Getting wrong kind of help worse than none
PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
December 3, 2019
If you are wondering why I could not post on this site for a while, it became impossible to be upbeat and share anything encouraging when we were being tortured for trusting the wrong people.
There are people we think we can count on to help us get to where we want to go. It can be devastating to discover we were wrong.
I found a buyers agent to help us in New Hampshire. Catherine Allen was a stranger turned into a blessing. Our house was not getting much attention and she took a look at the listing. Catherine said the pictures were the biggest part of the problem and so was the price.
When I told our "friend" what Catherine said, that was the last time she took my phone call and would not respond to emails. I had no clue what the hell was wrong with her but what made it worse was what it did to us personally knowing that "friends" would treat us like that.
Catherine proved she was watching out for us and knew the market in Florida even though she was in Maine.
I called Zillow to see what they would offer to just buy the house. Agents like our "friends" are a great reason why people would be willing to lose more money on the sale of their home and avoid a lot of extra stress no one needs piled on to their shoulders.
Zillow said that the agent would have to release it or we would have to pay the commission to them as well as the fee to Zillow. My husband called the husband of the agent since both of them were agents and thought of him as a true friend. Needless to say the response we got was that the would not release the listing. I was fed up!
I called the head of the agency and told him what they were doing and he said he would have them straighten it out. What followed was a series of angry emails from the husband. Since I worked for a title company, I turned to our agents and in turn to our legal department to find a lawyer we could trust.
Leo Brito of Nishad Khan got all the details on what happened. When he was reviewing it, more angry emails came in from the agent. The last one had two lies in just two sentences. He wrote that "we had an offer come in from "opendoor" are you interested in hearing the terms and conditions of that offer?" (He must have forgotten who I worked for, and knew how that business worked.) The next sentence was that his boss just talked to him, even though he had already sent the angry emails. I responded by telling him to stop contacting me and that he would be hearing from our lawyer.
I called Open Door and asked an agent if they ever cold called to make offers. After that agent stopped laughing, it gave me more ammo for our lawyer.
To top that off, Zillow contacted his wife to make an offer based on our conversation. As soon as he said who he was, she told him he had the wrong number, then hung up the phone.
Leo sent them notice that if they did not release us, it would head into litigation. They released the house so that we could get an agent who was actually interested in doing the work to sell the house and earn his commission.
We went with Wes Garrison of REMAX and he explained why the house was worth thousands less than it had been listed for. He sent our a professional photographer to take stunning pictures, including drone views of the area. We ended up with so many people coming to see it that we lost count. He was responsive to all of my questions and restored my faith in real estate agents. Basically he busted his ass to sell our house.
In less than 2 weeks, our house was under agreement! The best part of all is that the buyers were people we already knew. They loved the house almost as much as we did.
Hurricane Humberto was taking time going up the east coast, so we had to wait to fly up to New Hampshire to start looking for a house. Catherine had what we were looking for all lined up. We thought we found the right house in Maine and she got things moving fast since our house was being sold.
We flew back to Florida to start packing and she went to the home inspection, plus set us up with a mortgage broker. Brad Kelly of AnnieMac walked me through everything they needed and pushed to get it done in our timeframe. His whole team was fabulous, but the house we were planning on buying was not.
The inspection was bad enough that we had to walk away from it. We wanted to keep our word to the sellers, so we kept packing. On our 35th wedding anniversary, we sold the house. After the movers left, we headed to a hotel with our dog Murray.
Considering I was then unemployed and we did not know where we were going to end up living, basically homeless, this could have destroyed us if we let it. To top that all off, I left a job I love and people who were more like family than coworkers.
I turned to my husband and said, "Yahoo! Our 35th anniversary...we're homeless and I'm unemployed! Second honeymoon road trip!"
Long story shorter, Catherine found us the house we ended up buying and the team at AnnieMac got it together so that in less than a month, we closed on this house in Rochester New Hampshire.
There is so much they cannot find because the road has been blocked by too many snow jobs making them believe there was no hope for them to get to where they want to go. They need to know that they can heal PTSD, and their lives can be so much better. So far, it seems that female veterans have been disregarded by most of the groups. When some people hear that a female veteran has PTSD, they automatically think it was sexual assault instead of caused by combat experiences...the same kind males go through.
Point Man is ready to change that! I will be working with female veterans from all generations to let them know they matter equally They earned the gratitude, respect and help we are providing for free. With the veterans I have helped over all these years, I can attest to the fact that seeing their lives turn around is priceless!
Starting next Sunday, I'll begin the Sunday Morning Empowerment Zone again. I will also give updates on where the meetings will be as soon as I figure that one out.
If you are a female veteran in New Hampshire or Maine and need help, call me at 407-754-7526 or email woundedtimes@aol.com
