A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply.

(Actual reply from FHA):

“Upon review of your letter adjoining your client’s loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803.

Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin.”

Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows:

(Actual response):

“Your letter regarding title in Case No.189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 206 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain . The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella. The good Queen Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus ‘s expedition. Now the Pope, as I’m sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana. God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it, and the FHA. I hope you find God’s original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our damn loan?”

Portland: 90 minutes to the beach and mountains, three hours to Seattle, five to Vancouver and so much to do in between.  What will you do with your day off?

Charles, Jenny, Annie, Lisa, Susan and Vicki

Emily (MacInnes) Somers created, directed and choreographed this in Portland last week for her Medline glove division as a fundraiser for breast cancer awareness. This was all her idea to help promote their new pink gloves. I don’t know how she got so many employees, doctors and patients to participate, but it started to really catch on and they all had a lot of fun doing it.

When the video gets 1 million hits, Medline will be making a huge contribution to the hospital, as well as offering free mammograms for the community. Please check it out. It’s an easy and great way to donate to a wonderful cause, and who hasn’t been touched by breast cancer?

The video was shot locally at St. Vincent Hospital.

1) The Portland Trail Blazers- who would have thought? I could attempt to weave some comparison to our real estate market but the Blazers should get to stand alone on this one. Both could hit a wall.
2) Andy Rooney does his 60 Minutes segment on Sunday on how great of an invention the umbrella is. I don’t know where my umbrella is and most Portlanders would agree.
3) For the 37th MSA market, Portland is still is getting national attention and it isn’t even the New York Times this time. Bon Appetit does Portland in the travel section on page 30 of the Feb 2008 print version. I can’t find it online. Some of the mentioned are the Ace Hotel, Lovely Hula Hands, Toro Bravo and Rocket.

On a different note, this is interesting: Win a $2.1M house in a raffle or take $1.7M cash. Unless I am unclear on the concept, you’d have to finance about 50% to pay off the IRS.

If Portland is so green, why don’t we see more hybrid cars? When I went to visit my dad in the hospital (doing fine and home now after 7hrs of elective back surgery) in Marin on Friday, I drove his Prius. At the traffic light there were two other Pri-i in front of me and one behind me- four in a row. Anybody seen that in Portland? I was surprised that our neighbors hadn’t realized that the TurnerRealtor vehicles are Lexus hybrids.

I’m showing the one LEED Certified single family residence listed in RMLS on Saturday. That should be interesting. Its unfortunate (or fortunate depending on how you look at it) that the Earth Advantage program is so busy that they can’t certify remodels, only new construction. We tried with our current project.

So there you have it. Some real estate crept in there: occupational hazard.