Losing a dream
Family's plans for owning Tuttle home among many squashed by credit crisis
Family's plans for owning Tuttle home among many squashed by credit crisis

By Richard Mize

Published: August 20, 2008

Charles Cheek held his head high the day he walked out of his family's dream home for the last time.

He kicked in no walls. He shattered no windows. He yanked out no fixtures.

Whatever anger or sadness he and his wife, Glenda, felt, they held inside — or, at least, they kept it from shooting from their hearts and minds down their arms and legs and out their fists and feet. Some important walls in their lives were tumbling down, but they did not tear up the house out of spite, the way some do.

The Cheeks walked out of their home in Tuttle, started in 2005, finished just for them in 2006, leaving it in as good a shape as when they bought it — a rarity for a repossessed house.

Cheek, 41, an electrician, holds his head high today, even knowing the house will become someone else's dream home, even though he, his wife, stepdaughter Lacey Conley, 19, and daughter, 9-year-old Brooke, now live in a smaller house, a 27-year-old rental, in far west Oklahoma City. The Tuttle house has been through the sheriff's sale and is on the market again.

"I have days it gets to me, losing my home,” he admitted last week. "As a man, you kind of feel like you failed your family. I get depressed some days. It's a big letdown.

"But I work hard. I provide for my family. I'm not ashamed of anything I've done.”

Cheek's respect for his lost home is unusual.

The 2,550-square-foot house, on a nearly 1-acre lot, has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a three-car garage, a few extras, and is in Tuttle's Silver Ridge addition, a rural spot tucked near the Canadian River closer to Mustang than downtown Tuttle.

Silver Ridge sprouted in a pasture in early 2002, the beginning of the national home-building and mortgage-lending boom that has now left some housing markets in shambles.

Oklahoma markets, for the most part, are missing the housing bust, although foreclosures are rising here for the same kinds of reasons they're rising elsewhere: Lots of people borrowed money they shouldn't have been able to borrow, and got into houses they couldn't really afford.

That makes Cheek's story sadly typical.

Cheek said his plan was to take out a mortgage to buy the house, then get a second mortgage to pay off credit cards and two vehicles, to be able to comfortably make the house payment of about $1,500 per month.

But he didn't count on some things that had him in over his head before he knew it.

He didn't count on his wife, now a convenience store manager, being out of work for so long just after they bought the house. He didn't count on his own work as an electrician, now steady and at a good rate of pay, becoming sketchy, requiring expensive travel to Enid and Austin, Texas, just when they needed to pinch pennies.

Cheek said he had no idea, until the bills started showing up, just how much it cost to heat and cool a 2,550-square-foot home or how much it cost to keep an acre of lawn watered — it came to hundreds of dollars a month he didn't have.

More than anything, though, he didn't count on not getting the second mortgage, the $25,000 or so loan that would make the whole thing work.

"Nobody would loan me the money to pay off my credit cards and my two vehicles. That put us in a bind right away,” he said.

It took every ounce of credit he and his wife had for the house, for which they took out a loan backed by the Federal Housing Administration. There was nothing left, considering their prior debt, the new huge debt for the house, and their inconsistent income, to justify a second, smaller loan.

So before long, "We were already two months behind,” Cheek said. "Then I started getting behind on my credit card payments. It was just a big old snowball effect.”

It put a strain on everything else in his life, including his relationship with his family. Brooke was at the age where the details might be lost on her but she could tell something was wrong. She was — and is — a lifesaver, he said.

"She'll come give you a hug,” her daddy said.

They spent months trying to sell the house — more time trying to get out from under it, actually, than they spent just enjoying it. They priced it as low as $194,000, which is what they owed on it, even though the Realtor's commissions "would kill me.” But it didn't sell.

The lender foreclosed. They packed, cleaned the place one final time, and moved.

Cheek was glad to tell his story, as sad as it is, in hopes that others might learn from his mistakes. The biggest ones, he said, were not asking hard questions and believing what seemed too good to be true.

"The best advice is to not believe everything your lender tells you. I'd paid my debts down (some). But they knew what my income was. They knew I had outstanding debt,” he said. "Do your homework. Do your own homework on your income and your debt-to-income ratio.”

Anyone can tell what they can afford, he said, if they "look at it and do the math.”

"Don't assume your wife's going to get a good job. Don't assume you're going to get a raise,” Cheek warned. "Look into what utilities are going to cost you a month — I just didn't perceive that. I thought (it was an) ‘energy-efficient home.' But you can only get so energy efficient.”

Cheek said the biggest sense of loss is for his kids. He said he grew up poor, living in apartments, and he wants better for them — a big country yard, away from city trouble, trips to Disneyland, not just to the local Putt-Putt mini golf course.

"Probably years down the line, I'll probably buy another house. But this was my wife's and my dream home,” he said, choking a little when he mentioned how sweet Brooke has been to him. "I've had a nice lifestyle. I've taken cruises. We go to Mexico — I haven't done that in the last one or two years.”

Now, he said, "We're not going on any vacation this year.”

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