The never ending process of buying a home

We started looking at homes in May. The first day we went out looking, I fell in love with this house…

I didn’t so much love the front, but the interior was CLEAN, barely lived in. It had a large office, a large loft, a balcony. Two of the bedrooms shared a jack-and-jill bathroom, but each had their own sink. All of the bedrooms had walk-in closets, including a LARGE one in the master. The price was right.

 

But what I especially loved was this massive kitchen… It makes my heart go pitter-patter. Not only was the kitchen massive, but it actually had a walk-in pantry. Unheard of!

There was one little problem, though…the A/C units were missing. The biggest problem with this is that you can’t close on a home until the units are in place, which means that you take the risk that you put them in and then you don’t get the home for some reason. We put in an offer and were trying to figure out how to make it work, when the bank decided to work with some buyers who had made an offer and backed out. I was kinda bummed.

 

This is another home that we got really excited about. David actually liked the layout of this home more than the first one. I still liked the first home better, but thought that overall this was a better option.

This home was just down the street from the other one, but right across the street from the neighborhood park. Overall it was smaller, but still plenty big. It didn’t have a kitchen nearly as large as the first home, and no pantry.

This is what sold us on this home…the size of the backyard. You can’t really tell from the picture. It had a large pebble-tec pool with a diving board and a hot tub. It also had a large grassy area, and then that black area in the corner used to have a swingset. It was a corner lot, and you just don’t see backyards this size.

It was a foreclosure. We looked at it the day it came up, put a bid which was more than the asking price, and we still didn’t get it. I guess we just weren’t meant to live in that neighborhood.

 

So then we found this home…

It was a few miles closer to David’s work, in a little bit better area, and better schools (with the elementary school down the street). About the same size as the first house. No kitchen can compare to the first house, but this one was a decent size, but still a small pantry. We planned on changing the countertops and eventually putting in ceramic tile in on our own, especially where the table would be. The carpet was brand new. The backyard was larger than some, but still pretty small. That was our biggest compromise with this home.

We made an offer, and the bank accepted. Put down the earnest money, did all of our inspections, was working on our loan, when I noticed a house down the street for sale for $2K less than what we were getting this house for.

Now the money certainly isn’t what made us change our mind, because that is about how much we lost by cancelling the other contract. They are both roughly the same layout and square footage, with a little bit of variance. What really got us was this…

The backyard was twice as big! And a sport court! Fun! So much room for fruit trees, and a garden, and a pool if we can ever afford to put one in. We were sold. So we made an offer and the seller accepted the same day.

There are a couple things that we liked better about the other house, it had a 3 car tandem garage. This one  took the tandem garage and made the office bigger. We would have rather had the 3rd garage, but we can deal. This one cut the loft in half to make another bedroom. We would have rather had the bigger loft. The bathrooms only have single sinks instead of double like the other one did. (Thankfully the master still has double sinks).

Doesn’t that look odd? It was made to have double sinks. At some point, we will put them in. This one had a few upgrades that made it nicer…upgraded faucets, doorknobs, light fixtures, and such. It has a balcony, and vaulted ceilings in the master. All of the windows already have blinds. And it already has ceramic tile, so we won’t have to do that.

Our offer was accepted July 6th. We quickly got the ball rolling with our mortgage company, an inspection and such. We were good to go. And then….all the problems started. This home was purchased at a bank auction by an investor. Apparently when the owner has owned a home for less than 90 days it creates a bunch of problems getting a loan. We have to go through two mortgage companies for some reason. We are forced to go through GMAC as the second company. Two companies also requires 2 appraisals. Our company had their appraisal done July 19th. GMAC was supposed to have theirs done at the same time. It ended up that it didn’t get done until a week later. Then when it came back, it didn’t meet their quality control, so it had to be done again. It didn’t get done until the end of July. (This appraisal cost 3x what the other one did, and it caused a huge headache. Luckily we are supposed to be refunded since they screwed up so bad). At this point, they realized we are not going to make a closing date of Aug. 6th, so they extended it to the 18th.

Our mortgage company pretty much had our file underwritten already, they were just waiting on the appraisal. Oh, but the second appraisal came back $1500 lower than the asking price, so we had to renegotiate that as well. Anyway, our company quickly sends it back to GMAC to be underwritten. It was supposed to take 48 hours. A week and a half later (and a lot of phone calls from our mortgage company), they finally sent it back. Everything was checked off and approved except they needed the appraiser to sign off on something (their appraiser). So they had to contact the appraiser, have him sign it, and send it back. For some reason that took a few days. Sent it back to GMAC…they should be able to sign off on it quickly. They’ve been holding onto it for 2 weeks. Everything is signed off but the appraisal. We had to extend the closing date from the 18th to the 25th, and then from the 25th to the 31st. Nobody can get any answers from these people. As of Tuesday, the underwriter working on our file is “no longer with the company,” so they assigned it to someone else. Now this new underwriter is having a problem with the fact that the seller is selling it for more than 20% profit (it’s like 23%). Dude bought it cheap at an auction, and now he’s selling it at market value. What’s the problem?

The seller is saying he won’t extend beyond the end of this month, if we haven’t got it back from GMAC. I don’t blame him, but I don’t want to lose this house (and the earnest money, and inspection fees) because of the incompetence of this company. This has nothing to do with us. We’re all just sitting around waiting for these people to get it together. All they’ve needed to do for the last two weeks is sign off on the appraisal. Everything else was done! There is no reason we shouldn’t have been in this house a month ago. I am so incredibly frustrated, especially now that I’m worried this may fall through.

We started packing 4 weeks ago, because we thought we were going to be moving right away. This is what I have been living in for the last 3 weeks…

BEFORE

  

AFTER

Where’s a girl supposed to exercise in this? Where’s a baby supposed to play? How is anyone expected to stay sane living in this? I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown…