was "standard" as far as costs associated with a failure to close in a timely fashion, though truthfully I saw it as more of an opportunity than an annoyance.
On the actual day of closing--a day I thought I'd spend working on schoolwork--emails and excited calls from Juley let me know the seller was suddenly eager to close in the next few hours and wanted me to high-tail it out to Coon Rapids.

I guess my agitation reached them. The snow was really falling on March 31 as Juley came by with her real estate partner, Barbara, driving. The exact amount was a pleasant surprise. It sounds crazy, but I almost forgot about the earnest money. So I got a cashier's check for a little more than $6,000. We went to Bloomington instead of Coon Rapids, because it was closer and easier that way. My little paranoid check on the property the night before--because of all the electricity theft, see next entry--became our "official walk through," so we could make it to the title company before the OTHER kind of closing.

Juley's partner Barbara was such a sweet lady. I said something about finding the innards of a light bulb in the closet, and how somebody probably used the bulb to make a crack pipe. No, really, I saw it in a music video, I said.

"What music video?" Juley asked.

I didn't know the name of the song, but I could sing a few lines and perhaps she'd recognize it.

I really miss your hair in my face/
And the way your innocence tastes/

Barbara recognized it. Wasn't it some German group? Oh, yes, I remembered. It was Hinder. Was it pronounced "hinder" or "hine-der," I wondered?

And this put Barbara in a reverie, an expressive tangent. She talked about how she had recently been to a funeral of a soldier who died in Iraq, and a young man who used to be an exchange student from Germany--who knew this soldier when the soldier was only 11--had come all the way from Germany to read a poem. And such a reading it was, so moving.

Meanwhile, outside the church, the lunatic nut squad that pickets the funerals of soldiers--

"Oh, yeah," I said. "Fred Phelps. The church from Witchita."

--yes, him. I was familiar with him?

"They had a protest at my campus when I went to UND," I said. "We had a huge counter demonstration."

Well, Barbara continued, the Phelps wackos showed up to picket the funeral. And the funeral was at this very liberal church. But this other group showed up--the Patriot Riders--and they surrounded the whole church, so the mourners wouldn't have to see the demonstration, or hear it. They said the Pledge of Allegiance, over and over, drowning out the protesters. It was, Barbara said, surreal. Amazing. Moving.

As we pulled up to the title company, word reached us: the visionary architect Ralph Rapson had died. I guess I didn't realize until just this moment...how odd. We had just been talking about a funeral. Juley felt sad about it, though Rapson had lived a long time. She said to Barbara, "We should go to his funeral. We really should." And Barbara agreed.

I called my editor at the Minnesota Daily, Vadim, and left a message about Rapson and how this really deserved coverage. I'm sure there was no need for that. They were all over it. Here is the link to the story. http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2008/04/01/72166386

The closing was lovely, like funerals are lovely. We waited in a conference room and they offered us beverages. There was a guy in the room waiting for a closing or perhaps some paperwork, and he told me he designed costumes for sports mascots. I asked him what he thought about that whole Fighting Sioux logo controversy at UND, and he took a determined neutral posture. My little bit of fun, bringing up something controversial and political about his profession.

The title closing lady--who was revved up way beyond perky, I thought--poked her head in and said she didn't want to interrupt if we were "doing some business." Is this what happens in the lobby of a title company? Big business deals made over complimentary Diet Pepsi and Hershey's Chocolate Kisses? No, we said, we were just chatting. Time to close.

So I handed over the money and showed my driver's license--kind of like you would to get into a strip club, I suppose--and signed some paperwork. The title person said something about, did she hear right? This was NOT an investment property? I had plans to fix it up and LIVE IN IT? And when I answered in the affirmative, she said, blinking a bit, "How does one LIVE in a $9,000 house?"

I bit my tongue, of course, because she was pleasant and had provided me a veritable banquet of free candy and a complimentary beverage, so I didn't bother to mention this was the most expensive piece of property I'd ever owned, and I considered it rather ostentatious, really, to spend so much on a house...but this ol' country boy loves the city life too much, and to have property in the city you've got to spend the BIG BUCKS.

