The Return Home, The Bid, and Lessons Learned.

Soon after returning home, we called our Realtor to let her know how excited about the place we were. We'd spent a large portion of the return trip discussing the potential and our plans for the Sea Spray, and we were anxious to get the wheels turning. However, before we could even begin with that, we still needed that ROUS, the financials. Mabel said she was on it, and would get back with us soon. A few days later, after no word, we called her again. She told us that she was leaving on vacation in couple of days, but should have something before then. Finally, one day before she left, we received an email of sorts, containing some fairly hard to decipher tax forms from the last few years, along with an explanation that it was all they could find, and was likely all that we would ever find. Without any occupancy data, and with just the tax forms, it was worse than we'd feared. We had pretty firm assurances that they were making significantly more than filed for, and in fact, from what I could figure, the only income reported was what had been run on credit cards, no cash or check income. Either way, it did us no good. If we were going to be able to get a loan for the place, it would have to be for a good chunk less than they were asking. We still thought it was a possibility though, as we were pretty naive about certain things then, and called her to tell her we wanted to bid. Mabel convinced us to wait until she returned from her vacation; the place had been on the market for over a year, and no one was buying now anyway. We (somewhat grudgingly) agreed to wait.

In the meantime, I was selected for a hard fought promotion at work, and left for a training weekend and classes in Salt Lake City, UT. The whole time I was there, my mornings were spent in conferences and classes, and my evenings were spent obsessing over our bid and our future.

A week later, when Mabel returned from her vacation, we placed a bid, at a significantly lower price than they were asking, but one that we felt was fair based off of the income that had been provided. We heard nothing back from our Realtor, and when we called to check up on it a couple of days later, she said that she still hadn't written the bid up and delivered it, she needed to talk to the listing Realtor and get some forms, but she'd get on it that night. By this point we were pretty fed up with delays, but we sat waiting, hoping desperately that she would get back to us.

The next day, we got a call from Mabel. That morning, when she was calling the listing agent to ask her what other papers were needed, the listing agent informed her that the Sea Spray Motel had received a bid, and the owners accepted. Our bid had never even been written up or presented. We were utterly crushed.

We had spent months at this point working towards the Sea Spray, fighting with Realtors and curmudgeonly caretakers, our hopes always lifted by the vision we were creating for the future,and that short phone conversation undid all of it.




This was our first real brush with finding a motel, and we learned a LOT from it, all of which has left us in good stead, but they were lessons that hit below the belt a lot of the time.

What we learned from the Sea Spray Motel Attempt:

1 - You must always be happy with your Realtor, and always be 100% honest with them, as they should be with you. Our current Realtor here in Pocatello, Jared Wilks (one of the few people I'll use the real name for here, and solely because he's been such a true help that he deserves to be recognised) told us that when we first contacted him about our worries with Mabel. He explained that his company prided themselves on being the easiest to fire Realtors around, because they plan to be so good that you wont need to, but also because you should do it if needed. We didn't, and we regret that more than anything. From the first contact with Mabel, we sensed that she wasn't thrilled about working with us, and that she may not know everything she needed for a commercial transaction like the motel. That should have been enough of a sign.

2. Getting answers and responses should be easy and prompt. It sometimes took us days to get an answer to a simple question, if we ever had it answered. We should have immediately smelled ROUS in the room when they said they couldn't find the occupancy data. Mabel was also notoriously hard to get ahold of in fact, there were times we had to actually contact the owners and the listing agents instead. That shouldn't have ever happened.

3. Never dive without all of the answers. We should never have visited the property without the numbers. That was a big, dumb mistake, and should have been obvious.

4. Use your resources. Here in Pocatello, we have a few select individuals who are smart, successful, friendly, and willing to help, amongst them, Jared, and we underutilized them all.

5. Be cautious and certain, but jump as soon as you are certain. We had been told by Mabel that someone else was looking at the property too, but she followed it with a disclaimer that the listing agent claimed that all of the time, so we kind of ignored the possibility. We'll kick ourselves for not being pushy in regards to the bid and the time frame of it for the rest of our lives. Would it have made a difference? Probably not, but who knows?

