2nd and 3rd attempt at moving into a house. Part I

The story below was started on February 25th and because of the chaos you will read about you will see why I had to stop in the middle and am just now finishing it. The first couple paragraphs were writen back in February, and today, I am now finishing the story and finally posting it!

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Well, after all the chaos and then a brief trip back to the United States, we returned to "Saga of renting a house in Germany Part Two." Without sounding too vain, I'm pretty sure that my experience and blog could be turned into a better movie than Julie and Julia. I will have to update more on our ongoing experiences later, but first, let me fill everyone in on the continuation of "How we didn't get to rent our house today."

As you know, we found a house in Bonn that we thought was the best "bang for the buck" and had a good layout for our family needs and was in walking distance to the train and many grocery stores. So we arrived back on February 1st to get the keys and start the move in process and there was a dispute between the divorcing couple that were the out going tenants and there were repairs to be done and stuff to still be moved out of the house. So, we signed the lease saying that they needed to have things done by the 15th of February.

On February 12th they arranged for us to come to the house to get the keys since Monday the 15th was a holiday. Our agent was told by the landlord that the repairs were almost done and that we could move stuff in. (Picking up where I left off now) I arrived on February 12th with the children in tow as Andrew was working. It was supposed to be an easy meeting, I pick up the keys, I see how the house has been repaired, we have our stuff delieverd on the 16th and we live happily ever after in more than a postage stamp of an apartment that we had been living in up to this point, right? Wrong :( So I show up, and the agents are already there. Mine greets me at the door with a glum face. Most of the stuff was moved out, but there were still a few small things remaining from the old tenants, but not much and they promised by time we moved our stuff in on the 16th (the scheduled date for the moving company to arrive). But the worse part was that NONE of the repairs that the landlord said were "almost complete" had even been STARTED! On top of that, there was a new problem. The outgoing husband tenant turned off the heat the wrong way and cause some kind of water to leak beneath the living room floor and they were going to have to rip it up to dry it out and see if there was any other damage!!!! So, the landlord wanted to have another extension and have us move in on March 1st!

Well, to be honest, I didn't really know what I should do and was just stunned. I knew our trip to the US was from the 16th to the 25th of February and that our temporary housing was going to be up on 17th. I asked our agent what we should do when we return because the only option we had if the house wasn't ready was for us to stay in a hotel on our own. He said, that is what we would have to do but maybe they would have the work done earlier and we will just check on the 25th and maybe we could move in. So he just told me to sign a piece of paper saying that we received the keys and that the new move in date was March 1st but of course no rent would be owed for February. In hinde sight of course I know that this was the wrong thing to do and you are probably reading this thinking "no, don't sign that!" But I did, because silly me for thinking that if I had another option that OUR agent that was supposed to be reprsenting our interest would have told me I had another choice.

So I got the keys and they both left and I was going to take a look around and call Andy with the news. I was of course annoyed and knew he would be too. However when I called, he was very angry and immediately the ridiculouness of the situation and my anger arose more too. He said that if he had been present then he would not have signed anything and would have said the house isn't ready after a two week extension so we are not going to take it. Which, makes sense and is what I thought too, but didn't think we had a choice. So Andrew asked me to call our agent back and ask if we were actually bound to the lease or if we could get out of it, especially now after I made the mistake of signing something. Never in my whole life had I hoped that me being a woman could be an excuse for incompetents! LOL i.e. what I signed would be considered invalid because I, the wife, signed it without checking with her husband and he was the official "client" and money maker. At this point I didn't care if I had to timewarp back to the 1950s :)

To make a long story short, and I am aware at how long this post is getting, our agent checked with his company, checked with a lawyer, and talked to the listing agent and all agreed that the situation was messed up and that we had the right to walk away and should. The relocation company even authorized us another day of looking at different houses and got Microsoft to extend our housing another week (though it would only cover us for one day after we got back from the states, but at least we had a place to keep our stuff!). We didn't want to bother with looking at more houses, there was one in the town over that I had already seen that came with a kitchen and closets and the rent was only 150 euros higher, worth it since we wouldn't need to have to buy a kitchen. It was still available.

