TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
CLIENT: Look at your little funky jacket. So . . .
THERAPIST: Oh, oh.
CLIENT: Yeah. That loan is not going to work, so I’m fucked.
THERAPIST: How come?
CLIENT: With the formula that they have, we just wouldn’t get – there’s a cap. Reverse mortgages are FHA things. The FHA, in its fucking wisdom, doesn’t give a shit what your house is worth beyond $625,000. Our house is worth like $800,000 or whatever it is. They automatically just say, “That doesn’t matter. $625,000 is what your house is worth.” [00:01:02] If that’s the case and you have a mortgage of $250,000 or whatever, they’re not going to give you all the rest of that, right? There’s like a loan-to-value ratio. So really, after everything was said and done, there was going to be like $80,000. That’s great if my mom – you know what? I was thinking about this and I’m very lucky because my mom could. Other parents do. She could be like, “You know what, son, I’ve got to do this for me. I’m struggling,” because it is great for her because once you’re dead, who gives a fuck? She would have no more debt, no more nothing. She would have that rental income that would go right to her and then I just deal with it once she died; so it’s good for that, but if you have any plan to not lose your house . . . [00:02:00] I wouldn’t lose the house if we did that, but I would definitely have to sell it. It’s not awful, but it doesn’t serve what we’re trying to do. Also it would be a shitload of money. I knew there were a lot of fees; for reverse mortgages there are lots of fees. We’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars, but in my mind I’m thinking this is the price I’ll pay for this bigger change. Yeah, we’re fucked. I’m kind of numb now. This wasn’t going to change anything about this week, but on top of that, I have no doubt that this week I’m going to have maybe three checks that are going to bounce. I’m 90% certain just because I’m doing the best I can trying to pay whatever I can, but this week I think it’s all fucked. [00:03:03] (pause)
THERAPIST: Just not enough.
CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) So things are not good. Things are not good because I don’t like that feeling. I feel kind of numb now and it is definitely a situational depression and now it’s bad. I can tell. I had band practice yesterday and it was good. It was good, but I’m not motivated. I’m having trouble enjoying it. I don’t fucking know. (pause) [00:03:59]
THERAPIST: It’s hard to take in the reality of where things are. There is so much feeling. It’s almost unbearable. [ ] (inaudible at 00:04:11)
CLIENT: Yeah. (sighs) (long pause) [00:05:17]
THERAPIST: What are you feeling, Brian?
CLIENT: Not much. I’m sad, I’m angry, I feel nauseous. I have no fucking idea. It’s a joke. This is insanity. That’s the biggest thing that, I think, can drive you insane, is when you’re in a maddening situation. You’re not poor, but you’re impoverished. Go try to explain this to people who really are impoverished. I don’t know what to say about it. I really don’t because I feel like my feelings are false, in a way. [00:06:04] This is asinine. I’m worried about rubbing two nickels together. I have hundreds of dollars of equity in a house. Try to wrap your head around that. There are no words. I don’t know what to say about it. My poor mom is like, “I’m embarrassed, but there are ladies my age who get food stamps and stuff.” What the fuck are we talking about? Are you kidding me? There is nothing wrong with that, of course, but what is happening here? (pause) Part of me is like it’s time to sell the house. It’s time to sell the house. We tried. We’d love to keep it and buy another house. [00:07:03] Maybe we just put it on the market for some fucking ridiculously high price because we’re not in a rush. It is what it is anyway. We’re getting by somehow, I guess; not great, but then if someone wants to pay us $900,000 or something . . . Or I’m honestly just going to start hitting real estate offices and be like, “Listen, man. Let’s cut the crap. You need to help me find someone, and I’ll give you a cut or whatever – I don’t care. You need to help me find people.” In the old days – not old days – ten years ago or 20 years ago in Cheshire, they’re fucking dead now unfortunately, but there were these old dudes that had a lot of money. They were real estate guys and you would just go to them and be like, “Hey, buddy, listen. I’ve got my three-family. Here’s the situation.” I don’t even need all the equity. We have like $500,000 of equity in that fucking house. [00:08:05] I just want $300,000 of it. $250,000 give me $250,000. Whatever. I’m so tired of talking about this. It’s even driving me crazy, but I need to find someone like that; just be like, “Listen, man. I’m going to take that money and I’m going to immediately buy something else. Charge me high interest – whatever. This needs to somehow happen.” I don’t know. And if I can’t find anyone to do that, then I really don’t see what choice there is. I think we have to sell the house; unless I get some amazing job that pays me over $50,000 or $60,000 a year, but I can’t get a job stapling paper in an office. (long pause) [00:09:29]
THERAPIST: I wonder if there are ways you can do something like this reverse mortgage for the time being [just operating in like a bubble] (ph?). You said once last week that maybe it’s too good to be true.
