Chapter 4

After breakfast, the breakfast club’s ladies cleaned up the kitchen and started making an urn of fresh coffee. Muffins and pastries appeared on the sideboard. The folders containing the Offer Letters that Madge and I had prepared were on the table; we had them sorted alphabetically by street name to simplify today’s effort. Shane was due here in ten minutes, so there was that final rush to make sure everything was ready for his arrival. Vert and Relpt said they would see us later and left to join Simon.

After exchanging greetings with Shane, the five of us gathered around the dining room table to sign the papers with Shane at the head of the table. Shane removed the Bill of Sale paperwork he had prepared from his briefcase. I extended my hand, so he gave the paperwork to me. Phyllis was to be JAMP Enterprises’ representative and Alicia was to be JAMP Leasing’s representative.

I had the job of finding the property folder that contained the Offer Letter for the property that matched the address on Shane’s Bill of Sale. When I found the right folder, I would put the Bill of Sale in the folder and pass it to Phyllis.

Phyllis would sign the Offer Letter and its Bill of Sale as the seller, put the documents back in the folder, and pass it to Alicia.

Alicia would sign the Offer Letter and Bill of Sale as the buyer, put the documents back in the folder, and pass it to Shane.

Shane notarized the signatures, put the documents back in the folder, and passed it to Madge.

Madge would make a copy of the Bill of Sale and staple it to a copy of the Offer Letter. She then put the original Bill of Sale in a large envelope, and then gave the folder with the copies to me to file in her filing cabinet. When we finished, she would store the envelop in one of her file cabinets until tomorrow.

Our assembly line worked smoothly. We were finished in two hours. Tomorrow, Madge, Phyllis, and Alicia would take the Bills of Sale to the county office and have the ownership of JAMP Enterprises’ properties transferred to JAMP Leasing.

However, there was one minor hiccup in our effort. The purchase of some of the properties that JAMP Enterprises was buying had not completed escrow. JAMP Enterprises was only transferring ownership of the properties that had been registered in their name. We would have to repeat our signing session after the remaining properties had completed escrow and been registered in JAMP Enterprises’ name. There was no need to complete the transfer immediately for it would be a couple of years before we leased the first property, so we scheduled it as a low priority task.

Shane stayed for lunch, and we talked about a variety of non-business activities. It was an enjoyable meal. After Shane left and the dishes had been done, Madge, Phyllis, Alicia, and I had another signing session to sign the Offer Letters for selling the properties that Alicia and I had bought to JAMP Leasing.

All of the properties we purchased had completed escrow and had been registered in our names. So we would not need a second signing session to sell our properties to JAMP Leasing. JAMP Leasing would make the future offers on any additional properties we wanted our LLC to buy.

“The process for the signing session was similar to the one we conducted with Shane. Phyllis represented JAMP Leasing as the buyer, and Alicia and I were the sellers. Madge was the agent for both the sellers and the buyers. The session ended with copies of the Offer Letters being filed in Madge’s filing cabinet and the originals sealed in another large envelope, which was temporarily stored in the filing cabinet with the other envelop.

Tomorrow, after Madge, Phyllis, and Alicia finished registering the first envelop of properties in JAMP Leasing’s name at the county office, they would deliver the second envelope of signed Offer Letters to Madge’s Title Company.

We spent the rest of the day in a planning session for what we would be doing between now and when we had to start the preparation effort for the next meeting. We added several subtasks to our schedule.

During the meeting, the phone rang and Phyllis answered it. It was Staples informing us that the order of office supplies we placed would be delivered between nine and eleven tomorrow morning. Since my wives would be busy, I would stay at the farm to sign for the order.

We had added a subtask to the schedule for setting up Building 3 as our temporary office. We would have to decide how long we would be using Building 3 as our office, which would then determine how much effort and money we should invest in converting it into an acceptable office. We deferred addressing that decision so we wouldn’t interfere with the discussion of our current topics.

I suspected that once we had an office building for JAMP Enterprises, we would be using Building 3 as our satellite office and would only go to the JAMP Enterprises headquarters building when a face-to-face meeting was necessary. That meant an extensive remodel of Building 3 would be required. I remembered a brief comment about the possibility of building a new satellite office building instead of doing a remodel.

