The Background

After months of disappointment in the DIY search, doing the Craigslist crawl and sapped into cyber real estate scams, we hired Zephyr’s number one real estate pro, Bonnie Spindler. No matter that she is the sis of a gal I used to work with at Fairchild Publications many moons ago (although connections in these cases can’t hurt); her fast-talking, real-estate know-how, bulldog confidence and unabashed persuasion was a major link to our involvement in The Page Project.

The sellers, who will remain anonymous for obvious reasons, are in the midst of a scorching divorce, which showed up in the form of stacks of unpaid bills and general lack of or spiteful communication. She ran off to a Habitat for Humanity project, totally MIA, when we offered our bid, and again went missing (to therapy, apparently) when it was time to sign. It was a sleepless 45 days, to say the least, but with the support of Pamela Adams of Adams Insurance (insurance), Lyssa Paul of Sirkin Paul Associates (co-ownership agreement), Lona Flament (all things financial) and Clifford Fried and Frank Miller of Wiegel & Fried (real estate law), we closed on March 2nd and I became something akin to Old Mother Hubbard, with so many tenants she didn't know what to do.

Make no mistake, the purchase part was no party; more like a comedy of errors. The deal was contingent on the abstraction of commercial tenant #1, Michael’s Pit Stop. We conducted a kitchen table talk with the owner who has an iron-clad, long-term lease. If we would pay all his expenses, including his 2 kids’ college tuition for 2 years, he would move. Uh – I don’t think so. We decided to keep the porn-and-package store in place (and it has truly grown on me ☺) and moved onto plan B and C and D, all concoctions my partner dreamed up in the middle of the night. Persistent and creative, he brainstormed our way into the building into which we are moving in 2 days.

Noblee Properties, LLC is the company we formed (a combo of our middle names) to make the purchase, and Legal Zoom, an online legal document service, did the deed. Boring though it is, thought it best to keep a record of all the deets.