And it wasn't as easy as it should've been. Turns out the existing owner was a complete creep, and he was half-hoping that we wouldn't qualify for the loan.
You see, the house had been up for sale for nearly a year, and we were the first people to make an offer, and that offer was quite a bit lower than what he'd been hoping to get. He needed to move, though, so he took it. Miracle of miracles, somebody else tried to buy the house (and likely for more money) the day after he accepted our offer. The only way he could get the house back on the market would be if we weren't approved for the loan, so there you go.
Worst part was regarding our taxes. We closed on 4/14, the day before tax-day. We'd already filed an extension through our CPA, so we had until August to get our 2003 taxes done, but the loan people wanted to see 'em anyway, even if they didn't exist. The only other solution would be for us to pay the bank $2,200 to change our loan to 'blind' or whatever terminology you hear on those mortgage commercials that refers to a loan given with incomplete information. We talked to the CPA, but they were up to their eyeballs in taxes and couldn't squeeze us in. We had three choices.
- Bite the bullet and throw $2200 down the drain.
- Beg our CPA to get our taxes done before 4/15 so we could get 'em to the bank.
- Agree with the homeowner to push the closing date off a couple of days so that the taxes could get done and everything could get approved and everything would be hunky-dory.
The only remaining avenue available seemed to be number 3, so we called the homeowner. Given that I already mentioned above that he's a creep, you can guess what happened. He absolutely refused to move the closing date even one day. We then returned to our CPA and explained the whole situation. The CPA didn't wanna see us pay $2,200 due to circumstances beyond our control, so they worked a couple of late nights and got 'em done early for us.
And you can bet we sent 'em a bigass fruit basket that day :)
The capper happened on Friday. The homeowner's wife (who has a job in Chicago and stays there most of the time, go figure) called us up on Thursday to tell us that they were moved out and that the house would be vacant on 9 AM Friday. Around 9 AM Friday, our realtor showed up with house keys. I'd been boxing up stuff all week, so I loaded up the car with boxes and headed up to the house. Upon unlocking the front door, I heard 'I'M TAKING A NAP HERE!!!' He was still there. He yelled that since he said he agreed to be out by Friday that he was gonna take ALL of Friday.
This guy was friggin' unreal. We complied with all contracts. We did everything right. We qualified for the loan. We closed on the day we promised. The loan went through and his mortgage account was closed. And he still wanted to fight. He probably stayed until midnight just to make sure that we didn't try to get in 'early'.
The next day Shelly went around the neighborhood to introduce herself. Not surprisingly, the neighbors were happy to see him go.
. . .and he smokes, so we've gotta paint the whole place before we can unpack
. . .and Maggie's been sick the whole week, so we've had the grand pleasure of doing all of this with a sick kid around.
On a similar note, we just got a contract to sell our existing house, and they wanna close in a hurry. Our last payment on this house will be in May, and our first payment on the new house will be in June. Our biggest worry was that this place wouldn't sell and that we'd be stuck with several months of holding two mortgages. We rule.