After breakfast and the cleanup of the kitchen were completed the following morning, Madge, Alicia, and Phyllis left to go to the county seat in Everett. I decided to spend some time assessing what was needed to convert Building 3 into an office. I grabbed a notebook, pen, and the keys to the outbuildings.

My first stop was at the gate. I told the gate guards that I was expecting a Staples’ delivery truck this morning, and asked them to let it in and guide it to Building 3 when it arrived. I clarified which of the outbuildings was Building 3, and they said they would take care of it.

When I entered Building 3, I stood in the middle of the floor, and slowly turned in a circle. As I turned, I took a good look at the building’s ceiling, walls, and floor. I then walked over to one of the room’s corners that was near the door. As I stood there, looking at the interior of the building. I noted that there was no sheet rock on the walls or ceiling and there was no insulation, either. I observed a circuit breaker box, electrical outlets, a light switch, and ceiling lights. Romex runs in the walls connected the outlet boxes and light switch to the circuit breaker box. I noted the windows could not be opened, and the door was sheathed with sheet metal. The door was probably the only thing that didn’t need to be upgraded, but it would need to be painted.

I then created a mental image of what this room might look like after it was converted to a satellite office. As I made my inspection, I wrote the changes needed in my notebook. The main things on my list included adding a break area, a utility room, a bathroom, a heating/air conditioning system, and new runs to the farm’s existing gas, electrical, water, and sewage lines. I also noted that the building needed a higher capacity electrical service, wiring for multiple internet connections, a higher amperage load center, and plumbing changes for water and waste. The building’s interior needed more electrical outlets, better lighting, new operable windows, insulation, sheet rock, suitable flooring, and painting.

If we got Edgar started now, the work could probably be completed within ten weeks; once a permit was issued. The question in my mind was whether we would be happy with a remodeled Building 3, or should we just do the minimum necessary and replace Building 3 with a new building that was designed for use as our satellite office. I was leaning toward minimal changes and a new building, but would plan a remodel.

While I was making a quick sketch of where I would place the break room, utility room, and restroom, I heard a truck stop outside, and a knock on the door. It was one of the gate guards and the Staples’ delivery truck. I thanked the gate guard and went outside to greet the truck’s delivery crew.

The driver half seriously asked, “What is this place, another Area 51?”

I laughed and said, “Yeah, it probably looks that way. We are between meetings right now, but my farm is where the world’s delegates are meeting to discuss the Alliance Agreement with the Empire. The two shuttles belong to the Altairian military. They are stationed here to protect my wives, myself and our farm.”

The driver and his helper were surprised by my answer.

The driver’s helper said, “I saw a number of our army troops also. It seemed to me to be close to a full company. Is there an active threat against your farm?”

“No, it is more of a potential threat from the dissidents who have been in the area for the past few months. So far, all they have done is hold protests, and threatened a few of the delegates who chose to stay and eat at our local hotels and restaurants. Although, there were a few minor incidents in Snohomish between the dissidents and a couple of delegates.”

The driver turned the truck around and backed it up to the building’s door. His helper knocked the hinge pins out of the door’s hinges, and moved the door out of their way.

The driver asked, “Where do you want everything?”

I said, “Put the supply and filing cabinets, computer desks, work tables, and chairs against the walls, and stack the rest in the center of the floor.”

I gave the driver a tip, while his helper rehung the door. When they were ready to leave, I walked them out to the gate, and they left heading to their next delivery. The day was rather cold, so I headed to the house for hot coffee to warm me up. I would wait until my wives returned before trying to arrange the office furniture, so they could tell me where they wanted everything positioned. I’d ask Paul or Simon for a couple of their troops for muscle power, if I needed some assistance.

Once I finished warming up, I joined Simon, Paul, and Aaron to help them with monitoring Camber’s removal of the tables and chairs from the tents. It was us watching Camber’s people while chatting with each other, and on a few occasions, of Paul and Simon consulted with Camber’s people.

Alicia has the narrative...

Marge, Phyllis, and I arrived in Everett and stopped at a coffee shop before proceeding to the county seat’s office. Madge was well known in the Recording Division of the County Assessor Office. The office wasn’t very busy, so Madge asked to speak to Melva Yellen, who she knew was very knowledgeable concerning the legalities of selling and buying property.

