RE: Real Estate Podcast

Ben Harang, Realtor® (00:23)
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of RE Real Estate Podcast. I'm one of your hosts Ben Harang with me today is Clint Galliano. How you doing today Clint?

Ben & Clint (00:35)
I'm doing wonderful, Ben. How you doing?

Ben Harang, Realtor® (00:38)
Clint, I'm doing terrific. Glad to hear it. just on a personal note, Clint's babe, baby graduated from high school last night, with honors and, one proud Papa. Congratulations, Clint.

Ben & Clint (00:49)
Thank you, thank you. We are very happy and excited and proud.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (00:55)
as you should be. Starting the next chapter in her life and you and your wife get to start another chapter together. So it's a big deal. Congratulations and good luck.

Ben & Clint (01:02)
Yes, indeed.

Thank you.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (01:08)
Okay. We're to do something a little different today. we're to talk about, deals or transactions or just kind of storytell some different experiences that were not the typical real estate transaction. we have a couple of them to talk about. So, Clint, I'm let you go first and we'll kind of go back and forth and

We'll see what this turns out to be. It ought to be interesting.

Ben & Clint (01:37)
All right, now we're going to call this real client stories.

All right, so, ⁓ yeah, we have the trauma prove it.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (01:41)
the in a real too

I have the the warts and bruises and everything else bumps and bruises Go ahead

Ben & Clint (01:48)
You

All right, so I had a property listed. This is a few years ago, back when I was doing dual agency. So I was representing the seller and the buyer. And the property was part of the estate of a secession. And I was representing the administrator of the secession. Technically, I was representing this estate.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (02:15)
Mm-hmm.

Ben & Clint (02:16)
and we listed the property and working with the attorney doing the secession. In general, every time we needed something because we had to get that attorney to get a judge to sign off on every step of the listing and purchase process, it was

There was always a delay involved, know, normal delay because the attorney would have to go to the judge and get the judge to, they'd have to file it with the judge and the judge would get it on his docket, review it and approve it. And then it would come back and then we would be good to proceed to the next step. Well, while we get the property listed, we get an offer on it and the

the estate accepts the offer and we're just waiting on the judge to sign off so that we could close and Hurricane Ida hit.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (03:12)
life-altering event.

Ben & Clint (03:14)
And I believe we've mentioned it at least four or five times in previous episodes. It was definitely a life altering event.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (03:23)
Like August of 2021, I tell time by hurricanes around here. Um, don't know the date though. Might've been all, might've been August 30th.

Ben & Clint (03:28)
Yep.

It was August 29th. It was on Katrina Day.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (03:34)
Okay, that was close. ⁓

that's true, that's true. You're right.

Ben & Clint (03:39)
and

that's even more infamous because my wife's birthday is the day after. So she's always having hurricanes for her birthday and not the good kind.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (03:48)
huh. And Katrina

is going to be 20 years in August this year in a couple of months.

Ben & Clint (03:53)
Yep.

So Hurricane came through and the attorney handling the secession, his office was torn up. The roof was peeled off, everything inside was damaged, and we couldn't get in touch with him for a couple of weeks. Well,

Ben Harang, Realtor® (04:12)
And I've

heard the story in it. I'm right, it was an elderly gentleman who might not have been tech savvy to be able to work as efficiently remotely as some of us can.

Ben & Clint (04:24)
That was part of the story. The other part was, or another part was that he was semi-retired at the point when he had taken on the secession anyways. So he was already in the habit of not doing a whole lot. And as part of preparing for the hurricane, he took his wife and hauled butt to the northern part of the state.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (04:40)
Mm-hmm.

