Monday, April 26, 2010

Losing Life Riverside

Part III……………………………Making Like The James Gang


As Billy Banker never said anything in our subsequent discussions like “How dare you infer that Hell won’t have me!”, I never found out whether or not he read the original unedited letter that I inadvertently sent; (or was it really inadvertent – is there such a thing as a physical Freudian slip?) After what they did to us, I would’ve loved to have the opportunity to scream those nasty things to their face. And for the record, I would like them to rot in hell. And I also believe that hell is too good for them. And yes, Big Fat Hairy F-You!! It’s not like they could do anything worse to us than they are currently doing; (“Oh yea? Well if that’s how you feel about us, we’re gonna double foreclose on your property!”) so why not let them know how we really feel about them.

Billy Bankers only response to the letter was a terse email saying that there was no written record that I’d ever requested a line of credit, and when questioned, Betty Banker told him she’d never promised us a refinancing, and finally, that he was left with no choice but to proceed with the foreclosure process. Well, I had written proof of our credit line discussions in the form of my bank-approved business plan; and as for Betty Banker lying to Billy Banker about not promising us a refinance – who would ever expect her to tell the truth about anything? I’m certain she looks in the mirror every morning and lies to herself about her not actually being a lying, heartless, thieving bitch.

After reading the email, the reality of our situation was paralyzing, suffocating; it literally took my breath away. And couple getting this email prior to an afternoon meeting with my largest account – me getting Billy Banker’s email then having to sit all afternoon in a rather tense meeting, acting to the assembled crowd as if my entire world hadn’t just come to an end. Oh yes, then I had to call Julie, still fighting it out at the hotel in Colorado, with the news that Billy Banker and his scythe-wielding, sulphur-breathing she-bitch-from-hell may show up at any moment and demand that she vacate the premises. I had no idea what to expect, as I’d never had anything happen like this before. Julie was only slightly hysterical beyond the point of being consolable.

Our next step involved finding a real estate attorney who was licensed in Colorado. I was led to a highly recommended gentleman with a pricy firm whose first words to me, after I explained our dire situation, were “Mr. Paradise, I want you to calm down and relax. They can’t throw you out of your house or take your possessions. There is nothing about this situation that can’t be fixed.” So calm down I did as the attorney laid out the options.

Option #1 involved getting current on the loan– he echoed my friend’s opinion, that in this economy the legal system would look very harshly upon the bank if they tried to foreclose on a current loan. We can then fight them in court as to the validity of the ‘material change in the operation of the business’ reason for calling the note. However, Option #1 involved us coming up with a lawyer-load of money for legal fees, (it could ultimately cost $50,000 - $100,000) and we still had the potential for a downside if we didn’t prevail in court. Well heckfire, if I had $50,000 or $100,000, I wouldn’t be in this mess; so, cancel Option #1.

Option #2 was to move heaven and earth, pull a rabbit out of my hat, part the Dead Sea and then find a buyer for the hotel in the next 60 days. In the 10 months the hotel had been on the market, we had one potentially serious buyer, and he backed out when the sale of the adjacent hot springs fell through – it was kind of a package deal. So I didn’t hold a lot of hope for coming up with someone in 60 days, and certainly not someone who would buy the place for a reasonable sum.

Option #3…… walk away. That's right.....just walk away. Walk away from our investment, our equity, our labors, our memories, our friends, our dream, our successes, and sadly, our failure. Walk away from a lot of good things, but more importantly, walk away from a boatload of bad things. It’s referred to as a 'Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure’. You simply give the bank the deed to the property, the bank excuses the indebtedness and you walk away clean.

No more $5000/month mortgage payments, no more $1000/month electric bills, no more $750/month water bills. (Yes, that’s right; our water bill, regardless of usage, was a fixed $750/month.)

Most importantly, no more Julie and I living apart.

When the lawyer explained this to me, and how easily it could be accomplished, I literally exhaled all of the air I’d been suffocating on since early that afternoon. I began to breathe normally again. The tightness in my jaw and chest relaxed, this time without being the normal result of swilling a couple of Bombay’s. The massive weight and profound stress that had been burdening me the past two years slipped off of my back like a cheap kimono.

Just walk away.

But what about our equity and all that we’d invested? Equity is only equity if you sell X for Y. There wasn’t a chance in hell of us selling X for Y anytime soon, yet the thousands of dollars in monthly expenses would continue indefinitely – the biggest percentage being never-to-be recovered interest to those slimy, scum-sucking bastards at Grand County Bank. Realistically, how much longer could we continue to fund this financial Waterloo, all the while living like paupers in Mississippi?

Knowing that all of the pain and suffering could be over, and we could begin to live a normal life again, albeit broke, for the price of something that may never have existed or been attainable anyway, was almost too good to believe. When I explained the situation to Julie, I could hear her smile over 1000 miles of fiber optics. No question it SUCKS that it ended the way it did, BUT IT ENDED, and the peaceful feeling of realizing that it was finally over was worth more money than you can ever imagine.

To Be Continued……….

Monday, April 19, 2010

Losing Life Riverside

Part II - You Can Edit That Out, Can't You?

