It's all good

"The seller said I should start showing the building again," Maria Canard told me the other day. "He doesn't understand why a contract hasn't been issued yet."

"Maria," I said, "you can do whatever you want. As far as we're concerned, we're going ahead with the contract."

It's been like this for the past 2 weeks, since Eric & Sheri and Luis & I decided to buy a vacant garage in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. Maria, our real estate agent, hounds us practically every other day: asking why are we dragging our feet, telling us that only Manhattan lawyers understand the timeliness of the deal, warning us that the building is going to be snatched up by an ever-growing list of speculators because it's underpriced. Blah blah blah.

Buying a building with your friends is not the sort of thing you wake up one morning and just do. A lot of thought and discussion and planning went into our decision. In the past year we've seen a dozen or so buildings, some of which we loved but just wouldn't work. We think we've finally found one that's good for us.

Although Luis and I are the Ricardos to Eric and Sheri's Mertzes (though neither of them will own up to being Fred), we're acutely aware that we're going into a business venture together. Our attorney, Jan, told us a sobering story about working with three couples who bought a building together and six months later were suing each other. In the past each of us has earnestly believed that friendships or relationships can survive anything, but individually we've had enough experience to know better--particularly when money is involved. The best business arrangement for us, according to our attorney, is an LLC, a limited liability company. Unlike in a corporation, an LLC protects individual members from one another in a dispute. Deciding to form an LLC was a no-brainer--coming up with a name for the LLC required lots of brain.

We brainstormed and free associated and used anagram generators, taking the initials of our first names, middle names, and last names and every combination thereof. We tried to think of things we all liked. We came up with a list of 12 names and voted on them. Initially, when our single lawyer friend Jay was part of our investor group, we'd decided on Boo Boo, Donut, & Jay LLC. With Jay now out of the picture, the revised Boo Boo Donut LLC made the top three but was outvoted by Sherkilu LLC (first two letters of each of our first names) and our collective favorite, a bastardization of the building address, which resulted from my accidentally typing it that way.

Our big question was whether we would be able to get a residential variance and, if so, how we would proceed with getting it. The building is currently zoned for manufacturing use, and New York has arcane zoning laws. If we applied for a construction loan, the bank would want to see plans for a commercial building. Most likely we wouldn't be approved, since our intended use differs from the current use. Once we get the building changed to residential use, however, we can apply for mortgages and begin renovation, using the building as our asset.

I spoke for an hour with a prominent land use attorney, who helpfully explained all the steps involved in getting the variance and forming a condo. Having developed condos himself in Park Slope, he had excellent expertise and insight into how we should go about it. Getting the variance, he said, could take 6 months to a year, and then we'll need to form a condo and begin renovation. It could be 2 years before we move into the building, but at least we know that now.

Maria supplied us with the environmental site assessment, which another speculator had commissioned a year ago. The findings were helpful to us in determining whether any hazards existed. The building was a former tool and die shop. No toxic chemicals were found in the groundwater or in the building itself. Everything looked clean.

On Thursday we got word from our attorney that the closing date had been negotiated, so we expect to go to contract shortly. We wanted one last check to make sure our investment would be sound: a structural engineering report.

I asked my friend Mike, a structural engineer, if he'd be available to inspect the building. He said he'd be happy to come out on the weekend. I told him I'd check with Maria.

"Sorry, I can't make it on the weekend, and Monday I have jury duty," Maria said. "Can your friend make it tomorrow? I have a long list of people who want to see the building, and the seller said I should start showing it again."

"Maria, I have no reason to believe that we're not buying this building," I said. I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. "If the seller wants you to show it, we can't stop you, but we will have a contract in a few days."

"I don't understand what the holdup is," she said. "The seller doesn't want to pay the carrying charges on the building."

She was testing my patience, especially since our attorney had just told us that the seller was somewhat flexible on the date and informed us of the penalties of missing the closing date. Buying a building is not like buying a pair of shoes. "Maria," I said, my voice getting louder, "we are buying this building. If someone can get an accepted offer and beat us to it, more power to them. I don't know what the seller is telling you, but our attorney is telling us everything looks good for both parties."

"OK," she said, "but I'm just telling you what my instructions are from the seller."

"Well," I said, "talk to him again, or tell him to call his attorney."

I met Maria and Mike at the building on Friday morning. It was about 10 degrees, possibly lower, outside. As I arrived, I felt good about the neighborhood, which is on the verge of becoming what Seventh Avenue was in the 1980s and Fifth Ave was in the 1990s. But what excited me most is the potential for creating our own space, built exactly the way we want it to be. We won't have to worry about landlords or tenants or upstairs neighbors. We'll be in charge of our own living situation.

At a party, Mike is the kind of guy you might never notice. He's handsome but quiet and unassuming. We met at the boxing gym we both train at and have been friends for almost 5 years. Luis and I went to his and Allison's wedding in the fall.

Mike scraped some of the brick on the first floor walls. He pointed out some trouble spots with the brick and mortar and possible water damage. Nothing serious, he said, but it depends on how much you plan to spend on repairs.

We crawled out through a second-floor window onto the first-floor roof, which had the remains of a recent snowfall. To the casual observer, everything looked normal. But Mike pointed out that the roof membrane had been incorrectly laid, inviting moisture to build up in the brick underneath. He showed me missing coping stones that allowed water to run off the roof to the stucco siding that may have been improperly sealed. The walls, he said, were full of vines that could interweave with the bricks and eventually cause them to crack. They were all things that only a professional would know.

Maria tried to get us onto the third-floor roof by calling the owner, who wasn't available. "Mike!" Maria called to us while we were on the roof. "The owner's on the phone. Do you want to ask him anything?"

Mike looked at me as if to say, Who is this woman? "I guess I could ask him about the stucco," he said, taking the phone.

"What'd he say?" I asked.

"He said the stucco is from the 90s, so it's probably OK. But I asked him why he put aluminum siding on the facade."

"I wanted to know about that, too."

"He said he did it to make it look nice." We both rolled our eyes.

"I'm still trying to figure out why the windows aren't aligned," I said. The front of the building has three windows on the second floor and two windows on the top floor that are nowhere near vertically aligned. From the street the configuration looks like the face of a jack o'lantern.

Mike spent about 2 hours looking at the building, despite not being able to view much of the structure that was covered over. In the end, though, he found nothing that would cause us to not buy the building. Most likely we'll be replacing the roof, and the vine-laden wall will probably be knocked down. "It looks like any other New York City building of its age," he said. "You won't find a lot of buildings that are well cared for. It all depends on how much you think it's going to cost to fix it."

Maria, Mike, and I walked to the subway together. As usual, Maria was incessantly chatty. "My son is 15," she said. "He barely talks to me. 'How are you, Josh?' 'Good.' That's all he says. 'Good.' It drives me nuts."

"I think most teens are like that," I said. "I remember being surly with my parents. I stopped kissing them when I was about 12."

Maria raised her hand. "Oh, thank God he still kisses us. But it's the not talking." Mike walked with his head down, not joining in the conversation. "Like Mike here. It's like talking to my son." Mike didn't even look up.

"I hate real estate agents," Mike had said to me earlier. "I deal with them all the time. They just talk out their asses."

Mike and I both knew Maria was fishing for information about Mike's findings. But as I told my mother when she faced the judge in bankruptcy court, don't give out more information than you have to.

As she left the train, Maria said, "Kieran, call me after you talk to your friend so I know whether I have to start showing the building again." At this point I wanted to find her batteries and yank them out.

"Good," I said. She turned around quickly to look me. Maybe she thought she'd heard the voice of her son.