As many of you know, we have been interested in a piece of property outside the city of Milpitas. It's an interesting property, but the seller has not been very cooperative. Even with his own agent. It's in probate. We went to the county records 'office' which is actually a large building in San Jose. We have been there twice before, looking for information on this property. Some of the records cannot be accessed without a signature form the owner. There is confusion about who is the person to sign, so we haven't made progress there.
It's an old farmhouse built before permits were required for structures. There is a cottage in addition to the house, we cannot find any record of that at all. There are three wells, the oldest is a hole 3x3x12 with water in it. There was a building survey in 1984, but that turned out to be misfiled and for the property across the street.
Yesterday we found some interesting information. We found when the mortgage was paid off by the deceased owner. It currently has a mortgage. Somebody needed money, and not for home improvement. We found where the roof was repaired after a fire 4 years ago. We found where the property was used as collateral for a loan for a bail bondsman to bail out somebody with a different surname. We found that the brother in the house was not the executor and the other brother had filed a lawsuit. The earliest thing we found was from 1983, when property line was drawn dividing the farmhouse parcel from a bigger property.
These are microfisches of hand written records and surveys. There are yellowed papers and maps in big files. Joseph was SO bored! I taught him how to use the microficshe reader. I explained to him that this was how everything was done before computers and the Internet, you just look through files and files, one at a time. He rolled his eyes. This was more tedious than Pong.
We had to leave because we were in 2 hour parking. Joseph and I had already made a trip down to put more money in the meter. Freddy Frugal had only put a quarter in and then forgot about the time, thus risking a parking ticket.
And more tedium. In getting Google Shopping Cart on my site, I had to link it to a bank account. The one I chose is a savings account at a credit union where we don't have a checking account. I had to call and get the routing number and the full 18 digit(or so) account number that would have been printed on my checks. My secret password didn't work! I got the account numbers I needed, but they had to send the paperwork to change my secret code. Those came, for Joseph's account! No wonder my secret code didn't work. So I am filing out forms to fix the problems that happened, and waiting for snail mail to do it's thing. It's not a big deal. It's a minor problem. Too much of my time is spent on stupid minor problems. Cumulatively, it becomes less minor.
Now it works, so here are the pictures. It's one of life's mysteries that will remain unsolved because we are busy with something else.