Ben & Clint (04:51)
and his plan was was he and we eventually got in touch with him and kind of moved forward a little bit but then we kind of quit being able to get in touch with him but his plan was was to come back to town every couple of weeks and handle up on business and then we got to the point where we couldn't get in touch with him and so after

I want to say after four or five months of trying to get in touch with him to proceed with the transaction, we just got to the point to where both clients were frustrated. And so I recommended that they look at finding a different attorney to complete the secession. And so the seller client contacted

a recommended attorney. They reached out to them. They got all the information, took care of what they needed to take care of. We got approval to move forward with the sale. We were able to complete the sale, finalize the transaction. Buyer clients completed the purchase. They were happy. They fixed up the home.

and turned it into a rental and it's providing income for them. The seller client was able to complete everything involved with the secession of the estate and they were happy because they finally got out of all of that. But the whole process took about nine months from listing the property to getting it closed finally.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (06:30)
And you ought to be congratulated on that one just to have the stick to it-ness or the desire to get it done and to hang in there as well as the buyer and the seller that didn't get frustrated and walk away. Sometimes things happen like this and if you have some patience, it generally can work out. Not all the time, but generally. So congratulations on that deal, Clint.

Ben & Clint (06:52)
Yeah, and I mean, like, and it's not like it was a half million dollar listing. mean, this was a $40,000 property.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (06:59)
You

Yeah.

Ben & Clint (07:02)
But it's not really about the money, it's about helping clients.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (07:05)
It's an experience.

So, all right. Well, we're going to try to keep this anonymous. The, we had a, a property that was owned by the state, a state subdivision that had been purchased over 50 years ago, and, they had sold it to an individual.

Ben & Clint (07:08)
So tell me a story, Ben.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (07:28)
in a private sale and pay cash for it. No title insurance, no attorney looking at anything. The state prepared the cash sale, buyer signed it. Here's the check. Here's the keys. Have a nice life. Everything's fine. 15, 18 years later, buyer unfortunately passed away. So the estate is selling.

The house, we find a buyer, it's going through title. legal secretary called me one day and said, Ben, we have a problem. said, what's that? Said the, I can't find where the property that is being sold was subdivided out of the original tract of land that it was in that the state bought. And there's a lease on a part of the property.

That nothing's ever been done, but there's a lease back to what? 30 something years before, or 33 years prior to this going on. so we had two problems. So the property had been surveyed. So I contacted the surveyor. They agreed to do what needed to be done and get it subdivided. So that was taken care of in a matter of three weeks, maybe.

The lease was able to be canceled because it was a lease for $5 a year. And imagine that the $5 had not been paid. So the state was able to cancel the lease without any foreclosures or legal proceedings. They could just unilaterally cancel it for non-payment according to the lease. So, we all good. Then.

The third thing, the third surprise. yeah. So we think we're going to closing and the title insurance general counsel says as a state statute that if the state acquires property, whether through a purchase or donation, whoever donates it or sells it to them maintains a right of first refusal to buy it back.

At today's price. this was done in 1953. I'm sorry. 53 years ago. Most everybody involved has been deceased. so we went back and forth, back and forth and, title insurance. I'm sorry. The lender would not accept an exception on a title insurance policy. So anyway.

We got through it. Everybody understood that after 53 years, nobody from the original, the original sellers was going to come back and want to buy the property back. So, uh, after about a 45 to 60 day delay, not too terribly long with that going on. Um, we were able, we were able to close and the buyer's happy. The seller's happy. Everybody, everybody's happy.

more than once, the seller seller looked at me, what the executive executive tour of the estate and says, I can't believe what y'all do for your money. said, we do it all the time. You just, you just never hear about it. And that's kind of the purpose of, of our storytelling today, not to, not to bore you with the details, but just some behind the scenes things that people generally don't, don't see. So that one, that one had a happy ending.

So that

Ben & Clint (10:52)
Now, was

the solution part of, was it that the title insurance company accepted that response that there was nobody there to come back and offer to buy it back? Or was it that they had to go with an alternative title insurance company?

Ben Harang, Realtor® (11:10)
The closing attorney decided to accept the liability for that. So they didn't have to have the exception and the closing attorney used his, the gray matter between his ears. long time closing attorney, good friend to keep it anonymous. I'm not trying not to name names. you know, he, he, did a good job and he and I would communicate regularly.

Ben & Clint (11:17)
Okay.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (11:36)
And he was like, I can't believe they're doing this. I, you know, and then he, just decided, you know, there's, there's little to no liability in this. nobody's coming back after all this time. So they wrote the title policy without the exception. And if somebody does come back, he's, he was willing to take on that, that exposure, which is miniscule, if any.

So, alright, your turn Clint.