CLIENT: Yeah, but I felt like I had done my research. It is good. We could still do it and it would make a difference, but in this scenario the long term is very shaky because that’s going to be a lot of money that’s owed and then it’s harder to draw again. [00:10:11] You’re drawing from it so it’s hard to go to a bank or somewhere else, so it doesn’t work. The guy was a really nice guy, but I think he should have just told me. He must have had an idea because I was very honest with him. I said, “This is what we’re hoping to do, so this is what we need.” He must have known on some level what the formulas are. I mean, come on, there’s a big difference between $80,000 or whatever it is and . . .
THERAPIST: And $580,000. You said $580,000.
CLIENT: $584,000. So I don’t know what that was about. I don’t know why he – you know. (long pause) [00:11:59]
THERAPIST: It sounds like you would essentially open up a home equity line, the original [plan] (ph?).
CLIENT: They’re both, basically, home equity lines. They’re just vastly different amounts.
THERAPIST: But with a home equity, in other words, that’s probably all you would have expected to get. It depends on who is signing it, I suppose, given that the mortgage is already $300,000. Do you know what I mean?
CLIENT: I guess.
THERAPIST: It’s just disappointing. (long pause) [00:14:35] This is a lot. (long pause) [00:15:59] It wouldn’t have been this way if your dad were here.
CLIENT: Who the fuck knows? Maybe it would have. I have no idea. (pause) This is what happens. You come from this kind of background and if your family isn’t fucking savvy – they think they’re savvy, but they’re not. They think that because they bought a house it’s – whatever. This is what happens; and then there you are. It just gets passed from generation to generation. That’s all it is. (pause) [00:17:08]
THERAPIST: Or when there’s no guidance or you’re not seeing any and then your dad dies which would have even been, in a way, a kind of role model and someone who is still keeping up with bills and furthering his own financial livelihood and there to show you the ropes. (pause) [00:18:23]
THERAPIST: I think it’s unbearable that there’s no one there to help. You’re facing the aloneness head on. It’s so much that the urge to not face it is powerful. [ ] (inaudible at 00:18:44) something even that good with this mortgage which, to me, you said it felt too good to be true. I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked out in that way because it’s not. I know it’s almost like opening a home-equity line for an elderly person who needs it to finish living, but that’s about it. [00:19:05] It could be, for a moment, it could kind of be someone – a dad or a replacement dad or a replacement mom, even, who will finally help.
CLIENT: Maybe. I don’t look at it that way, though. I’m just trying to figure shit out. (pause) Yeah, now I feel helpless, but it was a decent plan I thought. I was trying not to get too worked up about it, but I did all my research. There was nowhere that said that, generally, people will get only $70,000. [00:20:04] It said it’s your equity. It’s a way for you to t tap into the equity of your home. (chuckles) The equity of our home is not $70,000.
THERAPIST: And nowhere gave the percentages and he didn’t, is what you’re saying, which is so kind of weird for the person not to know that.