6. Don't assume that you can create something from nothing. For every ROUS we saw in the motel, we quickly rationalized it away with a brilliant plan for overcoming it. I think that if we'd really sat down and written out all of the things we would have needed to do to make it what we were picturing, we would have quickly become overwhelmed.

7. Never EVER fall in love with a place before the last paper is signed and it's official. Nearly all of these problems we hit could have been avoided or easily overcome if we'd followed this cardinal rule. We were in love with this place before we'd clicked through all of the photos on the initial listing view. Hell, we are still in love with the place now, after we've sat and re-evaluated all of the negatives there were, and what a load of work it would have been. There's nothing wrong with being in love with a place.... eventually, but it's got to be worth it, and it's got to be yours to love. Otherwise it's just too difficult when you realize you fell in love with what it could be, and that you'll never have the chance to make it that.

8. If you do make mistakes, learn from them. This is one we have taken to heart like nothing else. We still make a lot of mistakes in our quest, but for every one, afterwards we sit and discuss where the misstep was, whether it was avoidable, and what we'll do next time. Eventually, we will get it all right, all at the same time, and it will be glorious, my friends!

Grayland/Westport, WA - early August

The Docks in Westport

After touring the Sea Spray Motel, we wandered around Grayland a bit, visiting the overflowing and excellent antique store across the street, and chatting with the gentleman that owned the grocery store. Heading north, we noticed a greenhouse, and stopped, partially because we saw that they sold Science Diet dog food, which we feed our dogs, and partially because we love greenery, and wanted to see what kinds of local plants were on offer. After leaving the greenhouse, we realized that we'd seen about all there was to see in Grayland, and decided to head up to Westport for dinner.

Westport, WA

Westport was a fun little city, and a dramatic change in feel from Grayland. Grayland felt very much like a little beachfront town. The kind of place that is just waiting on the verge for something to happen, but also like the kind of place that doesn't want to do anything to make it happen, kind of quiant, but isolated. Westport is a fishing town, and has a lot more of a feel for tourism, with a great little section of shops and restaurants, and docks rather than beaches. They were also just starting to get some "Big business" tourism in, with the building of some big condos and resort style places. One thing we found kind of odd and a bit off-setting was that in every place we stopped, if they asked why we were in town and we told them we were looking at property, they immediately recommended a realtor or had property to sell themselves! One lady even had flyers ready that she handed out to us.

New Development off the port side!

We ate at the Half Moon Bay Bar & Grill, which we had assumed was going to be a bit more of a down and dirty bar, and ended up being a fairly "nice" restaurant. The food was good, though not as good as the dives we'd eaten in previously, and the help also argued with us, upon requesting a refill of my beverage that they didn't carry Dr Pepper, and that I must have mistaken the Root Beer in my first glass... not something anyone that's ever tasted the two is likely to do... We spent a nice evening strolling around Westport, in good spirits, and feeling pretty hopeful about the trip out. We'd spent a good amount of money on gas for the trip, and for one as shotgun as it was, we were worried that it would be for naught. Luckily, it wouldn't be, but not for any of the reasons we hoped! As night fell, we headed for home, hoping to make it a good distance before sleep took us, and our ride became our bed...

Grayland, WA - The Tour - Part Three

Obviously, the most important part physically about a motel is it's location and the guest rooms, but one area that we've found is really lacking is the owner's residence and office area. While it's something that the guests don't have a lot of contact with, it's still quite important, and one that Lindsay and I focus on a lot. Most people that we've spoken to that are selling their business are doing it for one of two reasons, either they are ill or retiring, or they didn't know what they were getting in to and decided they didn't like running a motel. Working for a small owner/operated motel is an incredibly time consuming process, but it can be very rewarding. The biggest, and most obvious obstacle is that you're always on call, and pretty much need to be there all of the time. Luckily for us, we're pretty much designed for that lifestyle. I read obsessively, paint, sculpt, watch movies, lift weights, write, cook... and my wife likes to do a lot of crafts like Knitting, cross stitch, quilting as well as a lot of writing and reading. Neither of us have ever been much for getting out or anything, we like meeting people and talking, but as long as we can walk the dogs once a day, and have something physical to do like painting walls or building flower boxes, we could happily be cooped up in the same acre of property 24/7.

