Let's keep this post short and sweet so that we can get to the move, shall we? Well, short anyway - there was NOTHING sweet about getting our home.
I don't want to go into horrible detail, but we had a very diffcult time getting into our house. Remember all those previous posts where I said that things seemed to be going along so smoothly? Yeah - not so much toward the end. We had a difficult time agreeing on an agent here in Utah and in the end, I'm not sure we really liked the one we chose. She wasn't horrible, but she was very busy. Both David and I only met her once in person. She sent her husband to show us houses and did the rest of the stuff over the phone. She was even on vacation when we signed our documents so she sent her assistant then, too. Our mortgage broker was a friend of the family. He got us a great rate, but with the world's most nightmare-ish mortgage company. I'm not joking! They are notorious in the industry for being over-the-top picky about ridiculous stuff. For instance, they came back after we signed the documents and said that one of my dates was unclear. The dash was touching the next number so it looked like 5-29-72 instead of 5-29-12. So the man from the title company had to drive to my parents house in Farmington (he lives in South Salt Lake) at 7:00 in the morning to get ONE document re-signed. That is only one of about 25 incidents. We constantly had to fix teeny stupid things or jump through hoops - and we had to make the people we were buying the house from jump with us on many occasions. It was humiliating.
On top of the picky mortgage company, we had a few issues that exacerbated the problems. One major issue was the radon mess I already wrote about. Another was the source of funds for our down payment. We'd had the money for our down payment for months, but never thought about the fact that we would have a hard time getting to it when neccessary. Our money was in a bank in Idaho. We couldn't get a cashier's check in Utah - they wouldn't send a wire without an original signature - and we were barely issued new cards due to the fraud on our account, so we didn't know our new PIN numbers. We had money, but not GUARANTEED money and the mortgage company wouldn't take anything else. We also had more than enough cash with us. Cash is the ultimate guaranteed form of funds, but to this lender, cash = maffia affiliations or drug connections or something. It's NOT acceptable. We (all of us - the agent, broker, title company, me, etc.) scrambled to figure something out that would appease the lender. There just wasn't an answer, so I did them best I could - I got a cashiers check with our cash, and prayed that everything would work out. (I know this seems long, but I'm REALLY abridging a lot of stuff here!)
The day of our funding came. At the last minute - and I really mean the LAST minute, the lender decided not to fund because they discovered that I'd used cash. I was pretty upset that we didn't get funded. I had to call the movers and ask them to hold our stuff on their truck for ANOTHER three days (over a weekend), we had to tell the people we were buying the house from that we weren't ready yet (humiliating again, but they were so glad to have a few extra days to move out and clean - maybe their prayers were more pressing than ours). I had to impose upon my parents for another three days and I had to wait to get into our new house. All of those issues were upsetting, but I could have survived them. The REAL issue came when our mortage broker (a friend of the family, remember) told David that this was my fault for getting the cashier's check with cash and trying to cover it up. He basically said that I was dishonest. Dave LOST it on him and defended me in no uncertain (or soft-spoken) terms. Luckily for Craig, he to take another call about our loan. By the time they spoke again, Dave had calmed down a bit. I, however, was FIRED UP!!! I felt horrible! I already felt bad about having to wait another three days, but to have my integrity questioned was more than I could bear. I spent the entire night thinking about it, and determined that I couldn't work with this person anymore until I told him how I felt. I got up early the next morning and wrote a pretty scathing e-mail to Craig. I explained the reasons for getting the cashiers check the way I did and reminded him that he was fully aware of how I was handling it at the time. I mentioned a few of the headaches we'd had over the loan in the past and the less-than-honest ways he'd wanted to fix them, which we wouldn't do. I complained a bit about the lack of professionalism he displayed. I think I did so very calmly and matter-of-factly. I didn't call him names or anything, but I wasn't going to sit there and take it either. Craig responded with a very humble, apologetic letter. I responded back with a let's-put-it-behind-us-letter. And the whole incident was over. I don't think Craig will be sending me a Valentine in the future, but I think we're okay now.
So, in the end, we finally got our loan funded on Monday, June 4th. The movers weren't coming until Tuesday, but we got our keys on Monday night. We loaded up the kids and my parents and went over to see our new house. David met us there. He actually beat us there. We walked in the door and.....it was such a HUGE dissappointment! After all the trouble and heartache, we had lost any excitement we'd been feeling over this house. We almost wished that it would all fall apart towards the end. We just weren't excited about it anymore. When the house was empty, we saw every nail hole in the walls and all the stains in the carpets. We hadn't realized how bad the carpet was when we went through earlier. The whole house seemed older and more dingy than we remembered. Then, I saw a spider crawling on the wall and for some reason, it just sent me over the edge. I kept a happy face on as good as I could until we got the kids in bed that night, then I just started crying. Both David and I were like, "What have we done? That's not the house I remember." Great way to start you life somewhere, huh? Don't worry - it will get better, but that's the way it all began for our family in Layton Utah.
Oh Boy! What an ordeal!:(
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