After greeting each other, Melva asked, “What can we do for you this morning, Madge?”

Madge said, “We are here to register the sale of several properties. It will probably take a couple of hours to do all of the properties, so can we get together in a meeting room where we can be comfortable? You may also want someone to help you with the registration.”

Melva gave Madge a quizzical look and said, “If it is going to take that long, a meeting room and some help may be a good idea. Come with me.”

Melva led us to a small meeting room. When we were comfortable, Melva said, “I heard that you are one of those Facilitators, Madge, and now you come in here to register a lot of properties. I can sense a story behind this, so, give it up, girl.”

“Okay. Meet Alicia and Phyllis, two of my fellow Facilitators. The three of us and the fourth Facilitator became aware of a business opportunity. So, the four of us formed an LLC. The LLC bought some of the available property near where we live. In fact, we bought all of the property we could find that met our criteria. These property sales were registered under our LLCs name, and our LLC planned to lease the properties for development by others.

“Then our situation changed. Our LLC created a subsidiary LLC to handle the leases. Our lawyer advised our LLC to sell the properties to our subsidiary LLC for legal purposes. Since it is actually a sale of property from one part of a business to another part of the same business, our lawyer said we didn’t have to go through a Title Company and could complete the sales using Bills of Sale.

“So here we are, Melva, with an envelope full of Bills of Sale.”

Madge took the envelope from her briefcase and emptied the Bills of Sale onto the table.

Melva said, “You’re right, I’ll need some help to get this many sales registered within a reasonable time. Give me a few minutes to find a few helpers.”

The registration process was completed shortly before noon. Madge had told us that a check had to accompany each property’s registration paperwork until each registration process was complete. So, I had to write a check for the registration fee of each property that we were registering, and it was stapled to the paperwork. It was a good thing Madge had me bring a couple of new books of checks in addition to my existing check book.

Madge invited Melva and her helpers to have lunch with us. We had a long lunch, and afterward Melva and her helpers returned to work. Madge, Phyllis, and I left to go to Madge’s Title Company.

When we walked through the doors of the Trapp Title Insurance Company, Madge guided us to the receptionist’s counter.

The receptionist, Colette Pulman, greeted Madge with, “Good afternoon, Madge. What can we do for you today?”

“I have a stack of Offer Letters to be processed by your people, Colette. Is one of your Title Insurance Officers available?”

“Let me check, I think Earle Clay is available.”

Colette called Earle, and a few minutes later, Madge saw him enter the reception area and start walking toward her. She walked to meet him, and we followed.

After Madge introduced Phyllis and me to Earle, she explained why we were there.

Earle said, “Let’s go to one of our meeting rooms to talk.”

Once we were seated, Madge removed the signed Offer Letters from the envelope, and she slid them across the table to Earle.

Madge said, “My sellers, Alicia Creswell and Jebidiah Connor, purchased these properties within the past three months and most of the sales were done through Trapp.

“I know Trapp will have to investigate the titles of the properties purchased through title companies other than Trapp to ensure they are clear of encumbrances, but it should be relatively easy and quick for Trapp to update their current title searches on the properties my clients bought through Trapp. My clients would like to have a rough estimate for how long it will take to record ownership of the properties in the buyer’s name.”

“As you know, Madge, I will need to talk with the seller and buyer before I can come up with a reasonably accurate estimate of the time we will need to process these Offer Letters.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, Earle. I introduced Alicia and Phyllis using the last name of Connor, which they are using for personal reasons. Their legal names are Alicia and Phyllis Creswell. If you check, you will find that Alicia Creswell is one of the sellers on the Offer Letters and Phyllis Creswell represents the buyer, JAMP Leasing.”

Earle glance at Alicia and Phyllis and saw them nodding their heads, so he then said, “In that case, I would say you can plan on Trapp requiring an average of at least two weeks to process each of the Offer Letters before we can be ready for your clients to sign the paperwork. Of course we will be processing multiple Offer Letters at the same time, so my best guess is Trapp will be ready to have your clients sign the paperwork of the properties we previously handled within two months, but if we are overwhelmed with work it may take us slightly longer. The remaining properties will require an additional month, possibly two. Will three to four months be acceptable?”

