Spinning the Wheel - The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House - page 49

Soon I could hear him speaking rat-a-tat Spanish with an unknown party on what I as-
sumed was his cellphone. The conversation went on for some time. Though I could make
out the odd word here and there, in the end I had no idea what he was saying. And of course
he knew that. After a while he came back on the line.
“I have extraordinarily good news for you. They are willing to meet you half way at
$265,000, because they like you. And your tall friend.”
“Michael.”
“Of course. Michael.”
I sighed, somewhat dramatically. “I'll need to get back to you.”
I outlined the offer to Michael, who suggested I counter at $250,000 (please note that
he wasn't the one doing the haggling here).
I floated the offer to Armando, who said he'd be happy to speak to the owners. A half
hour later he came back with a counter-counter of $255,000.
“I'm sorry to crash your price ceiling,” he said, “but they're old, and $5,000 means a
lot to them.”
Unwilling to sacrifice our dream house for $5,000, I wearily acquiesced.
“Besides,” Armando concluded in his most confidential tone, “they really don't want
to live with my brother anymore.”
This, finally, was something I could relate to. I had seen his brother's apartment.
A virtual blizzard of phone calls, faxes and emails followed. In rapid succession we
learned a number of fascinating and bewildering facts about the house we had just commit-
ted ourselves to buying: it had no official street address; the current owners, both retired
seniors, were exempt from property tax and therefore the property had never been assessed
by the local tax office; it was extremely tough to find a good property manager, good gen-
eral contractor, good you-name-it, on Vieques.
But we pushed on.
At the recommendation of someone from Michael's gym, who had recently bought a
property on Vieques (more about that later), we applied for a loan through Scotia Bank.
It went through.
We located a property manager, also through Michael's gym acquaintance.
We set our closing for the first Monday in December, and booked a flight to San Juan
for the Saturday before.
“Looks like we're buying a house in the tropics!” I exclaimed that night before dinner,
my voice squeaky-high.
“Sure does,” said Michael, absently drumming his fingers on the table.
There was no turning back now.