My love story: Starring my home
It all started
April 2007. My journey of finding a perfect home was in process. We looked at many different homes ranging from the ghetto of the Ville to the slums of the millionaires. We finally found the perfect home.
It was the greatest starter home one mile from my husband’s job, a sparkling in ground pool, and brand new granite counters.
It was on the market for only three days when we saw it and immediately placed an offer.
It was 140000 and we bid 135,000 . Two people got into a bidding war and it sold for 150000. TEN THOUSAND MORE THAN WAS LISTED. We were heartbroken. We went into a deep depression for two years without going to another house again.
Fast forward and it is now January 2010. We are receiving notices from our realtor of homes in the zip code we like. We see three we are interested in visiting.
Monday, January 11, we visit the house in our dream neighborhood. It had 4 bedrooms, two bath, and a two story master closet. It was originally listed for 195,000 down to 183,900. It was a foreclosure on the market for 49 days, but we loved it.
Friday we visited two more in minutes. We knew we had found the home of our dreams so why look anywhere else.
Monday we placed a bid on our gorgeous dream home. We offered 175,000 and asked them to pay closing costs. We waited in agony for their response.
Friday, the bank counter-offered and told us they would pay for no repairs. It was an as-is situation. We countered their counter waited for them to decide what would happen next.
Monday we were good to go. We heard back from the back and although they wouldn’t pay our realtor his full commission fees, everything looked good and we proceeded with the process.
Monday, January 25, we got an inspector to look at foundation and the house, and they thought everything looked good. Yes, the master was missing carpet,
yes the master bath had a fist punched in the wall,
yes the bathtub had its panel hanging off,
but those were all cosmetic things and wouldn’t affect the sale. We did find out we had termites, but paid to fix that and it was no problem.
The mortgage company we were using was absolutely amazing. They got us a rate of 4.5% for 15 years. We weren’t worried about anything financial because our guy had everything under control.
Wednesday, February 3, we get our appraisal and it was for 20,000 more than we paid for it. We were super excited about that. Immediate equity. It was this day that our lender started requesting a ton of things to continue with the mortgage loan. We needed to give paystubs, w-2’s, proof of home insurance, and a letter stating why there was a discrepancy of addresses with Jason’s paystubs and w-2. There were silly things too, but we didn’t care. They were giving us a lot of money so we let it slide.
Tuesday, February 9, we had everything worked out and scheduled to meet the title company at 9:00AM on Friday morning. We thought it was all sailing from there. That’s what it seemed on the surface. My husband started to get a sick feeling that he needed to pray and so he prayed for the house and it would be a smooth process for closing and we would have no problems. He had no idea, nor I, that there were behind the scenes drama we had no idea about.
Friday, February 12, we get a call from our realtor telling us that everything wrong with the house has to be fixed by Tuesday, February 16. Jason and I panicked because 1. We were in San Antonio 2. We had no idea how to install carpet 3. We would be broke if we did all those things they asked. 4. They only gave us 5 days to complete it all. We tried to get the bank to give us an extension, but they would charge us over a hundred dollars a day if we did that. Thankfully our realtor was amazing and he lined up a handyman to fix everything for us.
Tuesday, February 16, We managed to get a thumbs up from the appraiser and we were headed toward closing Friday morning.
Wednesday, February 17, we were suppose to know the time and place of closing as well as the dollar amount we needed to have. For some reason we couldn’t get an answer from our mortgage broker.
Thursday, February 18, we were told we might not be able to close on time. They didn’t know when but there were complications that delayed us closing on time. Thursday night we were told we could close on time and all was well.
Friday, February 19, we arrived to our closing and our realtor and loan officer were there.
It was a happy reunion. After everyone left, my realtor told me that our mortgage guy busted his bum trying to get us to close on time. As soon as everything looked good, he quit working at the bank. He did the jobs of other people because they were slacking off and messing things up. Our realtor had to call the management and complain as well. We had no idea any of this was going on because our team was doing an amazing job keeping us out. They were successful because closing went without a hitch. Our realtor gave us a cruise for using his business.
And having a new handyman was the greatest thing ever. He installed new carpet, retextured our house, painted, and repaired our plumping. Oh and installed our appliances. Sears wanted to charge us hundreds to install each. We paid a hundred for all. And now we are living happily ever after.
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