February 16th, since Monday the 15th was a holiday, I called this morning so that I could arrange to view the house in Alfter to decide on some furniture to be kept in the house. Our agent couldn't come with us because he was scheduled to leave on holiday for Egypt that morning. But he just told me to call the listing agent, which happened to be the same woman (another reason we also thought it best to go with this house because then we could argue that the same woman and company would still be getting a comission, just on a different house.) So I called the agent and got an entirely different story than what we were told on Friday. She was insistant that we had to take the house in Bonn and could not get out of it unless we paid the commission to the listing agent on it, paid 3 months rent and gave the minimum notice of "moving out" (though we never moved in), and then if we picked a different house it would mean another listing commission on that house plus the rent and deposits. We are talking a total of 14,000 euros here (and a much higher amount in US dollars!)

So I was so upset! To top it off Andy was in some other country, I don't even remember now but I had to go to the Alfter house alone. I told the agent I still wanted to see the house and I would let other people sort the legalities out. The end of the whole mess was that we really wanted the house, we left for the US the next day, our agent was working on his vacation and found out the day we arrived in the US that some other person whom we had never spoken to told the listing company that it was a valid contract and that she would urge us to honor it. Talk about major sleam blowing out of both mine and Andrew's ears. He promptly wrote and email to the headquarters demanding an explaination which was followed by a phone call the next morning and their explaination that we were misinformed about what she said.

The whole week we were in the US we tried to have a good time, and did, and not think about the situation back in Germany as since we were not there, and our agent was on vacation until the day before we returned, we all agreed that we would just sort things out in person. In the meantime the relo company headquarters was going to monitor the repairs on the Bonn house because with the mess of everything and German law it might end up being the easiest thing to just take the house if the repairs were done by time we got back.

February 25th, we arrived back in Germany the evening of the 24th and had an appointment to meet at the Bonn house on this day. The relo headquarters said the handy man told them the repairs were being made on Monday of that week and since we were returning on Thursday it should be that we should find the house in good condition on the 25th. For the 3rd time now, we arrive at the house, ready to just accept that we will have to take this house or deal with filing lawsuits, etc. but also expecting the house to be complete. Its a bad not only is our agent there with the listing agent, but the outgoing husband tenant, and 3 different workers that have construction material spread out all over the living room!!!! You could see the frustration on our agents face and Andy and I just looked at each other trying to keep one another from just unleashing on everyone there. We toured the house so that we could at least say we saw what had been done and took mental notes so that we could give all of the reasons why we were definately NOT going to take this house no matter how many court rooms anyone threatened to take us to. We went out side for a little pow pow with our agent and we didn't even have to tell him anything, he immediately said that he would call to make reservations for us at a hotel and start negotiating with the agency on how to settle us getting out of this house. He also lit up a cigarette (which in a month and a half of working with him I had NEVER seen him smoke or ever smelled a hint of smoke on his clothing or car). He proceeded to smoke about 4 cigarettes over the course of the next 10 minutes, a clear indication that he was just as upset and frustrated as we were.

So it was decided that we would all go back to the Listing agency office and hammer out what to do about this situation. They were still arguing that we needed to pay them a commission on this house because under Germany laws for this type of work, the agents work is done the day the lease is signed (Feb 1st for us) and that the commission is owed at that time and anything else that comes up after is between the tenants and the landlord. We were there arguing for 4 hours! I'll spare you the details but the end result was we would pay 200 euros of the 3,000 euro commission on the Bonn house, and then we would rent the Alfter house and pay the full commission on that. So we walked away with a total of 4,000 in commission, which was about what we expected in the beginning of our house hunting. To solve the problem of canceling the rental agreement with the landlord, our agent just sent a legal letter, that we signed, stating the reasons we were cancelling that agreement because of his failure to get the work done and make it liveable and the agency agreed to convince him to just accept it otherwise he would be required to pay Microsoft back for all of the extra hotels we had to stay in, and would have to stay in until his house was complete. So he agreed to allow us out of the lease.

So it was decided that we would set up a meeting with the Alfter people to get that house rented. I will end here on this part of the story. It sounds like a happy ending now doesn't it. Well, not quite, you will have to read the other post to see what happened next.