<p>This is kind of a vent/shout off a mountaintop…</p>
<p>Do mortgage underwriters even <em>look</em> at when the closing date is? My husband and I are buying our first house, and we’ve been Johnny-on-the-spot with all our documentation. We were supposed to close tomorrow, but this afternoon, the underwriter comes back with a bunch of conditions. It’s primarily paperwork we already have that they didn’t even request the first time around (termite inspection, which we independently decided to do when we had the house inspection done because we thought it was a good idea–we were told that it was “optional” at the time… also, decided that they didn’t like DocuSign and wanted wet signatures on everything… also requested extra paperwork from our insurance company).</p>
<p>So now we’re stuck with having to cancel the movers we had scheduled for Thursday, postponing the utilities being turned on, rearranging my work schedule, and being really incredibly nervous about the fact that we have to be out of our apartment by Sunday.</p>
<p>People like us who have been fiscally responsible and have meticulously-cultivated credit scores of around 795 are messed around because our loan processor didn’t send in a termite report, but a year ago, you could get a balloon mortgage and everybody would just smile and nod as you signed your life away. Just feels like they’re not collectively seeing the forest for the trees right now, and darn it, I want my house…</p>
<p>We’ll roll with the punches as we always do, but it’s just so frustrating to have all your ducks in a row and then have to deal with more stress because someone else down the line doesn’t share your sense of urgency. We’re just another set of paperwork to somebody…</p>
<p>My advice: Vent away, then close and forget about it. I don’t think that those in the mortgage business are very “customer service” oriented because everyone tends to shop rates, not service.</p>
<p>I remember a guy calling me, wanting to sue after being tooled around by his loan closers. Life is too short. Vent, then forget and enjoy the house.</p>
<p>I feel your pain! Just to refinance our house, in which we have 80% equity, the hoops we had to jump through were staggering. For example, they wanted to know why the amount that I listed on the app for my checking account was LOWER than the actual amount a month later. IT’S A CHECKING ACCOUNT. IT CHANGES DAILY. It took over a month to process and when everything was “ready” they had sent the loan doc guy out to our house four times, because each time I caught an error in the figures.</p>
<p>Oh, definitely. Once we get those keys, I’ll be a happy camper… Just very skittish right now. This is all super-stressful… Hate packing, hate moving, hate having to reassure the cats every day that we’re not abandoning them… Just want all this to be over and done with.</p>
<p>This seems to be fairly standard practice. You’d think the escrow company, lenders, insurance company, etc. have dealt with a home sale before but they act as if this is the first time even though they do it every day. It’s frustrating but you just need to realize that the set ‘closing date’ can easily slip and have a backup plan to go another couple of weeks if necessary. </p>
<p>Sometimes if you stress the urgency to the escrow company they’ll do what they can to expedite but it can be hard to improve the efficiency of the people at the bank doing the processing (and asking for things like various inspections and docs from previous lenders at the last minute).</p>
<p>The bright side is that shortly after moving into the house this’ll all be past you and you won’t really think about it. Instead you’ll be thinking about paint, furniture, appliances, landscaping, etc. and making endless trips to Home Depot/Lowes/etc.</p>
<p>Aww, congrats on buying your first house, aibarr! I’m so happy for you. I’m sorry things aren’t going as smoothly as they should be, but if anyone can get through this, you can! (It’s just the point that you shouldn’t have to be going through this, I know.)</p>
<p>Blessings to you and your husband during this special time. I hope people get their, uh, stuff together. :)</p>
<p>aibarr, we just finished buiding a new house. Like you, my husband was beyond meticulous in every documentation. Still the mortgage lender, which is also our bank, constantly gave us the run around, passed us off from one loan specialist to the next.
They drug out our approval for so long that interest rates went back up costing us money. I understand your frustration completely. Hopefully it will work out this week and you will be really happy in your new house next week.</p>
<p>aibarr - You’ll get your house. And in a few months you’ll forget the insensitive louts that made the process more difficult than it had to be. Congrats!</p>
<p>PS, DW and I had the same experience as musicamusica … “We’ve noticed that the amount in your Checking Account different now than when you submitted the paperwork. Please revise your application to reflect the current amount and resubmit it.” I wanted to shout into the phone “SINCE YOU ALREADY KNOW THE CURRENT AMOUNT WHY DON’T YOU SIMPLY ENTER IT YOURSELF?!?” Ah, memories.</p>
<p>Sorry about your stress, unfortunately I have no words of widsom for that. However, I know your cats are going through stress as well, and I can offer some advice for them. I use a spray made by Pro-Pet (I buy it at walmart) stress relief calming spray. I usually spray their moving crates and blankets for a day or so before a move, and then 15 minutes before the move I spray it into their crates as well. It is like xanax for cats. :)</p>
<p>Ooh…! Like the calming spray idea. I’m going to go look for some tomorrow. Anything to help these poor kitties with the stress. Our dear, sweet-hearted little guy walked in, looked at my husband the other day, and while staring him down, pooped right on the carpet. “That’s what I think of this moving business.” :eek: We’ve been spending extra time and giving extra cuddles and explaining what’s going on to them, but they don’t speak English and we don’t speak cat, so we’re at a stalemate.</p>
<p>I know they’re just going to love the new house. So much room for them to run around-- twice as big as our cramped, hectic Midtown Houston apartment. Two stories, and they love stairs. No constant flow of traffic outside the new house. No fire station three blocks away. The garden in back is filled to the brim with birds and butterflies, and the windows are huge, so they can birdwatch to their hearts’ content. So many trees.</p>
