I Would Rather Have Root Canal Once a Week for the Rest of My Life Than Ever Buy a House Again
A true story. Unfortunately.
by Joel Samberg
Contents
Introduction: You’re an Idiot if You Don't Write a Book About This
Chapter 1: Doo Diligence
Chapter 2: The State with Two Backs
Chapter 3: Klingons in the Garage
Chapter 4: Hoover, Oreck & Goldberg
Chapter 5: A Spoonful of Bullshit
Chapter 6: My Heart Will Go On. Maybe.
Chapter 7: Mumbo Jumbo from Dumbo
Chapter 8: Tall Blind People Are Not Idiots. Idiots Are.
Chapter 9: One Bad-Ass Apple
Chapter 10: This Chapter is Brought to You By the Letter F
Chapter 11: Peeing for Dollars
Chapter 12: No Cellars for Old Men
Chapter 13: Bartrooms and Warpaths
Chapter 14: Gravestones Don’t Lie
Chapter 15: Knight Terrors
Chapter 16: My, What a Lovely Dumpster
Chapter 17: A Company With No Important People
Chapter 18: Hugs, Curses, and Prosecutable Asses
Chapter 19: Mr. & Mrs. Bunker
Chapter 20: Who Let the Dogs Out?
Chapter 21: How Deep is My Valley?
Chapter 22: Plumber Without a Crack
Chapter 23: A Clear and Minor Present
Epilogue: To Love a Hummingbird
Appendix: An Uncensored Glossary
Acknowledgements
Introduction: You’re an Idiot if You Don't Write a Book About This
As a writer I try to avoid clichés like a pandemic. So instead of saying boring and formulaic things like “Everything described in this book really happened” and “Most of the names have been changed to protect the identity of the people involved,” I’ll state it another way: What you are about to read is an entirely accurate if somewhat exceedingly emotional account of my dreadful, unbearable, insufferable, ass-whipping, gut-wrenching experience selling one house in New Jersey and buying another in Connecticut. The names of all the people involved (other than family members and a few friends) were changed in order to avoid having a couple of repulsive morons stalk me, curse me or otherwise make my life as miserable now as it was then.
That’s not to say that everyone who appears in the book whose name has been changed was an awful person. There are a number of them with whom my wife Bonnie and I had no quarrel. There are many we liked quite a bit. But I thought it wise to mask their identities anyway, because even the nice ones don’t always come out too well in these pages, the result, no doubt, of what the inhospitable process of selling one house and buying another can do to one’s memory; the portraits I paint are not always a direct reflection on the overall character of these individuals. To those few nice ones I apologize from the bottom of my emotionally scarred heart. But to all the others, I hope you’re all broke, miserably depressed, and have painful bleeding stomach ulcers that get progressively worse with every day that passes.
There may be some creative license employed in the recreation of specific conversations in the book to emphasize a point here and there, but the subject matter of every conversation is always exactly the same as it was during the actual odyssey, as were the tones, mannerisms, emotions, reactions and outcomes.
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that I should write a book about what Bonnie and I went through to purchase our house in Avon, CT, I’d have more than enough money to buy a political office. And if I won I would put all real estate agents, mortgage brokers and home inspectors behind bars. For life. Or longer. They’re all criminals, anyway.
At one point while planning this book I debated whether or not to make it a how-to, an instructional guide to selling and buying a house. But ultimately I decided to let the story itself be the lesson. For example, as you’ll see, Bonnie and I were very trusting; we accepted what other people told us without doing any research on our own. So there’s a primary lesson right there: don’t trust what anyone tells you. Assume that what you’re told is a bunch of crap that must be carefully weighed, debated and evaluated. Don’t be as stupid and naive as we were.
And there will be many other messages, hints, tips and warnings that will simply jump out of the pages on their own, without the need for me to highlight, underline or emphasize them in any way. Just read it, weep and learn.