At some point the closing lady made sure there had been a "walk through" and I said oh yes, indeed, there had been...while I was out there dealing with the ELECTRICITY THEFT. She'd heard all about that, right? Crazy. All these cords strung together. They were even running it through cords meant for cable television. Would this be the NEXT negative North Side trend to be publicized? THAT was bound to drive prices down even further.

And though it was a statement worthy of commentary, there was none from the closing lady or the real estate agents at the table. The North Side was what it was, and the market was crazy, but here was a deal to be done with the guy crazy enough to do it, so sign here...and here...oh, yes, and here.

As we left the title company, I said to the guy in the lobby, "Nice to meet you, mascot costume guy." A few days later, I went to Town Hall Brewery--where Juley was meeting a client--and dropped off the lock box. The seller was far away in California, and after seeing all the title paperwork I doubt they've actually laid eyes on the house.

But I'll say this much about the house, and why it was a bargain, and why I held it close to my chest and didn't reveal everything. The house has mostly plastic pipes instead of copper, so the copper thieves didn't destroy the walls to get at the pipes...albeit they stole one little piece off copper off the top of the water heater. It looks boxy from the front, but in the back there is a deck and...wonder of wonders...a large and empty yard, and a big mature tree.

You can't just order a tree like that from a plant nursery. It's either in the yard already, or you can wait around for a century.

The house has a deck in the back. The carpet on the floors needs a good cleaning, but it's not nasty. Somebody started rehabbing and quit in mid-job, but managed to move the project along quite a bit.

Two days after I paid $8,500 I was offered $17,000. More on this as it develops.

Consider the woeful position of the seller: they paid a water bill left by the former owner, one Kathleen Osby, whereabouts unknown, for $923.05. They paid two $1,000 boarding fees. They paid to have the lawn mowed, the sidewalk cleared of snow during the period of time the house was vacant. They paid taxes. They paid recording fees, title insurance for me, (god knows I'll need it) and a plethora of other stuff.

Oh, let's not forget Juley's commission. Juley is a "beer snob" without the snobby part, just quite enthusiastic about high-quality beer. I hope she cashed that check and bought herself some beverages made by barefoot monks from holy hops.

When all was said and done, seller paid the title company exactly $411.35 for the privilege of unloading that gobble-gobble TURKEY of a house to a willing buyer, and received no money at all. The City of Minneapolis got a notable little influx of revenue, and I hope they use it to pay for more cops to patrol my block.

Well, I say "my block" but I divide my time between the property--which is officially unlivable--and my other address in St. Paul, where I fret about the impact the light rail will have on so many citizens getting their cars towed in and around Frogtown.

Oh, the next day I had to prove to Juley there REALLY WAS a music video by Hinder which shows a guy smoking crack from a lightbulb. Here's the YouTube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr4VEbt4zSw

Having been made conscious of the illicit use of light bulbs by crack heads, now I notice odd "light bulb remnants" all the time, and other glass instruments made into makeshift crack pipes. (For example, inside of 420 31st Street North, near my house, and more on that to follow as I get the pictures)

You really think your down-and-out crack head spends $10 on a fancy-shmancy crack pipe at a head shop? No, hell, they find themselves a nice thin flower vase placed somewhere as a memorial to another North Side shooting victim, and they make it into a crack pipe.

When I was a freshman at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, I used to loathe the part of myself which came from Forada, Minnesota, population 197, which was naive about city ways, and my Resident Assistant Jon Stromvall just LOVED to keep pointing that out, worldly bisexual Norwegian globetrotter that he was, lording over the 18-year-old Concordia Cobbers.

I've spent so many years in cities--even in places in El Paso where Los Fatherless and Los Cholos competed for control of turf, and I've been in big city political demonstrations where the cops shoot real tear gas--but like a country bumpkin I still relish every new piece of gritty big city knowledge, I value these like the shining jewels which are the eternally lit windows of a big city skyline.

I own property in Minneapolis. Therefore, I am FROM Minneapolis.