CLIENT: Maybe it was just like – who knows. He was a nice guy. Maybe he just wanted to explain in detail that it might still be worth doing or whatever. Who the fuck knows? I don’t know. It doesn’t even matter. (long pause) [00:23:29]
THERAPIST: It’s hard for you to really feel what you’re feeling. It’s like there is so much feeling – outrage, despair, sadness, shame. (long pause) [00:26:08]
CLIENT: I could move downstairs to live with my mom again to get the rent from my unit, but I can’t. [I mean I’m fucking out of a job] (ph?). Then I’ll be sort of clinically depressed. I can’t do it. I have some semblance of a refuge. I just can’t do it. I can’t do it. Dignity, to some extent. (pause) [00:26:57]
THERAPIST: And selling one of the units doesn’t feel like an option?
CLIENT: It does. It does. We could sell the first-floor unit and have more than enough; sell it for like $350,000 – whatever – and we would still have $100,000 profit, no more mortgage and two units. But again, these things are just not ideal. Then it’s a condo. Then there are condo things you have to do and you don’t know who’s going to fucking live . . . You end up not liking the owner. Do you know what I mean? That’s a really worrisome thing. You can be as picky as you want, but you don’t really know once people get in there and whatever and whatever, what their day-to-day living is like and how much noise they make. Who knows? Then you have a fucking problem on your hands. [00:28:03]
THERAPIST: I’m struck that that feels just as worrisome as not having any money. There’s something about it that I don’t quite understand, like why that is.
CLIENT: Okay, you have money now; but, for example, what can I do? We’re still in that house. It’s not like a shitload of money where I can just go and pay cash for something and that way, even if the people that buy the new place are kind of whatever – fine. I don’t live there anymore. I own it, but I don’t live there anymore. Now it’s an investment. Okay, we don’t have that, but if I have to deal with shitty neighbors who are not tenants, they own one-third of that house. That’s a major fucking . . . It’s almost worth it to me to just figure something else out. I don’t know.
THERAPIST: Because you’re worried that it would feel so intrusive?
CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. [00:29:02]
THERAPIST: Because of your mother?
CLIENT: Because of my mother?
THERAPIST: Well, your history. There’s something you’re very sensitive to about that.
CLIENT: Well, yeah. I’ve talked about it, right? Over the years I’m more sensitive to noise. I don’t like feeling encroached upon and I get that this is an unusual extent of sensitivity to that because it would be kind of nice to not have a mortgage.
THERAPIST: And have $100,000 and your mother then taken care of by the tenant. No, she’s not, but her mortgage is paid off, really, so she doesn’t owe that.
CLIENT: Her mortgage is paid and now you have two units. Then I think it would be a lot easier. Then, actually, the reverse mortgage might work because they don’t have to pay your mortgage as part of the reverse mortgage. That was the other thing with this reverse mortgage thing. We could have taken a lot, but they’re paying $290,000 or $260,000, so that’s gone. [00:30:06] That’s your mortgage that they’re paying off; so it would have been a big chunk. The problem with selling the house is it’s not just me. I’ve got to move my mom, a 70-something-year-old woman. That’s a major ordeal. If it was just me, that’s totally different. That might be what has to happen. I don’t know.
THERAPIST: It might not be the right thing for you, either. That’s what I’m trying to understand [and get some sense of what you feel] (ph?).
CLIENT: That’s the problem. That’s why this is maddening. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what the right thing is to do or not to do. Everybody has an opinion. I can go to five different real estate people and they’re all going to tell me something different. It’s just fucking, really . . . [00:31:03] (pause) And, by the way, to even do that condo thing, you need like $5,000. That takes money that we don’t have, so there you go. I would want to fix it up a little bit. I want to get good money for that condo. I don’t want to sell it just as is. I want to do a little bit of work on it. To do that, you’re talking money because that means those tenants have to leave so you can do all that work so you can make it nice, ready to go, looked at, painted a certain way. I’d really want to doll it up a little bit to get good money for it.
