Mom’s condo is sold. This was a minor miracle. It’s common practice in Florida for condo bylaws to give the board the right to approve buyers. The bylaws allow any reason for accepting or rejecting a buyer, but in practice this is about whether the buyer has enough money to pay the monthly fees. Our buyer has a bank account with $400K in it and owns an apartment building in NYC, This should have been a shoe-in. But they have very little Social Security and no pension. The buyer ended up submitting three years of income tax returns and putting two years of monthly payments in escrow. Through it all, the board made themselves unavailable, accepted only paper documentation, refused to set up meetings for delivery of documentation, and in general made the process unbelievably difficult. Fortunately, the buyer really wanted the condo. After three contract extensions, the board finally accepted the buyer. This was one of the most stressful periods I have had.

After closing, it was time to transfer the utilities, cancel Mom’s insurance, etc. The easiest way to do this is for me to be in the room with Mom. I make the call, Mom identifies herself and says I have her permission to speak for her, and I do the business. It wasn’t that easy. I spent from 9:30 to 3:30 with an hour out for Mom’s doctor appointment. In addition, the bank chose that day to flag Mom as a potential fraudulent account holder. It seems her phone number and address didn’t match information at the credit bureaus. They were threatening to close the account that would soon hold the proceeds from the condo sale. In many cases, I would say this was a wise security measure. But Mom and I opened her new account in person at a branch. We presented all manor of identification and security. In person.

The worst agency was the Palm Beach Water Authority. I called them up. They said they would call back within 30 minutes. They did call back, but it was quite a bit longer than 30 minutes. When they called back, they insisted Mom couldn’t close her account until we downloaded a picture of her driver’s license. After I did that and called back, they promised to return the call in “one hour, two minutes, and 53 seconds”. I found this an astonishingly precise estimate. Which of course they missed by a mile. Two hours and 35 minutes later, I had given up and was starting to pack my things. They finally called and told me I had to read the drivers license number as a security measure. That wasn’t very hard. What a ridiculous “security” procedure. Even the title lawyer added excitement. The condo settled at 4:30 Thursday. They didn’t wire the money to Mom until the early afternoon the next day. That added four phone calls, two Emails, and a copy of the wire transfer authorization to the day’s activities.

But it’s all done now. We’ll get the final power and water bill in a month. The homeowners insurance will send us a check for the unused insurance within a month. The appliance repair contract is cancelled. The bank decided Mom isn’t some kind of a hacker / thief. And the sale proceeds are in Mom’s bank account. I don’t want any more days like yesterday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.