With that in mind, the Owner's residence was very important to us. We figured that if we are happy there, so will the guests, and this place had a lot of potential. In addition to an office and a 2 bedroom house, we were told by our Realtor that there was a 2 car garage that had been converted to a shop, perfect for my art room/workshop. There was also an office and a public restroom in the same building. Knowing all of this, we were pretty anxious to check out the building that we would potentially be spending a large amount of time in.

From the outside, it wasn't excessively promising... The wood had started to give in a few places, and there were quite a few windows that seemed to be obscured by junk piled inside.
An observation further supported by the first thing we looked at, the "public restroom" which was apparently now the paint closet.

The office was surprisingly small, especially considering the amount of space the building took up, merely a tall desk and a little hallway to stand in. This was a little disappointing, as we'd planned to put in a small gift shop and sell some trinkets, scarves, kites, etc... something to get non guests in, and to check out the motel, as well as a way to sell some of our crafts and artworks. While in the office, we spoke with the manager, who refused to let us see most of the house. He'd let us in the front room, and that was it. The manager and his family hada bird in the room, and beyond that, all I really remember about it was a couple of decorative teddy bears, and general feeling of slovenly distaste from the manager.

We then did a quick run through of the shop/laundry room/storage area... For those of you who have always wondered what the back rooms of a motel look like... it's usually not this...

In retrospect, the visit to the motel should have been less than exciting, but it was thrilling to us. This was the first real step we'd taken towards our dreams, and as many problems we saw, all of them were things we could overlook or work around. We impressed Mabel with our knowledge of motels and our enthusiasm, and even she came away from the tour feeling pretty hopeful about the potential and our prospects. The only real downer was the uncooperative manager and his family, who, we were told, did not want to lose his cushy position and job. We would later find out exactly how cushy that job was....

We left the motel extremely pumped up, chattering away about plans both for the day and for the future, deciding to spend the rest of the day in the area, checking out shops and taking in the ambiance of the twin harbors.

Grayland, WA - The Tour - Part One

After eating breakfast and driving around the area looking at cranberry bogs, we met Mabel, our Realtor at the Sea Spray Motel. She was pretty much as we'd pictured, a slightly older lady, friendly, and nice, but somewhat biased and set in her ways. Immediately, we could see that she was surprised by our ages. I'm 30 and my wife is 24, and we look young, Our age would continue to be a problem as our search continued, and that day we could see that she hadn't anticipated our youthfulness. She was very friendly though, and it was nice to finally put a face to the voice online. Mabel also handed us a card, featuring her picture holding a couple of cute little dogs, which was both a shameless advertising ploy on her part, and yet still utterly fitting for her to have on the cards.



Having checked out the Motel, we were pretty anxious to get the show on the road.
The Sea Spray Motel consists of 11 structures, with 9 individual 1 bedroom cabins, and one duplex, as well as an owners residence/office. The property is 1.2 acres in size, and is on the corner of the main road through Grayland and the main beach access there, which is utterly perfect! Online, the motel is posted as having ocean frontage as well, though that clearly was not the case upon arriving, as there was roughly 4 blocks to the beach, and in between there were plots of land for sale, but it was still in a great spot for a motel.

Naturally, the manager was being incredibly difficult. He would only allow us to look in certain cabins, and Mabel was reluctant to push him, so we reluctantly agreed to look at the ones allowed and the office/residence. It was pretty apparent from the start that the motel had once been cared for. The cabins were cute, and had a lot of character, and were decorated pretty whimsically from the outside. Unfortunately, as we started looking around inside, it became clear that at one time, the owners had started decorating and painting it, and as the owner became ill and the manager took over, that stopped, and things were left either poorly painted, half finished, or just made up enough to get by.Colors were all over the place, ugly hotel bedspreads mixed with clashing sofas and paintings...