I called a good friend, who is an attorney, with my devastating news. Devastating on two fronts – the obvious one where I realized that all that we’d invested, both financially and emotionally, and all that we’d accomplished the last two years at The Riverside was at the stools edge, ready to topple into the bowl and be flushed down the toilet. But perhaps even more disturbing was me coming to grips with my naiveté regarding the banks total manipulation of us and our money. I trusted them implicitly, viewing them as my most essential and necessary partner in this venture. Learning that they were anything but a partner, in fact, they were an adversary, made me question my core ability to comprehend the most basic mental tasks – reasoning, deducing, anticipating, obviating, etc.

I also always thought I was a pretty good judge of people – well go right ahead and throw that notion to the four winds. To think that this bank lady that I trusted so entirely – I can’t begin to tell you the information I shared with her, not only financial but personal – was probably the most devious, evil, dishonest person I’d ever encountered. It was as if I decided that it was probably OK to try and French kiss a hooded cobra. I sat in this woman’s office and cried both in sorrow as I recounted my financial situation, and in joy, as she told me everything would be alright. Little did I know that as I was pouring out my heart & soul, her hands were under her desk sharpening a scythe that would make the Grim Reaper envious, while her gentle demeanor was masking what she was really probing for as she looked at me with her comforting eyes; namely, the best part of my fleshy personage to whack away at with that toad sticker she was honing.

My lawyer friend was fired up when I told him the situation, saying “just because the bank says it’s so doesn’t mean it’s so! Let’s put these bastards on notice that you’re not going to just sit back and let them have their way.” His thought being that in these tough financial times, and with the current national and legal mood regarding financial institutions, that there wouldn’t be a judge in the world that would let them take our hotel from us if we were current on our payments. But first and foremost, I needed to go on record with the bank and write them a letter detailing some of the issues – the fact that they lied regarding a refinancing, and another heretofore unmentioned issue of them promising, and then reneging on a line of credit.

When we were in discussions regarding our loan before purchasing the hotel, it was discussed at length and I was promised a line of operating capital, which was to be secured by the equity we had in the hotel. It was detailed in every cash flow statement, every operating statement, and explicitly discussed in my business plan; all of which were approved by the bank loan officer, the loan committee and the board of directors. I would have never considered purchasing the hotel without a line of credit. Not even close. Take that cash infusion out of my five-year projections and the venture would be dead after two years, as all of my numbers reflected.

When the time came to sit down and request the line, about 10 months into the venture, the loan officer had me give him year-to-date financials and a write up on the general state of the business, including improvements we’d made to the hotel and actual sales and expense numbers vs. budgeted numbers. I complied, and off he went to the loan committee for what I was assured was a done deal. (I wasn’t asking for much – less than 5% of the equity we had in the hotel – just enough to get through the end of the year until the busy holiday season refilled the coffers.)

When I received the news that, in fact, the line of credit was denied, I said to the banker, “We’re dead”, and he didn’t deny it. As previously mentioned, every financial blueprint I’d come up with had that line being essential to our survival; I never figured it any other way.

So a letter was written that detailed what I felt were misrepresentations by the bank that were critical in the failure of the business. My job in writing the letter was to enlighten Billy Banker regarding some of the past history, regardless of his professed lack of interest in “past history.” The letter was to be written in three parts, part one being “we were promised this”, part two was “you welched on your promises”, and part three, to be completed by my lawyer friend, was “now here’s what we’re going to do if you don’t make things right.” I had no clue as to the legal what we can and what we can’t do, so I let the lawyer have at that.

I write parts one and two, and when I get to part three, I decided to have a little fun and vent, as I knew my friend might get a kick out of it, and it might make me feel a little better. In lieu of the legalese that my friend would supply, I started part three of the letter with “So, Grand County Bank, all I can say is BIG FAT HAIRY F**K YOU! You lying, thieving pack of bastards can rot in hell, assuming hell will have you!” Then I emailed the letter to my friend.

He sent me back an edited version, changing some of my text in parts one and two, and adding the all important legal piece at the end of the letter. He used that Microsoft Word program where the deletions are shown in red with a line through them, and the additions are in blue. I cleaned it up, or so I thought, and sent it on to Billy Banker. I then went to lunch. After lunch, I decided I’d open the email I sent to the banker and re-read the letter, trying to get the feeling Billy Banker would get when he opened and read this legal tour de force.

Ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit!”, I said to myself; I inadvertently sent Billy Banker the original, the one where I end it with “So, GCB, BIG FAT HAIRY F-YOU!”

I thought I got rid of all of the colorful deletions and additions; especially that real colorful part at the end of my original letter. But nooooo; unfortunately, and again with very bad timing, there are still some applications in Microsoft Word that I’ve yet to master.

So really really fast, I sent another version – this time as clean as our bank account – to Billy Banker in an email that said “Please disregard the previous draft submission. Clean version attached.”


To be continued……

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Losing Life Riverside

Part I - Black Tuesday


It should be no revelation to those that knew us and our situation that we were struggling to make a go of it at The Riverside; we were struggling hard. I didn’t move by myself to an apartment in Mississippi for the view. Our timing flat sucked in purchasing a business that had no record of profit, in a real estate market that, arguably with maybe an idiot, is the worst real estate market since real estate markets were valued. Like my grammar and my luck, our timing couldn’t have sucked more worser.