THERAPIST: You want it but you might not be able to. Do you know what I mean? You say that then as if you shouldn’t do it unless you can doll it up. You can sell it as is.
CLIENT: Yeah, I could. [00:32:00]
THERAPIST: You may decide you don’t want to, but that is an option. Of course it would be better if you had a lot of money to doll it up first, but if there isn’t I’m sort of trying to think out what the options are.
CLIENT: I guess what I’m saying, though, is that okay, if that’s the case, you still need $5,000 or $7,000 to do all the lawyer paperwork condo-izing – whatever the fuck.
THERAPIST: In which case then selling the whole thing maybe makes more sense. You can buy a two-family for less money; have some cash.
CLIENT: The problem with all that is . . . Yeah, no, you’re right.
THERAPIST: What?
CLIENT: What’s maddening is that it’s just maddening to not hold onto what we have and buy something else. That’s the goal here. [00:33:01] It seems insane to me that there’s no possibility whatever in doing that. That’s not possible. There are too many people in real estate who would see the value in what I’m trying to do, so there’s got to be someone that would like to make money, too, to help me do that. It’s money. I get it. It’s not a charity, but it doesn’t make sense. Someone would like to make money by giving me money to invest in something that’s clearly going to make money. It’s fucking Cheshire. I’m not buying from Timbuktu. Do you know what I mean? If anything goes wrong, they know that there’s more than enough for them to recoup what they’ve given me.
THERAPIST: So this is where you’re talking about finding someone with a lot of money?
CLIENT: It’s a hard-money loan. It’s called a hard-money loan or cross-collateralization. There’s either got to be some small financial institution that does that shit or I’ve just got to hit the pavement and find people and just present to people that look, man, this is the situation. [00:34:10] I’m not trying to be a real estate mogul, but I want to have more than three or four properties in the next five to eight years. It’s not rocket science. I have tons of equity. It could easily be done. I just need someone to . . . Is it a risk? I guess it is, but not really.
THERAPIST: It’s riskier for them than another investment, right, like if they went and bought the property themselves?
CLIENT: It is and it isn’t. What’s the risk really? They’re charging a higher interest rate. Those loans charge like seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve percent interest. They’re not giving me even close to the maximum equity in my home. I’m going to buy something in Cheshire. [00:35:04] Do you know what I mean?
THERAPIST: It’s only if you were to default on your loan to them, then they have to pay legal fees to recoup the money, to repossess the house. It’s just a hassle for them.
CLIENT: Yeah, okay.
THERAPIST: I’m just saying that’s how they would look at it.
CLIENT: I guess, but my view is that these are people that kind of do that shit anyway. It wouldn’t be up for someone who has never given money. This is what they do, kind of.
THERAPIST: So that’s a particular person.
CLIENT: Exactly.
THERAPIST: (laughs) No, I don’t know those kinds of people.
CLIENT: No, they’re out there. They’re just a lot harder to find. These are real estate terms that even banks used to do it. It’s almost like a business proposition. You’re almost doing a business proposal. [00:36:00] I’ve done all my numbers. Yes, of course, it’s a risk, but it’s a very calculated minimal risk to the person who is putting up the money. I don’t know. If I can’t find anyone like that, I think then we have to sell. But again, I don’t know how that would happen. We would have to borrow money from my uncle again and I can’t take that anymore.
THERAPIST: It sounds like this feels worth inquiring about.
CLIENT: Yeah, because it seems impossible to me that it would be impossible. (laughs) That doesn’t make sense. I’ve known – not me personally – but I’ve known that in the last 20 years there are lots of people in Cheshire who that’s exactly what they did. [00:37:01] There were just people that they would go to who were just fucking rich; and they were rich in real estate specifically. And there is something slightly altruistic about it. There are people who are like, “Yes, I’m going to make money, but I get what you’re saying. I’m a business guy. I get what you’re saying. It is fucking ridiculous that you can’t tap into your own fucking money. So yeah, I’m not going to give you $300,000. Here’s $200,000 and I’m going to charge you 14% interests.” Everybody wins. (chuckles) I don’t think it’s impossible at all. I think it’s harder to get done. I don’t know. Who the fuck knows?
