Our House Story - Part 1

So...I have been keeping a secret. It isn't anything major, I just haven't told anyone except for family and a few people at work that are in similar situations.


We haven't closed on our house yet.

Well, NOW we have, but not until this past Wednesday.


See...this is where the story gets long and boring and if you make it through it you will be my hero. lol

We put an offer in on this house in March. Yes...March.

We started looking at houses in late January/early February. We looked at a TON of houses, so many I lost count. We took a ton of pictures, so many that my memory card got almost full ( and that takes a lot to do).

Finally, we found the house. It was our second look, and while I loved the house from the get go, Hubby was a second-look kinda guy.

Which house?

The Random Toilet House.

The random toilet didn't scare us, as it had scared so many others. It had been on the market for almost a year when we made our offer, sat empty that entire time. The owners had split and moved to opposite sides of the world really.

The house was a short sale. I wrote that post in March if that's any indication of how LONG this has gone on. At that point it had been just three weeks.

It is now July people...you do the math (okay...almost 5 months after we put our offer in).

So, we waited...

And waited...

And waited some more...

Finally, the end of April Hubby called the Selling Agent. No normally how it is done, but oh well.

He told us that it was looking like it could be up to another 4 weeks before the second mortgage agreed to a price.

Let me tell you how frustrated I was with that piece of information.

We told him our lease was up the end of May, we had to make a choice.

1 - keep waiting, and have no where to live the end of May

or

2 - Move on, pull our offer and try for a different house risking another short sale

He had a third plan, and this is where it can get confusing for so many people...

We could rent the house until we close, have a contract for closing drawn up stating that we will close on the house when it is finally ready to happen.

We would be in charge of all maintence on the house, and the sellers would maintain homeowners insurance. If something broke, we would fix it (which we found out 1 week after moving in...the sewer backed up. Thankfully, no tree roots. Just from lack of use).

However, we couldn't change the things that many people want to change when they move in: garage code, paint colors and putting in a fence. I was even leery of planting a garden.

This is scary for a couple reasons. What if it takes MONTHS to happen? What if something (anything) happens that would prevent us from being ABLE to close on the house? What if we find that after two months we hate the house?

We talked about it for days. We thought about it, did pros and cons and asked family for their opinions. We got advise from other agents, and found out that there are so many people that are doing this now.

With the amount of short sales in the market right now, a great deal of people are renting their houses before they close on them, just to get into them. Many of them, in situations like ours.

Not only was our lease up, but if we didn't move by the last day of Boo's school, she would have to change schools. We did NOT want that. Her school has had a LOT of changes in the past few months and we wanted her to continue to be a part of it.

So, we took the plunge. We signed the contract for closing and moved in in May. We only unpacked the things we needed to live. No pictures, games and very little toys for the kids. Our walls are STILL empty, but that will change this weekend.

It was two weeks after we moved in that we found out that the first mortgage accepted our offer, no counter offer at all. That was great news.

But we still had to wait for the second mortgage.

About two weeks later we found out that second mortgage accept our offer, with a side deal that we agreed to. We wanted to be done.

Then the waiting began again. Short sales are not a high priority to close. It was 6 weeks after we got the acceptance from the second mortgage before we finally closed.

And that was delayed.

5 Days later...Wednesday...we closed.

FINALLY.

It is done.

We signed the bajillion pieces of paper, and the house is ours. We can hang pictures, we can paint, we can put up a fence for Koda.

We can move in.

But...there is more...

This is only the tip of our heartache/frustration/anger.

There is more to come...and not from a likely source.