When someone breaks in your rehab and changes the locks on you...

[Jason Yarusi]

...Sometime you just have to laugh. 

Happened two weeks on a house in Cranford, NJ, a nice neighborhood. Bought the house from a guy who was in a rough spot due to some premature deaths of family members and he just went downhill and the house was a hoarder house. I was able to give him a fair price that we both walked away happy with as it kept him out of foreclosure and got him into an apartment and out of this spiraling mess and I got a property with good potential.

Long story short, closing was a disaster. Lesson #1, the title company came recommended and they just really dropped the ball. The guys paperwork was all over the place and it became one of those houses I had no idea if and when it would ever close. Well finally two weeks ago it all magically came together and we did. Lesson here is if you can use a company you are familiar with the process will be so much easier.

Prior to closing I was able to negotiate to have a third party clear out the entire house paid by the seller which was great. Lesson #2, there was so much stuff here I missed that there was no bathroom on the first floor. The half bath they spoke of was an illegal bath in the basement and this house is in a flood zone so that is another issue with having mechanicals in the basement.

I deal in flood zones a ton, however not all the towns do most of the work in flood zones and this is one of them so the permitting process is longer than wanted but expected. Lesson #3 I call each town now as the Uniform construction code since Hurricane Sandy has gone out the window and many towns are implementing additional items that were never needed before and this includes utility shutoff procedures.

Here is where the fun part started, I go over to the house the day after closing with my wife @Pili Yarusi

and two of our guys for review. We are in the kitchen when two guys appear in the kitchen.

My response - "Who the heck are you?"

Guys - "We are here to winterize the system."

Me- "From Who"

Guys "We'll be right back"

They made it seem like they were going to get a card or some proof of who they were and then they were gone. I always have lots of random stuff going on, so I made a mental note on went on with my business.

Next day, I told myself to just go by the house and check again. I show up to the house to find a note on the door from M&M Mortgage Services that the house was found to be vacant and they have winterized the house and secured it by changing the locks. So those guys waiting for me to leave and pushed their way in the back door and changed the locks and claimed it was vacant even though I was standing there earlier yesterday.

I call the company and of course its a matrix that is impossible to reach a person. I call my lawyer and he does his magic and finally gets some person on the phone in Miami, who claims they have no record of this property and they did not do this. My lawyers response was "So you are telling me two guys are running around Posting your signs in houses and winterizing houses" to which there was some form of verbal confirmation that this was M&M's story and they are sticking to it.

Lesson here, is a lot of chaos happens with these happens and although I could have been annoyed, which I was for a few minutes, I laughed it off as a great story I could write down the line and put with this property. Seems after closing our wonderful closing company is not getting docs squared away quick enough so the banks still see this in foreclosure for whatever reason even though it's paid off.

Final lesson, I needed to winterize the house anyway and even though I had to change the locks again, I thought to myself maybe I should have let them keep doing whatever they intended on doing. Maybe they would have started the rehab for me at no cost as well.

I did file a police report and had my lawyer put them on notice and took a few other precautions on this.

In the end I will post some final pictures when we get through this bad boy. The neighbors are ecstatic to see anything being done here as the property was a jungle and you can barely make out a house as you can see from the picture.