"vintage" appliances and tile right out of a 50's nuclear disaster readiness film...

and where they had attempted to add some decor, it was badly waterstained posters and glued together puzzles, hung without regards to the other things in the room.
The walls were amazing too, odd colors, often painted over old paneling, and poorly patched with colors roughly matching...


Clearly, this should have been a clear sign that the Sea Spray Motel was an R.O.U.S. - then again, we'd essentially ignored the previous Rodents Of Unusual Size associated with the venture, the inefficient Realtor, the utterly unprepared and clueless owners, the surly and uncooperative manager, and like those, we ignored this stuff, after all it was all cosmetic, and could be easily fixed with some elbow grease and LOTS of paint. We still really liked the Sea Spray! It had a lot of character, and a lot of potential!



Then we toured the grounds and office.......

Grayland, WA

We arrived in Grayland well after nightfall. It was actually a beautiful drive, cruising along the coast of Washington, the ocean audible beyond the lush greenery, the rain drizzling down, with beams from the lighthouse cutting through the sky.

When we reached Grayland, naturally, the first thing we did was scope out the reason we'd come, the Sea Spray Motel,* and from what little we could see in the dark, we liked.

As this trip was being performed on the cheap, we didn't have any lodging lined out, planning to sleep in Strontium, like we had on a previous trip to the coast. Sleeping in the back of a Honda Element is amazingly comfortable, after some trial and error on our first trip. I'm around 6'2" and have the proportions of a yeti, and my wife is just over 5' and quite small, but we've created a pretty nice little setup for sleeping in the rig. We have an inflatable twin mattress that runs on a little battery pump, and we leave it laid out in the bottom of the Element. Then, layered on top of that is a full size pillowtop mattress cover, plenty of blankets, and around 6 pillows. Then we just pile our luggage and cooler on top of that. When it comes time to bed down, all we have to do is slide the seats forward, stack our luggage in the driver's and passenger's seats, inflate the mattress, and tuck the pillows into the odd crevices around the doors. I was shocked how comfortable this was the first time we did it, and it's incerdibly nice to be able to just pull to a dark place, inflate, and sleep. We've slept behind Safeways, in isolated campsites, construction zones, on the sides of roads and hotel parking lots, all with little to no problem. The first time we used Strontium like this, we made neat little cardboard and cloth window covers, which were nice, but a huge pain. For this trip, we just went bare windowed, and hoped no one wanted to peek in. Eventually, I plan to come up with some sort of clever window covering system, but for now it seems like we do a pretty good job of fogging up the windows by sleeping in it!

Anyway... we drove around the area for a while looking for somewhere to sleep, and were shocked to discover the campground, which had well over a hundred spots, full up! Eventually, we just found a dark, semi-private road, and parked on the side for the night.

Camping, Element-Style!

The next morning, we headed to the beach, desperate to see the ocean, and walk off some of the nervous energy we had. The first thing we noticed, was something we'd forgotten, that you can drive on Washington beaches. This is something we are not fans of. Lindsay and I are usually the people giving you dirty looks as you cruise past us on your four wheelers and dirtbikes on the trails of Idaho, and we figured that the beaches of Washington would be no different.
Luckily, even with tire tracks, the beach was gorgeous. Grayland is part of the Cranberry Coast, and they have 18 miles of beach. The beaches in Washington are a different breed, very cool and stromy, they definetly have a different feel to them than beaches in Oregon and California. More of an untamed, rebellious ocean. We loved it.

An old stump on the beach in Grayland, WA

After wandering on the beach for a while, we ate some decadently greasy chicken fried steak at the Local Bar, and drove around Grayland, finding it intriguing how many vacation houses were for sale, and how many other houses seemed to be slowly melting into the land. The cranberry bogs were also very unique, and we've sworn to eventually find out more about them, and hit a harvest, because they're very odd, and cool.

