Phillip looked around, as if the answer was going to appear in the marble foyer, before saying, “Okay. The living room and the den.”
“Great,” I said, gesturing toward the movers. “Lead the way.”
Phillip hovered next to me, watching the men dismantle each room. Leather couches, antique armoires, end tables, Tiffany table lamps, artwork, expensive rugs. All of it got wrapped and carefully loaded onto the truck.
“Where are you taking it?” he asked me.
“I’ve rented a warehouse. We’ll store it there, and after everything’s finalized, we can move it back.”
“Do you need money to cover your expenses?” he asked. “Movers, warehouses…”
“Nope. It’s all covered by your retainer.”
I waved as I drove down the long driveway, the moving van close behind me with a large number of Phillip’s most valuable antiques.
Of course, I sold them.
***
I once conned a geologist （$25,000 plus a Fender Stratocaster） who told me the tectonic plates beneath us are always shifting. Always moving, even if we never felt them.
I’d thought a lot about that over the years. The idea that we were out there, living our lives, thinking only about the next thing we needed to do, never noticing the incremental shift that was happening below. That one day, we’d look up and realize everything had changed.
Taking Celia’s lake house shifted things for me. I began waking up in the middle of the night, not thinking about Phillip or the job I was in the middle of working, but of Ron. Memories of my house on Canyon Drive. My mother’s laughter. I began dreaming of possibilities I thought were long gone, back now with a fresh coat of potential. What I was doing here, I could do again for myself. For my mother.
I’d need a different approach for Ron, though. There was no way I could float into Los Angeles as a life coach and convince him to sell me Canyon Drive for $20,000. He had decades of experience buying and selling real estate, with hundreds of transactions behind him. I was going to have to level up.
My research started out as a jumble of ideas scribbled into my notebook. I began by exploring the circumstances under which a property might not be sold at market value. If the seller wasn’t going to deliberately underprice it as Phillip was, you’d have to make them believe the property was worth less, through inspection reports outlining significant damage and appraisers willing to corroborate.
The universe will always give you what you need. Phillip became my case study. How to lay the groundwork. Figure out what worked, and if there were mistakes to be made, I would make them here. The other part of it—the life coaching—was just making sure I got paid for my time.
***
Phillip and I stood side by side in front of a vision board I’d created, a mishmash of various words, inspirational quotes, and images. I’d gotten the idea off Pinterest, and Phillip seemed to think it was sufficiently new age to be legitimate.
“You’re going to need to get an inspection and appraisal for the lake house,” I said.
Phillip turned to face me. “Won’t that defeat the purpose of selling under market value?”
I shook my head. “Look, a judge is going to want to see them. Your attorneys will too. I can make it so that the reports say what we need them to say. In the meantime”—I handed Phillip the contract with the $20,000 purchase price—“sign and initial where I’ve indicated. Leave the date blank for now.”
Phillip scanned the document I’d downloaded from a do-it-yourself real estate website. “It’s boilerplate,” I said. “As an extra layer, I listed my company as the buyer, and I’ll be waiving most of the contingencies. When I’m done with the inspection report, it’ll lower the value where we need it.”