Our House Selling Story Continues… Is Third Time the Charm?

I’d have to say we had one of the strangest closings, not that I’ve been to many, but it was definitely unbelievable! The buyers’ bank representative had to be on some sort of drugs because he was acting like he was on speed. As the buyers signed, they didn’t put the year for the date and when the banker noticed, he had a fit! He started talking under his breath and shaking his head and twitching like he has some serious OCD issues and one of the buyers and I were on the verge of saying something to him. He was a ticking time bomb.

Besides that, the bank had just moved into the office and there were barely any office supplies, so when it came time to make photocopies of documents, it took an hour for them to find copy paper! Our attorney was in disbelief of the whole situation as were we! We were thrilled when it was finally over. As we left the parking lot, we had such a sense of relief and elation even–that old door had finally closed and we were ready for the next to open! Almost a whole year of stress was finally over. Or was it..now we just had to secure a mortgage!

As we drove home to my aunt’s house, I called our mortgage broker to get the ball really rolling. The mortgage broker we were working with was so good, but then we hit a roadblock and he could no longer help us. Our attorney recommended another mortgage broker and we immediately contacted him. We only had a few weeks to secure a mortgage before we would become in breach of contract on the house we were buying. I have never worked harder in my life for anything than I did to get this mortgage!

I easily spent 6 hours a day every day, morning, noon and night including weekends, making phone calls, gathering documents, writing letters, supplying documents, signing and faxing things several times over and over because the bank’s system wasn’t receiving the documents properly that I was sending, and this went on for 3 weeks!

The bank had an online system where we could e-sign documents but then days before we needed to have the mortgage commitment, those weren’t good enough for them. It was like they didn’t know what the hell they were doing, kept taking back their words and it just made us more nervous than ever–it was as if WE knew more about what was going on then they did, and that’s just not a good feeling! I didn’t understand; was I the chair, the chairperson, or the chairwoman?

We started off with this bank on such a good note and by the end, we were so glad to be done with them. They said they were going to work with us on adding in some closing costs into the financing so we could put more money directly into the house, and kept saying they would see what they could do and if the ratios worked out, they could do it. Days before closing, they said they couldn’t and wouldn’t have been able to no matter what–did anyone apologize for the misunderstanding or for not realizing sooner? No. They made it seem like it was our fault for thinking we could possibly do that! I wish I could play back our phone conversations, those dicks.

Days before closing they also told us our seller’s credit that was to be used for installing different heating was not able to be given to us. It was written in the contract from day one but due to the wording as a “repair credit” and the fact we were getting an FHA loan, it couldn’t work the way we intended. The seller and us agreed that he would write us a check at closing that way it could go directly into the house, or if he couldn’t give US a check, to write a check to the bank for our closing costs. It would be less money out of our pocket. Instead, the seller had to reduce the purchase price by the credit amount, therefore reducing the amount financed. In 30 years it’ll save us thousands but we wanted to use the money now, not later! After losing the immediate credit, paying more closing costs than budgeted and not being able to finance any of the costs, we ended up losing out on over $10,000. That reduced our renovation budget by that much, and we had a small budget, to begin with. Ouch.

On top of financing issues arising with less than 72 hours left before the supposed scheduled closing, we had not received the “clear to close” yet. We needed to close by December 3rd because the seller’s attorney was leaving for Europe and wouldn’t be back for several weeks. We went from hoping we’d be in the house before Thanksgiving, to hoping we’d be in before Christmas. The attorney was coming from upstate New York and would have quite a commute so we were anxiously waiting for the clear to close before she drove all the way down for no reason.

It was the night before closing and the bank still wasn’t ready. The next morning while we were on our way to closing, with 30 minutes to spare, I received an e-mail that said the funds were cleared and we could close. 30 MINUTES! How ridiculous is that!? We went to the bank, cringed as nearly all our proceeds from our own sale were withdrawn from our account and just hoped for the best. Check also this article about women wanting to get back into the workforce.

The closing was super easy, one of the quickest with signing paperwork being done within an hour. We had to wait for the seller’s attorney (long commute, remember?) because she was running late which was fine and barely held anything behind. All was well with the closing and the Levittown house was ours! We were both excited and terrified at the same time.

We had the plan to do some major construction in the house, namely cosmetic, but we would be tearing down walls down to the studs and seeing how extensive termite damage really was. We would soon find out…