Eventually, it was time to meet Mabel, and take a tour of the motel... A place we were really hoping would become ours, especially after the charming morning we'd spent in Grayland!

The Sea Spray Motel* (Not it's real name)

In Preparation

A week passed. On Mabel's end, no news. The family was hard to get a hold of, the Listing Realtor, it seemed, had inherited the listing, and knew virtually nothing about it, the manager was very uncooperative, and our Realtor was seemingly unwilling to push any of them to get the info we needed.

On our end, we began investigating the property heavily, using any and all online sources available to us. Starting with a google search for images, and going so far as to emailing the Chamber of Commerce, and the Cranberry museum in Grayland, WA. The Motel had virtually no presence online, the homepage was a simple page, with one link to events in the area, and one link to a few more pictures of the cabins, they didn't even have any online ordering, just an address and a phone number. Outside of what we could find there, the information we found was intriguing though. While it was listed as being 11 cabins with ocean frontage, from what we could find in pictures, it was actually 8 separate cabins, one duplex, and the owners house/shop/office. It was on 1.2 acres, and from Google earth's vantage appeared to be the closest building to the ocean, but certainly not ocean front. We started conversations with the Chamber of Commerce and the Cranberry Museum there, primarily trying to find out people's opinions of the Motel, and then try and delve into the history of the place. We're both big history fans, Lindsay is a History Major from the University Of Montana, and I have a lot of interest as well, and we had plans to decorate one of the cabins with the history of the motel in mind.

Surprisingly, we learned that most of the residents of Grayland were imports, and the Chamber had no idea who we would even begin to talk to in order to learn more about the history or to find old photographs. For the time being, we just kind of filed it away, something to look into deeper after we got the place. The people we connected with were very friendly however, and we chatted off and on while we prepped for our visit. One thing we did learn was that the Motel was considered poorly run. That actually gave us hope, but in retrospect, should have made us nervous as well...

A Headlong Leap.

Deciding to take a chance, we contacted our Realtor here in Pocatello, Jared, who found us a Realtor out in the area, contacted her and let her know we were interested. The first thing we were surprised to discover, is that a lot of Realtors move at a glacial pace. Jared, and everyone we'd dealt with previously at our local business have been energetic, friendly, up with the latest tech, and just absolutely amazing to work with, and we'd assumed the same would be the case in Washington. Apparently, email is something fairly foreign there. If we wanted to get ahold of our new Realtor, Mabel (Name changed) we found ourselves needing to call, and usually leave a message a couple of times, and the listing agent for the Motel was even worse, often deleting emails unread. It seemed odd to us that a tool like the internet and email would be so quickly discounted out of hand by these Realtors!

At any rate, we dove in, asking to see occupancy data, and asking the usual questions; days on market, date built, why the owners were selling, etc... Some of the information came back quickly, and the rest would never really be answered...

It turned out, the owner who had the same name as our Realtor, Mabel, was very ill, and that was why they were selling, and had been trying to sell for almost 2 years. They has bought it for her to run, and shortly thereafter, she fell ill and they hired a manager to live in, and run the place. This made us excited, adding fuel to the fire. They seemed desperate to sell, no longer ran the place, and had been trying to sell for quite some time! They were also willing to carry the loan, something very favorable to us, while we have good credit, we didn't have any real money for a down payment. Somehow, in the excitement, we kind of overlooked the lack of any occupancy data, income numbers, or any real effort on the part of the Realtors or owners. We realized that we had a few days off together in a few weeks, and asked Mabel to get us the data while we planned to come out and visit the property...

Diving In

Okay, back on track...

When Lindsay got home that night, I prefaced showing her the property. "Don't get excited, I just thought it looked intriguing, that's all." I then showed her a property listing for a 10 cabin motel with owner's house on 1.2 acres roughly 2 blocks from the ocean, in Grayland WA. Withing 5 minutes, we were in love and wanted to try for it, all of our careful plans be damned!