It took a year and 4 contracts on properties to get Roberta a home of her own. She is a single mother of 3 who had rented a trailer for 7 years and desperately wanted to give her children a better place to live. I sent her to a lender first to make sure she was qualified to buy. She was but only under an FHA loan, with a 2-1 buydown and seller paid closing costs. The first property did not have a septic, the second did not meet FHA standards on the foundation, the third was bank owned and rejected, the fourth looked like it met all requirements. The agent said it would go FHA and Teller County had purged the title. But we could not get plans for the foundation from either the County or the developer who had originally put the unit in place. So we had to hire an engineer to design a foundation, a contractor to install it, an appraiser that could see the "bigger picture", and the lender had to update the loan package, sending it to underwriting a second time.

We all ran into issues that we were unaware of when we started, regulations that we did not know existed, situations that at times seemed impossible. We did get the result we wanted. Roberta is in a home of her own, the children are happy with room to play, both inside and outside. We learned that you can not trust the MLS listing to be correct. You can not trust that the County regulations will be the same as FHA regulations. You can not trust that you will even know what all the regulations are when you start. The engineer regulations for FHA are as thick as a book. You can not trust that the you can find a contractor willing to do the work needed. You can not trust that when you do, that the work will get done as quickly as first thought. But what you can trust is that when a buyer or seller is determined, and sells that determination to a dedicated real estate agent, (especially me!) we will be successful. We had the help of an exceptional lender (Jerry Yoder), a dedicated contractor that did get the foundation installed under the trailer (Larry Lockwood) and an outstanding engineer that worked with us to get the job done (Ralph LoCascio). Congratulations to Roberta and the people who helped put her in a home of her own!

Most real estate transactions do not take a year, most proceed smoothly, but when the unexpected happens, you need a professional team that can get the result you want. I work hard to insure that I have quality people helping me help my clients. We all hope that situations do not arise out of the ordinary, but we also want to be prepared in case they do, like the seller who decides to not sell after accepting a contract from a very qualified buyer or the little known regulations that seem to crop up when not expected. I try to stay educated to the unusual and surround myself with people of the same quality. Together we will succeed on your behalf!