There have been several highs and lows over this whole home buying thing. Phew... I don't know if I ever want to buy one again. I have always read that buying a home is one of the most stressful things that you can do in your life, and at this point, I believe that Trey and I would both agree. It's a lot of time spent wringing your hands together and waiting for whatever is next to hit the fan. Let us not forget that we have decided to buy a house at what might be the absolute worst time in the world to do so.
It all started with us not being able to get a hold of our lender for over a week. The person handling our loan is receiving medical treatment for cancer, so he tends to be out of the office quite frequently. (While we are very sympathetic, it makes us wonder how in the world we wound up with this one. When we tried buying a house in New Mexico last year, we could never get our lender on the phone then either) Our realtor started going nuts, since he wasn't able to get information either.
Then Trey got a call last Thursday. Dum dum dum dum... We had to have almost $6000 by closing. Of course, Trey didn't get the call because he was working, so he was greeted by that on his voice mail. Talk about making you freak out. He spent all day Friday trying to get a hold of our lender to see a break down on the cost etc, but of course, no answer. Then we started thinking well that was the amt that we were looking at before we bought the house, and they must not be factoring in the $3000 we added to the sale price of the house to have the seller cover that amt in closing costs. We took a deep breath, believed all would be fine, especially since the gi bill was kicking in and we were owed some back payments.
Trey was off on Monday, and finally... he reached our lender. Of course, it was after we got yet another panicked call from our realtor wanting us to consider changing lenders before it was too late. Hey, the market is bad, and he wants his commission. He gets nothing if we don't close on the house. Fortunately, that's not our problem.
The VA appraisal money was taken, and we found out that our closing cost doubled. Holy cow! Our closing costs are up to 12k at this point. Some of it will roll into the loan, the seller will pay $3k of it, so we are responsible for about $5800 by closing aka October 15th. Deal off man... That's insane. I know that th market is going nuts, but how do closing cost completely double in barely 2 weeks?
After taking a long hard look at our finances, and knowing all the gi bill payments that are due to come in and all the overtime that Trey has been working, it looks do-able. Not only that, but after doing some careful studying of the good faith estimate, we noticed that they were still overestimating our insurance and taxes. Oh, I forgot to mention, that if you are smart, you won't buy a house with a va loan in October. Just about any other month, if you buy a house, you are only responsible for having to pay 3 months of taxes and insurance for closing. Nope, not us, we are special. We have to pay the full year's insurance premium and also 13 months of taxes up front. Yup, so that's what added the extra 4k to our closing costs. Shame that they couldn't tell us that ahead of time. After Trey and I made the adjustments since we know what it all is really going to cost, we should close at about $4800 instead. Keeping our fingers crossed.
But, all is good. The VA appraisal is supposed to have happened some time this week. It may have already happened, or could be happening as I type this. After this is done, then we can have the home inspected and have it pest inspected as well. We'll want to schedule that next week when Trey is off. He won't want to miss that one. I want to go back through and get some more pics of the place and take some window measurements, etc. That way I can start figuring out the prices of the blinds, etc. Start making plans for curtains, you all know what I'm like... ha ha...
So, we are still good. Trey is working as much overtime as he can get his hands on. He's amazing. He has to work nights all this weekend, and so he stayed up all night last night so that he could sleep all day today to be ready for the change in work schedule... He received a phone call this morning around 8 and asked him to come in and work all day long. Fortunately, it's his short night anyway, so he was only going to have to work from 4 till 8 tonight, but the poor guy still has to stay up all night and so he can work his 12 hour work shift Friday night/Saturday morning. He's doing whatever he can to pad the bank account so we'll satisfy all the criteria before closing. OH, and the good news... I finally unearthed the 401k statement that they were wanting. While that may not sound like a huge victory, if you could see Trey's desk, you'd understand what an undertaking it indeed was.
20 days until closing... So close, yet so far away...
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