But in addition to weeping and learning, I also want you to laugh, because laughter is the finest antidote to life’s challenges. And since much of the laughter is a result of my recollections about the real-life jackasses who populate this narrative, it will be more than just a fun story, but a damn cathartic one, as well. Many people across the country have horror stories of their own, and it is my hope that this book will be therapeutic for them, to let them know they are not alone. You are not alone! We all know that it’s a stupid process inflamed by stupid people, a process that needs to be changed and then managed by people who actually have brains and consciences. That’s not likely to happen, but at least we’ll have the last laugh by knowing this book is out there putting these people and processes on trial.
“I Would Rather Have Root Canal Once a Week For the Rest of My Life Than Ever Buy a House Again” is for people who recently moved, people who are thinking about moving, people who are glad they’ve never had to move, people who are debating whether or not to move in the near future, people who are looking for a great gift to give to people who have moved or are thinking about moving, family members and friends who were concerned about my mental health at the time this all went down, and everyone who over the course of a year-and-a-half told me that I’d be completely nuts if I didn’t write this book because of all the nightmares Bonnie and I were forced to endure.
I wrote it. I’m not nuts. Quite the contrary, I actually took several decisive steps not just to write it, but to sell as many copies as possible. For example, the selection of an eyebrow-raising title was for the express purpose of generating publicity. I may be stupid and naive, but I’m not, well... stupid. In fact, that decisive step is apparently working simply by virtue of the fact that you’ve gotten this far in the introduction (how many people read introductions?) and plan to finish the whole thing. Would you be as interested in reading every page of this book, including the often snubbed introduction, if it were titled “Misery on Interstate 84”? I don’t think so.
(Incidentally, the Epilogue at the end is just as imperative as the Introduction to get a complete picture. Don’t skip it. But don’t skip ahead, either.)
Speaking of titles, this book originally had a longer name, but I feared it would present technical or merchandising problems down the road. Its original title was “I Would Rather Have Root Canal Every Tuesday, a Colonoscopy Every Thursday, and Get Into a Nasty Fender Bender With Mel Gibson Right in Front of My Temple Every Saturday Than Ever, Ever, Ever Buy a House Again.” The sentiments still ring true, and it is worth noting that I would rather have a root canal every Tuesday and a colonoscopy every Thursday than ever buy a house again. Why? Because the home selling-and-buying ordeal was painful and made me sick, whereas with modern medical technology, root canals and colonoscopies are usually painless and ultimately can lead to better health.
As for the Mel in the original title, it’s true: I really wouldn’t mind getting into a fender bender with him in front of my temple, because that would mean even more publicity for the book. They’d talk about it on “The View,” “The Daily Show,” “Late Night With David Letterman,” “Access Hollywood” and a dozen other shows. They’d write about it in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and USA Today. The article would go something like this:
“Joel Samberg, a magazine writer and author of a popular book about the trials and tribulations he and his wife experienced while trying to move from one house to another, a book that happens to have the name Mel Gibson in its title, actually got into a fender bender with the beleaguered film star yesterday morning in front of the author’s temple. Gibson, apparently trying to avoid the kind of scandals that have plagued his career in the recent past, offered Samberg an immediate apology and, as a gesture of good will, a chance to join his production company as a screenwriter. He offered Samberg a four-year $1.5 million contract to be on his permanent creative staff. Samberg asked if he’d have to sell his house in order to move to California. Gibson said yes. Samberg said forget it.”
Chapter 1: Doo Diligence
Getting to a closing date on our new home in Avon, Connecticut was such a painful ordeal that ending this story on that hallowed day seems logical. Which is why I feel I must begin with what happened the day after. Because it was not only illogical, but excruciating.
The day after we closed, the paralegal at our attorney’s office called to tell me that I wasn’t me.