Ben & Clint (12:03)
All right, so this next story doesn't quite have the same happy ending as the previous one. So this is another listing. Client wanted to sell a home in, I'll say a remote area.

which a lot of areas in our market could be considered a remote area. ⁓ Anyways, we listed the property and shortly thereafter we got an offer. The offer was negotiated and accepted and everyone was happy. We were proceeding towards act of sale. And all of a sudden,

Ben Harang, Realtor® (12:27)
Mm-hmm.

Ben & Clint (12:46)
the wheels on the train locked up and the sparks are flying and we find out that there's problems with the title and the specific problem is is that the person selling the property had bought the property with a previous husband okay we'll call him previous husband number one if that's not foreshadowing ⁓

Ben Harang, Realtor® (13:09)
And I'm not,

I'm not laughing Clint. I just know the story. I'm sorry.

Ben & Clint (13:13)
That's OK. So.

She bought the house with previous husband number one and obviously they broke up.

and at some point down the line

he as I guess as part of some type of settlement, he decided to sign over his interest in the home and property to her and he did it via quit claim deed. And I'll preface this by saying I'm not a title attorney or anything like that. I'm just relaying the facts of what happened in this story. But

because he was living in another state, he went to a notary in that state and they did and followed the procedures of that state. And because my client was being a lay person, was ignorant of the laws and rules of Louisiana, they just went and filed that quit claim deed with the parish.

and got it into the record. The problem with that is is that for any deed to be transferred in Louisiana it has to be accepted so that means that the person receiving it needs to sign it. Well she didn't sign it so that was problem number one. Problem number two is that when she filed that she was married to previous husband number two.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (14:29)
Oops.

Ben & Clint (14:39)
and

So that by filing that while she was married to him, the property, an argument could be made that the property became community property. Okay, so that's fine and dandy. Previous husband number two became ill and at some point passed away. Previous husband number two had three children that were not with or of my client.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (14:49)
Mm-hmm.

Ben & Clint (15:06)
And then at some point one of those children passed away also. So now we've got two deceased people as partial owners of this piece of property. And so now the client's trying to sell it.

And the only way that she can clear up the title is to get the two remaining heirs to sign off and to do a small secession on the other deceased child of previous husband number two. Now the problem is that the two remaining children are estranged from her and want nothing to do with her and

I believe the words, no way in hell, were used that they would sign off on anything that would benefit her.

The long story short, that killed the deal. There was no way to clear it up. And it didn't help that the client didn't have the resources to pursue it legally. She could have if she had the money to spend to get it cleared up, but she didn't. ⁓ And so that killed the deal. We had to cancel the contract.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (16:10)
huh.

Right.

Ben & Clint (16:21)
had to cancel the listing agreement because without spending money there was no way to clear up the title and get the property sold.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (16:29)
Yeah, that's a shame when that happens. And especially with the succession after somebody passes away, you're dealing with things that you really don't want to be dealing with. And it's just unfortunate when those things happen. And that piece of property will eventually go back into commerce, probably through a share sale at some point in time. ⁓ But it'll sit there for an extended period of time, probably.

Ben & Clint (16:52)
Yeah, probably so.

Yep. All right, Ben, how about another story?

Ben Harang, Realtor® (16:59)
All right. Let's see if I can, get this one. This one is ongoing and may end next week. listed a house in a, some waterfront property, with a house, a lot in the front of it. Then the waterfront in front of the second lot.

We get the property on the market. Everything's fine. We find a buyer. I'll find an agent that had a buyer. We negotiate. everything's fine. We, guys coming in from out of state, everything's good. started getting calls from the closing, the title company saying, it doesn't look like the seller owns a hundred percent of that lot in the front. So, well, he inherited it.

Well, we can only find half of it and it's not an inheritance. It's a donation. So we go back and forth, back and forth. And sure enough, there would an elderly couple had owned it. Their, their intent was to donate it to this guy. One passes away. The other one donates the portion that was owned by the person that passed away, but not the portion that he owned.

So now we have five more people involved. They need to do a succession. thankfully everybody in the group is, or amenable and get along and everybody in that group understood that this person was to have that property. So, initially we closed on the house and half of the lot that he owned.