THERAPIST: You sound like you know more about it than I do.
CLIENT: I do because I know it’s a little less common than it used to be, but then again, what do I know? Maybe it isn’t. Now financially things are so tough that people can’t get money from the banks. Even when they have jobs they can’t get money from the banks. [00:38:05] It’s almost like things are going cyclically – do you know what I mean?
THERAPIST: Yes, maybe it’s on the horizon.
CLIENT: Yeah, so who knows? And again, business is business. Business people aren’t fucking stupid. They have a lot of money and they see what Cheshire, Hamden, Shrewsbury – they know what these places and what the market is. This kid wants to take $290,000 from his hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity and (chuckles) buy a nice one-bedroom condo in Cheshire. (laughs) If worse comes to worse, I’m going to sell it in eight months for $310,000. It just seems so ridiculously simple. Nothing is guaranteed, but there is risk and then there is common sense calculated risk based on years and years and years of living somewhere and seeing just what the facts are. [00:39:06]
THERAPIST: In the storyline about how hard it is for people to get mortgages, to get home-equity loans or if they get it, it’s much less than they thought it was going to be. That seems the norm in everything I hear about, but this is a different avenue that isn’t in the banking world, where everything is tight. They’re not giving loans to people who have a million dollars right now, that kind of thing. I hear that all the time.
CLIENT: No, this is just private; people who see opportunity.
THERAPIST: Where there’s something – a heart kind of connection to it.
CLIENT: A little bit, more of a human connection. I’m sure they’re not just going to give it to me and that might be. They might be like, “You’ve never done anything like this before. Usually we just deal with people who have a history of real estate.” In that case, I would have to bring my uncle into it. I would have to be, “My uncle is going to be supervising;” some people to vouch for me or whatever. [00:40:08] (pause)
THERAPIST: I’m sorry this is such a disappointment . . .
CLIENT: Thanks.
THERAPIST: . . . from what you were hoping for. (pause)
CLIENT: Yeah, that’s what you do. It’s very natural. You want to be hopeful.
THERAPIST: Of course.
CLIENT: What are you going to do? (pause) [00:40:59] And it was 50% accurate. (chuckles) We could do it and it would make big changes. Of course, when you don’t have any more mortgage payments and you have $70,000. That’s still pretty good. It just fucks up any plans to really be able to buy another property. I did think about calling Jim back and saying, “If we did this, how does that affect me doing what I’m saying now to you?”
THERAPIST: With a private investor?
CLIENT: A private investor or even a bank, having a different home equity loan or whatever. How would it affect that? I don’t know.
THERAPIST: Right, whether the debt is going to go in your name.
CLIENT: Something like that. I would just be curious because maybe it’s still worth it. It’s just a shitload of fees for not that much money, but on the other hand, that’s $20,000 – more than that. [00:42:08] It’s $22,000 of rental income that no longer is going to the mortgage. It’s going into your pocket. From that you only have to pay $8,000 or maybe $10,000 of property taxes and shit. It’s nothing to sneeze at on top of the equity line they’re giving you.
THERAPIST: Again it sounds like you’re saying as long as there’s another line of income from an investment . . .
CLIENT: Exactly.
THERAPIST: In other words, it’s just building your debt.
CLIENT: Exactly. Of course. It’s worth it for my mom, but not for what I’m trying to do; and my mom doesn’t want to do that. I’m wondering if there is a way that it would not affect my ability to try to draw more on the equity that’s there or from a separate source.
THERAPIST: Next time? I’ll see you tomorrow.
CLIENT: Thanks, Claire.
THERAPIST: 10:00?
CLIENT: Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.
END TRANSCRIPT