Or, more specifically, the mortgage bank that provided our mortgage, Franklin American, of Franklin, TN, had informed our attorney that my signature on the closing papers, which I had signed the day before, didn’t seem to match the signature on my mortgage application from three months earlier, and the papers needed to be recertified or the mortgage would be rendered unlawful.
There is not a mortgage banker in the country who, in my opinion, does not deserve to be stripped of his or her job, salary, bonuses and savings, and then featured on the cover of Time Magazine under the headline, “I Am a Stupid, Brainless Phlegm Wad.” Actually, my first thought was, well, what the hell can you expect from a bank in Tennessee? Come on—Tennessee, for Christ’s sake! That’s where people drink moonshine on rope bridges and live in places called Bog Holler while feeling up their cousins. But then, as I started to hear other horror stories from other home buyers who dealt with mortgage bankers and mortgage companies all over the country, I realized that Tennessee had nothing to do with it. It was a national disease. It was simply that mortgage banking had become a spoiled, greedy, renegade industry. Their own long-term shortcomings in approving and administering mortgages, coupled with a morally-challenged way of doing business that had gone unchecked for so long, made it that way.
It’s no surprise that many mortgage companies faced legal troubles in 2010, the year in which our ordeal began. Every time I heard of another lawsuit—Bank of America, Chevy Chase Bank, 1st Republic Mortgage, GMAC Mortgage and others—I screamed for joy. Neighbors must have thought I was either having sex or being murdered. Or both.
“We are an organization dedicated to helping our members do their business,” says the Mortgage Brokers Association on its website. An image popped into my head the moment I read that description—an image of dogs doing their business. Based on my experience, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the two. “We promote fair and ethical lending practices,” the web copy continues, “and foster professional excellence among real estate finance employees through a wide range of educational programs and a variety of publications.” The problem, of course, is that most of those employees probably sleep through the educational programs and use the publications to clean up after their own dogs do their business.
“You’ll have to come into the office and re-sign all the papers,” said Tara Toiler, the paralegal at Weppster & Minor, the law firm that was handling our real estate transaction in Connecticut.
“But everyone was in the room with me, weren’t they?” I said, hoping the rhetorical nature of the question would put the matter to rest. “The lawyer was there, our real estate broker was there, our mortgage broker was there, you were there, my wife was there. If it wasn’t me signing the papers, who was it?”
“Mr. Samberg—”
“Exactly! Mr. Samberg! And he’s the one who signed the papers.”
“No—I was going to say that the banks are being very cautious these days, and—”
“Cautious? Try insane! Why would an imposter want to take on a mortgage if he doesn’t have to? If he’s that crazy, then he deserves to be me anyway, because buying this house has been the most horrible experience of my life and I’ll gladly pass along the responsibility of paying for it to the real me, whoever the hell that is. Me not being me might be the best thing to ever happen to me. But if I’m not me, who the hell am I?”
“I know you’re you, but...”
“Then why can’t you tell Franklin American I’m me? Won’t they believe you? Unless they don’t believe that you’re you.
“Mr. Samberg—”
“Mr. Samberg is not here, apparently. And maybe Mrs. Samberg isn’t, either. I may have been living with someone else’s wife all these years. So maybe her husband should pay the new mortgage.”
Certainly Tara was not surprised by my frustration. As she well knew, this was just the latest in a long list of errors and problems that resulted in ceaseless misery and outrage throughout the process of selling a house in New Jersey and purchasing another in Connecticut, a process that had been going on for more than half a year. Sometimes it was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, other times a Marx Brothers comedy. It was me, of course, in the room the day before who signed all the mortgage papers. It is also clear—or should be—that not everyone signs their name the same exact way from signature to signature, especially when they’re under a lot of stress and signing dozens of times in a row. But try telling that to a mortgage banker.
Nevertheless, Tara said it was the mortgage company’s prerogative to question the legality and validity of all paperwork, no matter how inane the request, and that if I didn’t come back to the lawyer’s office to re-sign right away, there could be a problem with our official ownership of the house. We’d have to go to war. Montague and Capulet. Hatfield and McCoy. Jon and Kate. Letterman and Leno. Samberg and Franklin American.