And I think it's going on, well, it's probably was seven months ago when we closed on the house and have it a lot. And I got a call last week that we're to close on Tuesday coming and everybody's going to be there. There's a couple of powers, the powers of attorney involved to get all the signatures, right. But, it, it looks like within the next week, we'll finally be able to close that deal.

that started closing probably nine months ago, seven months ago, I guess. It's kind of been open since then. I'll probably have some explaining to do to the MLS when I close it out finally. But anyway, and it has gotten me to thinking just like Clint's the successions and you know, we

We good ole boys. I believe what people tell me. and most of the time, the people that are telling us that they own a property, believe they own a property. and when this, when things like this happen, it, it, it's a colossal waste of time for everybody because we're operating on one set of circumstances and that's not in fact true. Nobody's fault. It just happens. So,

seriously considering, contacting a title company and say, Hey, would you be willing to do a cursory search of my listings just to confirm or deny that the people that think they own it actually own it. So if we have a problem, we can identify it and deal with it while we have it, while we're marketing it, or we take it off the market, deal with it, then put it on the market. Cause the last thing you want is.

Something like what happened to Clint where you find a buyer. they get an appraise, do the inspections, everything happens. And all of a sudden you find out the property is not able to be sold. and we, we country boys, everybody, everybody knows everybody. but the size of the properties, the prices, title insurance requirements, it's just, everybody's taking a closer look.

and when we went through the debacle of 2008 and the housing crisis, the time leading up to 2008 to hurry up and get things done, we can't do it today, but we will, we were changing and closing on settlement statements that were being generated five and six times within the closing cause they were wrong or something had to be changed. We can't do that anymore, which is a good thing.

But I suspect with the 3 % money we used to have two and three quarters to get things done, we could kind of have the same issues that we had before the 2008 debacle. So anyway, it's, it's always a good idea to confirm that you own what you think you own. if there's any question, get it, get it clarified. And it, and it does cost money, unfortunately.

but it may cost a whole lot more if you don't get it straight. So I'm gonna now step off my soap box lint and I think we can wrap this one up maybe.

Ben & Clint (21:37)
need to maybe get a little soapbox icon and put that on the screen when we do a little red here.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (21:43)
Yeah, I tend to do that sometimes. But it's the nature of the beast. And if you do it long enough, you're to see some wild things.

But anyway, those were three out of four of those ended with happy ending. Unfortunately for Clint's deal on both sides. Yeah. Yeah. Not bad. Not good, but not bad. So, all right.

Ben & Clint (21:54)
Yeah, so three out of four ain't bad.

That's right. So hopefully

you like, you know, like the change in topics. We're going to try and do some similar stuff, not necessarily the same thing, but just different topics like this. And like we mentioned before, we're going to look at potentially bringing in some guests, talk about different topics related to real estate in the future.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (22:23)
Whether

it's mortgage brokers, title companies, closing attorneys, insurance, appraisers. So we have some people to bring in to talk about it from their standpoint. Because we deal with them from our standpoint, and we'd always see it from their standpoint. So it's good to understand their approach and why they do what they do so we can understand it and maybe help them.

Ben & Clint (22:30)
that type of stuff, yeah.

say we we focus on the real estate portion the buying and the selling and we know a little bit about all those other domains we'll bring in the other guys because they're the experts in their domains

Ben Harang, Realtor® (23:00)
Yeah.

I like to stay in my lane. I'll help anybody do whatever I can do to help facilitate it, but I'm not an attorney, not an appraiser, not an inspector. Just, can, I can send you in the right direction to help you try to get it fixed, but I can't fix it.

Ben & Clint (23:16)
All right, so if you like what we're saying, you find it interesting, you get something some benefit from it. Would appreciate it if you like share, subscribe, comment, send all your friends our way. You can find us at re real estate podcast.com. And from there you can subscribe on any podcast app. You can watch us on YouTube and subscribe on YouTube. Just

any way you feel like consuming it, whether it's video or audio, either one, we're here for you.

Ben Harang, Realtor® (23:48)
Clint. think that's a wrap. Congratulations again and have a good one.

Ben & Clint (23:51)
All right.

Appreciate it, Ben. Thank you. You too. Bye bye.