Beautiful Crisis
I’m so poetic, right? Did you read that title? An oxymoron that is too tantalizing not to click on, right? That’s why you’re reading this post, isn’t it? I’m trying to A/B test here, so help a guy out! Bear with me while I lean on another overused writing and public speaking technique and define the meaning of the word “crisis” to open this baby up:
Crisis- A crisis (from the Greek κρίσις - krisis) is any event that is going (or is expected) to lead to an unstable and/or dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or whole society. A secondary definition is, "a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger".
Before I get too into the weeds here, I would like to acknowledge that the particular set of “crises” (which is a weird word to read in it’s plural form) that I am going to write about in this post are very first-world in nature. As crises go, I am not starving, nor do I fear for my family’s safety. Nobody has died (recently anyway), and I am not in any imminent fear of a natural disaster or being eaten by a large feral cat of some kind. With that said, I do feel like the word, “crisis” is the only fitting descriptor for what Court and I have experienced over the last year of our life together. We’ve never experienced such discomfort, nor have we had so many significant changes take place in such a short period of time. Let’s dive in, shall we?
The housing crisis
Ha! No, not the 2008 blunder that was very entertainingly depicted by Ryan Gosling and Steve Carrell in the 2015 motion picture treasure, The Big Short (stop reading and watch it if this is news to you). I am referring to Court and my personal housing crisis that still feels like the emotional equivalent of having someone speed bag my nuts.
It began when we had an offer accepted on a 2-acre property in Park City. It was the dream spot. Beautiful views of las montañas, perfect building envelope, and surrounded by plenty of open space. It was the perfect combo of rural living and proximity to civilization where I could still ride my electric longboard to a Smith's (which was one of my staunch requirements). It was P-E-R-F-E-C-T!!!
It was so great that we honestly didn't think we had a snowball's chance in hell of getting it under contract. We decided to put in an offer anyway with the contingency that we would want to sell our home in Holladay before closing. To our amazement, they accepted the offer! We freaked out! We were jumping up and down; we were teary-eyed, we were passionately making out on the kitchen counter totally succumbing to the raw emotion of it all! (I think I am remembering all of that right). We were feeling so incredibly giddy to have taken such a huge stride toward our dream of getting back to Park City. This was something we both desperatley wanted to do ever since leaving our first house there a few years prior.
The only caveat to this whole sitch came in the form of the sellers own contingency; if they received a backup offer at any point, we would have 48 hours to drop our contingency (the sell of our Holladay house) and come to the table with proof that we could get financing to purchase the land without selling the Holladay house. Since the contingency was really only there as a safety mechanism in the first place, we signed with zero hesitations and went under contract. We listed our house in Holladay the next day and started our due diligence on the lot in PC. Court made countless calls to the city, spoke to our lenders, called all the utility companies, had builders walk the property with her, and jumped through numerous other hoops to make sure everything was going to work out. We quickly had offers on the house in Holladay, which made us feel great because we had sunk our hearts and souls (and lots of our cash) into a huge year-long remodel project that we were super proud of. Everything was moving along swimmingly until our agent called us while we were walking into church one Sunday. He delivered some pretty terrible news letting us know that there had been a screw up of epic proportions. He told us that an email had been sent by the sellers letting us know that a backup offer had been received on the property and that the 48-hour window was now in effect. The only problem was that the email he had been sent by the seller's agent OVER TWO DAYS prior but went to an email address he, "didn't check very often" ............................
No amount of dots at the end of that last sentence could accurately reflect how deflated we felt listening to him deliver this news. It was over. To his knowledge, we were already in backup position, and the sellers had moved on to another buyer... I saw the dream slipping. Still, I was way too emotionally invested to let it go so, instead of church that morning, we piled in the car determined to find the sellers and speak with them face to face. This would be a last-ditch effort to convince them that we were the ones they needed to sell to! I frantically searched tax records in Summit County to find the owners/sellers of the PC property. With the help of some friends (who shall remain nameless due to the unconventional nature of the actions that followed), I found the seller's current address (which happened to be in Salt Lake County), and we headed for their front door. I know we are in Utah so perhaps the site of a family clamoring over a strangers front gate in their Sunday best seems like commonplace. In this case though, my heavy fisted thumping with one kid under my arm and Courtney's visible tears probably alerted them to the fact that this wasn't a standard "ministering" visit. They answered the door and hesitantly let us all in. I explained the situation and pleaded with them like an 1830's street urchin.
I genuinely felt their pity for us. They made a call to their agent to see what could be done, but by that point, it was already out of their hands as there were signed contracts on both sides with the backup buyer. We were crushed... We seriously could not believe it. We stayed at their house until I got a text from my agent telling me that their agent was super pissed we had barged in on his sellers without his knowledge... That was fair. My unconventional "drop in and try to schmooze" approach was my last attempt to keep the dream alive, but instead, we watched it die an abrupt and untimely death there in their dimly-lit living room. It had dissappeard as quickly as it had arrived and we unlcoked a new level of dissapointment that we would carry with us for years to come.
We still had to make the decision of whether or not to sell our Holladay house. We had a couple of great offers including one from a well-known family that lived just a neighborhood over. All our friends and neighbors knew them well and vouched for how wonderful they were. Getting the right family into the house was important to me because I wasn't just selling a house we had remodeled as a quick flip or cash grab. I was selling the Wardrop family home that my grandpa and had built himself. It had been the Wardrop residence since the early sixties, and I had countless childhood memories bound up in that sweet and wonderful abode.
Courtney and I also had our own memories and experiences in that home. Our sweet little Norah was born there, Graham had grown into a toddler there, my siblings had lived with us there, and as previously mentioned, we had put a ton of effort into a remodel that we absolutely loved. There were a million reasons not to part with that house, and we still hadn't officially gone under contract to sell the house to anyone, but we had to make a decision quickly. Court and I had both just finished the book, "You are a Badass" by my secret crush, Jen Sincero. We gave a lot of credit to that book when we found the PC lot in the first place, and we felt like the universe was on our side and we had willed our dreams into reality!
Even with the crushing blow of losing the lot in Park City, we felt like it was a sign that we needed to take another big step into the unknown (hold the Frozen II jokes, please). We decided to sell the house with the hope that something else would fall our way in Park City... We went under contract to sell and had three months to find a new place to live. Those months were stressful and sad. We frequently questioned whether or not we made the right decision. With no options in Park City being even remotely appealing (and certainly not comparable to the lot we had just lost), we began frantically searching for a house within our neighborhood boundaries because we truly love it here. That was a pretty tall order considering our neighborhood is made up of about four blocks, and absolutely nothing was for sale...
Finally, we heard that a little yellow house might be coming up for sale down the street. It was on a busier road, built in the 1930s, and about 2400 sqft, which was less than half the space we were currently living in. It was old (1930's old) and gross. It didn't back up to a cute little elementary school like our last house and it needed serious work. The perks were that it was on .5 acres, and since it was for sale by owner, it was being offered at a good price. Most importantly, it kept us in the hood, so, with no other options available, we simultaneously sold Holladay house #1 and purchased Holladay house #2 unknowingly hurling ourselves into two more years of a emotional turmoil.