As I was preparing to go to the Weppster & Minor offer to re-sign the papers, the gigantic moving truck arrived from New Jersey. The moving company had been storing our furniture for three months, and we were glad to get it back. (It had been costing us $50 a day after the first month of storage.) The manager of the moving crew, an ex-military man who spoke and acted with martial precision, told me that after all the furniture was unloaded he’d ask me to do an inspection tour with him of all the delivered items and then sign all the final paperwork. “Sir,” he said, “there are quite a number of papers to sign. It will take a while, sir.”
“Have Joel Samberg sign all the paperwork,” I said.
“Sir, aren’t you Joel Samberg?” he asked, a baffled look on his face.
“Apparently not,” I responded, and walked away.
Bonnie signed the papers. At least I think it was Bonnie. After what the two of us had just been through with oblivious brokers, irrational bankers, befuddled attorneys, clueless inspectors, dispirited sellers, disheartened relatives, anxious children and incontinent cats, she wasn’t entirely sure if she still wanted to be.
Chapter 2: The State with Two Backs
Bonnie and I were looking forward to a fresh start. We had raised our three children in the small Northern New Jersey suburban community of Verona, a town whose three claims to fame were that David Letterman once taped a skit on its main thoroughfare, comedian Jay Mohr went to the high school, and portions of “The Sopranos” were filmed there. Other than that it was a typical down-to-earth town with sky-high property taxes, too many empty stores, and two-and-a-half-square-miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic. We were ready to begin the empty nest stage of our lives with a brand new set of social and professional ties somewhere in north-central Connecticut, about three hours away. Our daughter Celia lived up there with her husband, Dave, and we had the opportunity to do some exploring whenever we visited. We liked what we saw. The open spaces were bigger, the property taxes lower.
I’m pretty good with directions and thought all we had to do was cross the Hudson River, pick up I-84 East, and get off somewhere in the Farmington Valley.
Boy, was I wrong. So was Mapquest.
As it turned out, we had to do endless figure eights along the darkest highways of hell, make detours into such unpleasant ports as Carelessness and Callousness, take wrong turns through the miserable back alleys of Greed and Laziness, and stay overnight against our will in the dreadful slums of Incompetence and Stupidity before we could even set foot in our new home.
I don’t know what route that was, but it sure as hell wasn’t 84.
In no particular order, here are the five most egregious reasons we wanted to relocate:
1. New Jersey has more crooked politicians than it has towns in which to be crooked, and we were anxious to go through just one incumbency without an arraignment. Frankly, I don’t give a crap about married politicians making ‘the beast with two backs’ with people other than their spouses—as long as it is not my tax dollars paying for the hotel rooms where all those backs are being bestial.
2. Suburban sprawl had invaded our part of New Jersey to such a degree that all the deer, squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, chipmunks and wild turkeys that used to roam in nearby woods now roamed in our backyard. (I know that may sound quite pleasant, but deer crap is small and very hard to see when you’re doing yard work.)
3. Property taxes in our neighborhood were excessive. Annually it seemed to be enough to buy a year’s worth of toilet paper for every resident of the Garden State (population: 8.4 million)—an appropriate analogy since you can’t even wipe your ass in New Jersey without first getting permission, and a permit.
4. Our house, which was 84 years old, was starting to act as if were a hundred and eighty four years old. I think Thomas Edison, who had his laboratory in the town next to ours, actually installed all the wiring. Plus, we never needed to tune in Al Roker because all we had to do was look at our shabbily constructed front door to see what was going on outside. It would all come in from a gap at the bottom: rain, snow, wind, locusts, pestilence, you name it. It was an almost biblical existence, but not in a spiritual way.