<p>We’re all going to love it… We’ve just gotta keep our eye on the prize and keep on going. DH and I channeled our frustration into packing and more or less finished off the kitchen today. Got all our paperwork turned around in two hours this afternoon. Still hoping for a quick turnaround. We’ll get there, knock on wood… Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…</p>
<p>This unfortunately is all too common in real estate. Hang in there, and enjoy your home. Is is a new home or a resale? Hope you did that final walk through with all the punch list items taken care of BEFORE you close.</p>
<p>It’s a resale. Built in 2001. Only a couple of little things wrong with it, nothing unexpected, only requested about $500 in repairs that we considered to be critical. Being a former structural diagnostician has its advantages… Went up in the attic with boots and a flashlight on our second showing. Even though we have the receipts, wouldn’t dream of skipping our right to a last-minute walkthrough. Took our inspector’s advice to the letter and I’m going to be keeping an eye on a few questionable items (a couple of doors that are a little crooked in their frames, a little undulation on one part of the roof) and taking progress photos to monitor everything over the coming years.</p>
<p>Thankfully, I do punch lists all the time at work and know the value of trusting but verifying!</p>
<p>aibarr, so frustrating! The first house we bought we gave notice on our apartment and thought we’d have two weeks to move in. Instead we had the closing in the morning and had to be out by midnight. We had a baby and no backup plans.</p>
<p>The second time I again had several weeks overlap. The new house needed lots of work. (And the walk through the day before confirmed that the previous owners hadn’t gotten rid of all their junk as promised.) But the worst was discovering at the closing that they had some second mortgage that hadn’t been closed out properly. There was a flurry of faxes and it all was resolved, but for a while there I thought I’d driven an hour to the closing for no reason.</p>
<p>Just wanted to say that the cat-calming spray is fantastic. Bought a tiny little thirty-dollar bottle of calming pheromone spray on a wing and a prayer, and darned if it doesn’t work like a charm.</p>
<p>Still haven’t closed yet. It would seem that the termite inspection report is insufficient… They also needed for us to sign a disclosure saying that we understood that it’s advisable to have a termite inspection done. I kind of figured that our having submitted a termite inspection report would adequately convey our understanding of that, but… Guess not.</p>
<p>Supposedly that’s the last thing on the list, and the junior underwriter has signed off on everything, but still needs the senior underwriter (wouldn’t they be called… the <em>over</em>writer…? ) to sign off on everything. Then, our loan officer has everything ready to go, and the title company is ready and waiting to move forward with the paperwork as soon as they receive it, so it’s really just a matter of waiting for a signature and then sprinting to the finish.</p>
<p>Another bright spot, I talked to our leasing office yesterday afternoon, and they <em>have</em> rented our current apartment out to a new tenant, but the new tenant doesn’t move in until September 10, so we have until September 5 to pay month-to-month and stick around if we really get up a creek.</p>
<p>Good times, good times… Thanks for all of your kind words of support.</p>
<p>When we refinanced we had a really creepy guy that did the paperwork - I don’t know if it was drugs or alcohol, but he just seemed “off.” Well, we get to closing and we’re supposed to sign this affidavit that says that we received all these Truth in Lending notices within x days after applying for the loan. Not only did we not receive the TIL notices withint x days, we didn’t receive them at all So lawyer that I am, I marked up the affidavit to say we didn’t get the notices, and proceeded to close. </p>
<p>Two days later I got a call, “Your affidavit says you didn’t get the notices. If you didn’t get the notices, we can’t fund the loan. You will have to start over again with the application process and the interest rate is now higher. Do you want to reconsider your affidavit?” So they sent over a clean affidavit and I swore out a false affidavit, saying I had received notices on a timely basis that I had never received at all.</p>
<p>DH asked the closing folks for all the legal docs in advance. Told them he’d be reading every page, and he could do it on his own time if they sent them in advance, or on their time while we all sat in the office and watched him read. They sent us the paperwork.</p>
<p>Aibarr, congrats on the house – glad to hear you are moving forward with life!</p>
<p>With lots of the residential loans, if you change one word of their form documents, they won’t fund. You can check to see if the interest rate, loan amount, etc are right, but if you make substantive changes, they won’t fund.</p>
<p>Of course, most people don’t see their title commitment and survey until closing. I remember getting a call from closing: “Our hot tub is half way over the property line.” They closed anyway, but there was litigation afterwards…not a good position to be in!</p>
<p>The survey, I made sure to have in hand ahead of time. I’ve got the survey already. Everything’s where it ought to be, and there are no unexpected easements. (Well, not for me. My husband just learned about easements and building setbacks, and is a little disillusioned at the concept so far… “You mean we’ve already given away rights to this land that we’ll be paying for??”)</p>
<p>Thankfully, they’ve been very good about getting the documentation to us so far…</p>
<p>Sorry you’re experiencing what should be a happy time! It will all be good in the end!
I keep telling myself that - we’re scheduled to close on a refi this Friday. We started this process in mid MAY! I’m just thankful our house appraised in this crazy SoCal market.</p>
<p>Final walkthrough is this morning… Closing this afternoon, we’re told. Think happy thoughts for us!! I’ll really believe it when they drop the keys in our hands and wave goodbye…</p>
Even though we have the receipts, wouldn’t dream of skipping our right to a last-minute walkthrough. Took our inspector’s advice to the letter and I’m going to be keeping an eye on a few questionable items (a couple of doors that are a little crooked in their frames, a little undulation on one part of the roof) and taking progress photos to monitor everything over the coming years.</p>
) to sign off on everything. Then, our loan officer has everything ready to go, and the title company is ready and waiting to move forward with the paperwork as soon as they receive it, so it’s really just a matter of waiting for a signature and then sprinting to the finish.</p>