Alicia and Phyllis nodded Yes, so Madge said, “I don’t think my clients will have a problem with that time frame, Earle.

“Thank you for your time, Earle, and we will head home now so you can start processing those Offer Letters.”

Earle said, “And thank you for having Trapp handle the sale of the properties.”

Earle escorted Madge, Phyllis, and me back to the reception area and we exchanged our final goodbyes, then we left to return home. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived.

I’d lost count of the number of Offer Letters we prepared, but there were at least twenty, and the average price was close to five hundred thousand dollars each. Mage told us that realtor fees here in Washington were five point three percent, which is split between the seller and buyer’s agents. For these sales, Madge represented both the seller and buyer. Since she wouldn’t have to split the realtor fees, Madge would have several rather large pay days totaling over five hundred thousand dollars. As the sellers, Jeb and I would have even larger paydays, which should total close to nine million dollars. Of course, we also had to provide JAMP Leasing with that amount of money so they could buy the properties. We would also have to document the exchange of funds between us and JAMP Leasing according to Shane’s instructions.

Jeb has the narrative...

My wives arrived home a little after 3:30 PM. Alicia went looking for me and found me in the meeting tent with our helpers: Paul, Simon, Aaron, Vert, and Relpt. She told me that she, Madge, and Phyllis wanted to go over a few things with me. We said goodbye to our helpers and walked to the house. Madge and Phyllis were waiting for us at the dining room table. We got some coffee and joined them.

Madge jumped in and said, “Everything went smoothly at the Recording Division. We should be receiving the Titles to that batch of properties within ten days. I asked our Title Insurance Agent for an estimate of when the processing of all of our properties that are being handled by Trapp would be finished and he said it could take as long as four months.”

I said, “That is a bit longer than I expected, Madge, but there’s really no rush. It will be two years or more before we lease our first property.

“While I was waiting for our Staples order to be delivered, I made a list of what I think needs to be done to turn Building 3 into a temporary office. I’ll come back to that in a few minutes.

“Anyway, I had just finished a sketch of the layout I envisioned when the Staples’ delivery truck arrived and dropped off our order. I had them put everything in Building 3, and we can move the stuff around to where you want things. I don’t know if we need them, but I noticed we didn’t get any cubicle dividers.”

Phyllis said, “Personally, I don’t like dividers. By the time you add a desk, chair, worktable, and filing cabinet, there is hardly any room to move around.”

Madge said, “I agree. I’ll take a framed-in office over a cubicle any day. When should we set up the office?”

Phyllis said, “Tomorrow morning sounds good to me.”

I said, “Then we’ll start after breakfast.”

Everyone agreed, so I continued, “In addition to setting up the office, we need to find an office building for JAMP Enterprises and its subsidiaries. Hopefully, we can do that sometime this week. The question is, should we lease or buy the building?

“There is one additional thing that I was thinking about this morning. Once our headquarters building is in operation, we will probably not commute to the office every day. Instead, we will probably want to work from a satellite office here on the farm. So the main question about remodeling Building 3 is, should we remodel it or should we replace it with a new building designed and built to be a small satellite office?”

Alicia asked, “What do you see as the advantages of remodel versus replacement?”

I said, “Building 3 was intended for use as a storage building. Its dimensions limit us in what we can do. It does not have a bathroom, individual offices, heating and air conditioning, and the amenities that I would like in a small office building. Therefore a remodel is likely to be expensive. If we demo Building 3 and replace it with a small office building, we can have large offices, a large break area, a couple of bathrooms, and storage space. We can add a utility room for phone, internet, and a server with a backup system. We could use the server equipment currently stored in Building 3, but that would be major overkill, so I think that equipment should be installed in our headquarters building.

“I don’t think we would be happy with a remodeled Building 3 for long-term use as a satellite office. It just isn’t large enough for what I think we want.”

Alicia said, “My instincts say you’re right, Jeb. However, I have a hard time picturing myself helping to manage JAMP Enterprises. Somehow, it seems like I would only be busy a couple of hours a day, and a remodeled Building 3 might be adequate for that. However, I suspect we will busy for more than a couple of hours a day, and I doubt I would be happy working in a remodeled Building 3 for more than one or two hours a day.