Keys

I feel like I should write something profound here (as if I were capable) but right now I am just too happy and tired to bother.  The fact that my main man Josh rolled up with a bottle of Gentleman Jack isn’t really contributing much to my verbosity, either.  Good lookin’ out.

I have a house now.

Nearly There…

So, we went in yesterday to sign the loan docs to finalize the purchase of our house.  The Wife and I both took the day off of work.  To be fair, it wasn’t just to sign papers- we also had to vote (hooray for Obama!  Boo on Prop 8!) and go to an ultrasound appointment (Papers is rocking strong).  We drug the Littledoo in tow, and drove all the way up to Redlands.  When we got there, to our shock, we discovered that instead of recieving back all or most of our $2250 deposit (which we were led to believe would happen) we instead were being asked to pay an additional $1500.  That puts us $3750 further in debt than we were expecting.  You hear about this kind of crap happening all the time, but it was still a shock.

Anyway, we are negotiating with the lender, and it looks like they are going to be able to magically whisk away the additional $1500, but we are still on the hook for the deposit.  It is shocking to me that buying a house is pretty much the same as buying a used car, simply with more zeros attached.  They know they have you by the balls right at the end, and you don’t have any other options without cancelling escrow.

Whatever.  We’ll figure it out.  I should be posting something about the feel of the keys in my hand within a week.  I hope.

Further Adventures in Homebuying

At least according to the Status Updates I am reading from my friends on Facebook, it seems that The Wife and I are not the only ones trying to buy a house right now.  Seems like a good idea, right?  Prices are lower than they’ve been in years, all that good stuff.  Okay, I’m convinced.  If you ask me, though, the prices aren’t going anywhere for a while.  Things are going to get worse in this economy before they get better, y’all.

Anyhow, I would just like to reiterate that the actual process of buying a home is somewhat less fun than advertised.  And I was told it was about as much fun as a root canal.  It has been going on for us for upwards of six months now, although at least now there is a supposed end in sight.

I shall now whine about it.

Our latest closing date is scheduled for October 27th.  Once again, everything officially looks fine. Except…

Our loan is in place, except that one of my W-2s from last year had a typo on my social security number.  The loan cannot be processed until it is corrected, which requires the approval of the Federal Government.  So we are waiting on them.  They said we would have a response by Friday.  Next they said by today.  No word yet.  I am being held hostage by the IRS.  Of course, this is only a problem because my lender can’t deal with a stupid typo, even though I submitted a letter from my boss, and the W-2 clearly refers to me.  Argh.

The county program that we are using for down payment assistance assures us that everything is moving forward.  The pace at which it is moving forward, however, is another story entirely.  We submitted our application to them at the end of JULY(!), and they still aren’t done with it.  If it isn’t done by tomorrow, we will probably have to get an extension on our closing date, which may well cost me money that I don’t have.  It also complicates things with my current landlord, to whom we already gave our 30-day notice.

Buying a house, at least in my experience, has been an endless stream of these sorts of things, usually several at a time.  All of this with no guarantee of success at the end.  It’s enough to make you want to drink Wild Turkey straight from the bottle.

Anyway, I am sure that this will all work out eventually, but for now it has me stressed out to no end, which makes me tired, forgetful, and cranky.  This, let me tell you, does wonders for my home life.  The Wife has found me to be especially charming lately.

*****

Hopefully in a couple of weeks I will post something about how cool the new house is, and I can start griping about The Home Depot like the rest of the homeowners I know.  For now, I think I need an ice cream sandwich – one of the Nestle Tollhouse cookie ones they have in the freezer at the gas station.  Yummy.

Otra Vez

Here we go again. We got another offer accepted, on the very best house we have seen yet. Escrow is set to close by the end of October.

The sequence of events required to get us into this house has been pretty intense, and interesting. We put our bid in on this house the first day it was on the market. Turns out that by the time we bid on it, the county First Time Homebuyer program we are using for our down payment was out of money. The only reason that we are able to get the money is that we already had an application in for another property, which subsequently fell out of escrow. So it seems that the only way that we could have got this house, which incidentally is superior in every way to the last one, was to have gone through what we did on the last one. Far out. To my way of thinking, this is a pretty clear case of God’s plan, wisdom, and timeline being infinitely better than my own.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted, but for the time being, all systems are go.

Last Man Standing

2:06 AM. Still no house. Submitting another offer. I will not be defeated.

Waiting on a lender…

The Wife and I are trying to buy a house. Have been, actually, for the better part of six months. This act, I suppose, more than any other, defines the suburbanite. I mean, isn’t it the very definition? You can have the wife and the kids anywhere, but the house with the white picket fence… that’s the ‘burbs. It’s not the same if you’re renting, either. Makes you feel like a poser (I refuse to add the “u” to that word. Makes me feel like a poser). You literally haven’t “bought in” yet. There’s no fear, no pride, no sense of ownership.

What with the mortgage crisis and all, there is a popular belief that it is a buyer’s market right now. Nothing could be further from the truth. The lenders have been taking such a beating in the last year that they have decided that the only solution is to pass that beating onto any potential borrowers. To borrow from the channel 9 overdubbed version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, they are clenched so tight that “if you stuck a piece of coal [IN THEIR HAND] in two weeks you’d have a diamond.”

Anyway, for the last month or so we have been frantically trying to put all of the pieces together to purchase our own little chunk of paradise. We have had the definitive “yes” and “no” from the bank a couple of times over now, but supposedly tomorrow we will know for sure. Here’s hopin’.

I do love me some John Cougar Mellencamp. I’m not being ironic either. I love everything he does, up to and including “R.O.C.K. in the USA”. I eat it up with a spoon. I suppose that should have been the first sign that I was born to live in the ‘burbs.