5. Beginning earlier that year, all the magazines for which I had been writing cut back either on their use of freelancers or their rates. Similarly, all the small companies and organizations that had been using my writing services for marketing communications faced economic conditions that prompted them to eliminate outsourcing budgets. I was severely underemployed. But New Jersey wasn’t the only place with magazines and small companies.
No, “The Sopranos” had nothing to do with our decision to leave New Jersey. But at least they were a lot more entertaining than political indictments and deer crap.
We selected our real estate broker, Roc Leonardo, based solely on the fact that he seemed to hate everyone in town. We liked that. No pretense. Brutal honesty. A little rebelliousness. But personable and funny. Our kind of guy.
Roc was an independent broker when we first hired him, but ended up joining a regional office of Prudential by the time we were ready to show the house in the fall of 2009.
Of course, before long the character trait we had loved so much at first started to annoy the hell out of us. According to Roc, every broker and potential buyer who stopped by to look at the house was a cheap annoying grouch who never in a million years would ever consider making a decent offer. During my many years as a communications manager I had been involved with countless corporate initiatives, such as CIP (the continuous improvement process), TQM (total quality management), EHS (environment, health & safety), JIT (just-in-time manufacturing), MBPI (the Myers-Briggs Personality Index) and other annoying acronyms; never, though, was I involved with PNR, Perpetual Negative Reinforcement. Roc was the king of PNR.
There’s only so much hate you can allow yourself to have before you start hating yourself for hating everyone. With Roc on our team, we were starting to hate everyone.
Still, we fixed a few things in the house that needed immediate attention and let Roc do his professional thing, which included building a website for the house, placing newspaper ads and scheduling open houses for brokers and buyers. But there was very little action all through the fall and well into the winter. Even the broker open houses were poorly attended. You know you’re in trouble when brokers, many of whom are fat slobs and others who are just fat, don’t want to come to your house for free cupcakes and cookies.
At the end of one particularly long and boring open house, Bonnie and I were sitting in the kitchen lamenting our fate. I grumbled a fairly good rendition of George Carlin’s famous “Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV” as I recounted the last few weeks of futility. The house had been on the market for four months and we were convinced that we would be forever stuck with our deer crap, Edison wiring, pestilence, bastard politicians, outrageous property taxes and lack of income. Then, suddenly, we heard two excited voices coming from the living room and the first few notes of the chromatic scale tickled on our ivories. The open house had ended hours earlier and we weren’t expecting company. So either we were being robbed by bandits who adored old upright pianos, or our neighbor had a good sense of smell and came by to see why we had so many cupcakes and cookies just hanging around doing nothing.
We went to the living room to check it out. No brokers, bandits or neighbors. Instead, we found a young couple there, Cicero and Sandy. They were from out of town and had decided to check out the neighborhood to see if Verona was a town they might like to live in one day. (Sandy was pregnant.) They had not yet searched on line, looked in the newspaper or visited a broker. But they saw the For Sale sign by the sidewalk, and the front door was open, and... well... they decided to walk in just for the hell of it.
Two months later, Cicero and Sandy owned the house.
They loved the place from that first day, without too much prompting from us. But we did our part anyway to promote everything from the crowded basement (which actually resembled an ancient coal mine) to the small Verona public library (which made a bookmobile look like the Library of Congress). We didn’t tell them any of the reasons we were leaving. We simply said that we were empty nesters looking for a smaller house closer to our married daughter. And we assured them that none of the Real Housewives of New Jersey ever ate in any of the Verona restaurants.
As a result of our efforts, Roc had a successful sale during a year in which he saw far fewer transactions than most of the other years throughout his distinguished career, and of that we were happy. He’s a good guy; he deserved the commission. But when you really think about it, he had little to do with bringing Cicero and Sandy to our house in the first place or making them fall in love with it once they were inside. So having to pay him almost $17,000 in commission was a bit of a bitter pill. We could have used that $17,000 to repair everything in our new house that broke just six months after we moved in.