Riata Story

Since the housing market has taken a big hit not only in Arizona but everywhere, it is extremely hard to get a loan. It seemed like the bank wanted everything short of a blood sample to get the loan approved. We did so much paper work and so much info to our lender to buy this house. Finally on Wednesday September 29th all our ducks were in a row and docs were ready for everyone to sign. Jacob, and I went to the Ash’s and signed docs there and the sellers would sign the next day and that same day the house was supposed to record and we had planned on moving in that weekend.

On Thursday (the next morning) I took Liam to the doctor and while I was there, I received an e-mail from title saying the sellers were ½ way through signing docs when they stopped and decided they needed to speak with legal council before they finished signing. Basically we were told that they were scared of the 1099 that they were going to receive because they were selling the home for so much less than what they owed. Jacob and I were familiar with this so we thought that soon they would realize a short sale would be much better than letting the home go into foreclosure and that they might sign the next morning. Well, the next morning turned into maybe Tuesday the next week. On Tuesday we received some phone calls from some of our Riata neighbors saying there were a lot of cars at thee Riata house. I jumped in my car to see who it was and it turned out to be the Harmon’s checking out the house. I was told they talked to the neighbors, so I went over to the neighbors house and spoke with them and they told me the Harmon’s were acting weird and seemed to leave a little frazzled. Later that night we received a phone call from Roger the listing agent and he informed us that John Harmon seemed to think we were the in laws of Jeff Kartchner and if that is true he would not be selling the home to us. At this point I had my whole house packed up and we had been living out of boxes for the past week. In reality, we thought we would have already been living in the Riata house for a week at this point. This of course was devastating news!

The next day we all prayed, fasted and hoped the Harmon’s would change their mind. Jacob asked Roger if he could call John and try and speak some sense into him, but Cecil, having a law back ground, thought it would be a good idea for him to call John. The next day Cecil called John Harmon and talked to him a couple of times. John basically said he did not like the Kartchner’s and that he would not sale the house to us. Cecil said I don’t care what you think of the Kartchner’s this is a sale between the Ash‘s and Harmons, not between the Harmons and Kartchners. John said he would spend 500,000 fighting us in court if that is what it would take, but he would never sell the home to a relative of the Kartchners. Cecil’s response was, “you can spend as much money as you like fighting this, but just know at the end of the day, you are going to have to pay your attorney fees and then you’ll have to pay our attorney fees, and we are still going to get the home. John still made it sound like he would not sell to us, although it seemed like that statement made him think a little bit. Thursday we made appointments to meet with two lawyers. We came up with some good ideas and basically the plan was to file a law suit for specific performance forcing the Harmon’s to sell. Then to cover the other side we were going to work with the bank to purchase the note and then we ourselves would foreclose on the Harmon’s. If that worked out, Cecil was looking forward to calling John and saying, “I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is we dropped the law suit. The bad news is you owe us $950,000. (Cecil said this more in jest than of a serious nature. Cecil is not the type to be vindictive in any way). So thinking we had the perfect plan we decided to move on with our moving plans and move out of our house on Orchard Way letting our tenants move in.

Friday and Saturday was spent moving and Jacob’s Uncle Brad was kind enough to let us move in with him temporarily. We moved Jacob and our two boys and what little we could live on into two tiny room’s and just prayed and fasted that Harmon’s would change their minds. Oh yeah Jacob also in the middle of all this decided he was going to sell his car and did. So at this point we had one car and no house! To say the next few days or even the past week was stressful would be an understatement! Jacob and I got into a lot of little arguments here and there, but we quickly realized they were all my fault. We were arguing over a lack of sleep and stress and it seemed we had to constantly apologize to one another for snapping. It’s nice to know Jacob and I can communicate and work through these things. I really did marry the perfect man for me!

On Wednesday October 13th at around 5:00pm Jacob received a call from Roger saying the Harmon’s would be at title to sign docs at 8:00am! WHAT?? WHY the sudden changed?? Wait who cares lets sign docs….these were the thoughts going through my head. So the next day we drove out to north Scottsdale and signed docs…after the Harmon’s this time. The next day on October 15th at 3:15 the house was ours. As I was waiting to hear it recorded I remembered my birthday was the next day and then I remembered that we moved out of the Riata house the day before I turned 22 and we bought it back the day before I turned 27. Exactly 5 years later to the day!!! CRAZY!! Jacob and I are so excited about our new home; words do not describe how happy we are.