But ‘woe is me’ aside, we did everything we could to keep the place afloat. Thank God for Ergon. And Thank God for the fine folks at Grand County Bank, who promised to work with us in re-doing our loan to make the monthly nut more affordable. In October of 2009, when we were struggling to keep current with our payments, the bank sent us an angel who promised us that if we got current on our 1st mortgage and paid up another short term loan they’d given us, our loan would be refinanced, allowing us a reduced monthly payment where we could keep our mortgage current with only my job revenue. This sweet-faced, seemingly innocent Bank VP – she could be mistaken for an ex-nun – looked us in the eye and promised us a sanctuary from the impending financial doom, provided we did our part in getting current. Our part included depleting both Julie’s and my retirement accounts, which we gladly did in an effort to satisfy the bank and pave the way for a new financial future. Even better news, as in early December, our ex-nun bank angel brought a savior to The Riverside, a savior who was brought in from the outside to help us with our situation. Julie made them coffee, showed them around the hotel, and bid them off with the feeling that our fate was in the hands of these caring, helpful souls. There was a light at the end of the financial abyss, provided we kept up our end of the obligation.

As promised, and with much effort and at the expense of vendors and creditors, we paid the bank every owed cent by years’ end; a gut-wrenching process, but what a feeling of relief when the bill was paid.

During this process, in early November I received an email from our realtor, which brought news to which I was uncertain of its affect regarding our situation – Grand County Bank had been issued a “Cease and Desist Order” from the feds. A modicum of research – Wikipedia, I think – told me that this is what the feds do before they barge into your bank unannounced and seize it at 4:30 PM on a Friday afternoon; a not-so-gentle last warning to ‘get your financial shit together’, or you’ll quickly have no financial shit to get together. This wasn’t a surprise to me, as I’d weekly seen numerous foreclosures on $600,000 weekend getaway homes, crumbling Grand County businesses and a major financial sinkhole in a 36-hole golf course/fly-fishing resort, on the banks of the Colorado River, that went totally tits-up 1/3rd of the way through the development process – all on the balance sheets of Grand County Bank.

All of a sudden it dawned on me that Grand County Bank giving us a loan might not have been the vote of confidence I was looking for in higher financial powers having an educated insight into the potential success or failure of our dream. Throughout the process of our buying The Riverside, Julie would ask me “I wish we could get a sign as to whether or not we’re doing the right thing.” I would answer, “The banks will give us that sign. If we can’t make this work, they’ll have smart people that will blow my numbers out of the sky and we won’t get a loan.” I naively relied on the bank, knowing every last one of our intimate financial details and relying upon my ‘worst-case-scenario’ 5-year pro-formas, to tell me whether or not we had a viable business venture. What a fool I was.

January came and went without news from our sweet angel from the bank regarding our refinancing. At the end of the month, I sent her a brief email saying “waiting to hear from you re our refinancing. Don’t want to get another month behind…” February came and went, with no news from the bank. I was worried, but I knew that our angel was working behind the scenes to make our path easier. But now I was coming up to being two months behind on the mortgage.

Tuesday, March 2nd, the Grand County Bank savior sent me an email. “Mr. Paradise, you are two months behind on your mortgage. Make payment immediately or we will begin foreclosure proceedings.” Wow! I’d never met or spoken with him, but Julie said he was a nice guy who said he wanted to work with us; this email was a little chilly. I called our new friend and explained that I’d held off making payments as I was waiting to hear from the bank regarding my promised refinance. If need be, I could make the January payment immediately, and the February payment by March 15th.

This is where the story turns. This is when I realized there was more at play than us being late with the mortgage. Billy the Banker told me how it was going to be:

“Mr. Paradise, first and foremost, you need to take that money and hire legal counsel. Regardless of whether or not you get current, we are going to declare you in default. You have a clause in your loan that states if there is a material change in the ownership, management or operation of the business, and you living in Mississippi with plans to close the hotel April 1st certainly qualifies as a material change in the operation of the business, the bank can declare the loan in default. We are going to exercise that right.”

“But what about our refinancing? All we want to do is hang on to the place until we can sell it.”

“Mr. Paradise, the Cease & Desist order that we are operating under doesn’t allow us to refinance your loan.”

“Wait a minute!!! Betty Banker promised us that if we got current, we would get refinanced, and you’ve been under the Cease & Desist since early November. Did she just flat lie to us to get every last penny we had before you called the loan?? She knew we couldn’t refinance yet she strung us along until we drained our retirement accounts and handed them over to you??? She seemed so sincere. How could anyone be that evil and not be doing life somewhere?”

“Mr. Paradise, that’s past history. I’m only concerned with the here and now.” (That is a direct quote.)

It was at this point that the disdain and vitriol that I usually reserve for the legal profession was now borne by those in the banking profession – particularly these lying Grand County bastards. In fact, I now needed to embrace the legal profession, as it was my only course for being able to deal with this den of thieves.

To be continued…..