(This post was originally written on Monday, July 16, 2012 – see the intro post for more details…)
I realize that I haven’t written anything about our house-buying adventures in a couple of weeks, but truth be told, there really hasn’t been a whole lot to say. Right now we’re hoping to close around the end of the month and it’s really just paperwork getting shuffled between now and then, but nonetheless, here’s a quick summary of what’s happened since last time…
- Ordered The Survey – …which is apparently a big scam in the mortgage industry because all they’re doing is verifying the property lines for the house, which has already been done two or three times before! I’m pretty sure the house hasn’t moved since it was built 7 years ago, so as far as I’m concerned, this was just an easy waste of $198 in my book.
- Shopped for Insurance – …which ended up being kinda confusing because one day I spent a lot of time talking with the guy who I figured I’d end up going with, and then a week later I was committing to another lady who spent half the time but had twice the knowledge of the first guy. It was weird, and I hope that I bought enough so that we’re covered if aliens steal the house or whatever, but we’ll see…
- Mortgage Underwriting Approved!!! – …which we actually just confirmed today and is subsequently a huge load off of our backs because that’s one of the big things that we were kind of nervous about, due to some minor credit issues that had the potential to become much bigger credit issues. Of all the random approvals that we’ve gotten over the last month, this one actually means that someone agreed to loan us the money to buy the house, so it’s a big one as far as I can tell!
- ______ The Appraisal – …which again I think is another waste product of the mortgage industry because essentially what they’re doing is inspecting the house for the bank to make sure that it’s actually worth what they’re offering to loan us. Why couldn’t they just do both the inspection and the appraisal at the same time??? Because that would’ve saved me $375, that’s why…
- Initiated the Down Payment – …which apparently I should’ve done a couple of weeks ago, but who was I to know that the information given to me by my 401k people wasn’t actually going to be accurate for what I was trying to do?! In a nutshell, we’re taking a loan from my 401k to pay for our down payment, and it was explained to me that it was really quick paperwork to fill out, and then the money could be wired to my checking account shortly thereafter. Nope! Instead, it’s now a race against the clock to hurry up get the paperwork processed and then wait by the mailbox for the actual check because they won’t wire it to me after all. Again, in hindsight this is something that I should’ve done weeks ago, but I was kind of waiting for that approval listed above before proceeding … just in case. 😳
I guess you could say that it’s been a whole lot of hurry up and wait mentality over the last couple of weeks. Here and there we’ll have a random document to sign and return, which we’ll rush to do, only then to find ourselves back to waiting while somebody somewhere “processes it.” It’s a little frustrating because all of the sense of urgency is on the buyer’s side of the table, whereas this is something that all of the other agents do every single day, so that paper in the pile that represents this huge event taking place in our lives is but another document for them to get through before their workday is over. 🙁
Anyways, I suppose that’s all for now. With any luck, hopefully about 9 days from now I’ll be posting an image of a new set of keys and the moving can finally commence!!!