Buy a House

Today escrow closed on the house. I spent much of the day calling around to get utilities transferred and such. After DH got off work we drove over to the escrow office to pick up the keys and some final papers. Then we celebrated by picking up some Panda Express to-go and eating it in our new, empty house.

So now we are homeowners! Next comes the whole long process of cleaning up, moving in, and fixing up the ol’ house.

Today we had our final walk-through and everything seems to be on track. Seller still needs to get the water heater properly strapped and replace 2 smoke detectors, and the tenants still need to move a lot of stuff. But I do think it’ll get all done by Monday.

So close!

I may have sounded a bit pessimistic in my last entry about how bad the condition of the house is. It is true that the house is in kind of shabby condition, but mostly it was my paranoia that the seller could find out my 43T identity, read my entry, and find out that DH and I love the house. And that would reduce our bargaining power.

The seller did end up giving us a credit for replacing the roof, not as much as we asked for but more than we actually expected :-) So, yesterday we signed all the paperwork, including the mortgage documents and releasing our final contingencies! The only thing left for us to do is to transfer the down payment & closing cost funds into the escrow account, and wait for the seller to fulfill their side of the bargain. It looks like this is really going to happen. DH and I are very excited.

We close on Dec. 29!

The Good: We’ve finished with all our inspections and although there were a lot of items turned up as needing attention, most of them could be dealt with fairly expeditiously. The basic structure of the house is in good shape.

The Bad: The roof needs to be replaced, and upon further inspection it would cost even more than DH and I originally estimated. We’re planning on asking the seller to provide a credit for the quoted replacement cost – and this disregards the possibility that we’d need to spend even more on potentially rotting lumber underneath. Don’t know what the seller will say.

The Ugly: A title report has turned up the fact that there are multiple atypical liens on the property, which could delay close of escrow. It remains to be seen.

Now onward to the inspections and obtaining the loan.

I really really hope nothing too horrible turns up in the inspections. The house is in kind of shabby condition so I expect a lot of little things, but a big thing would just complicate the situation. I’ve had enough of complicated situations.

If everything goes well, escrow will close Dec 29.

Oh, did I mention – this is the second house ever that we looked at, well over a month ago (and the first one shouldn’t really count, as we stopped on a whim and it turned out not to have a kitchen, or enough bedrooms.) But our intervening experience gave us confidence in our bid that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The house we put an offer on last week was apparently very popular (8 offers on the same night!), and the seller accepted someone else’s offer. I do feel disappointed we didn’t get this house, but I am not disappointed that we lost out at the final price & terms that were accepted from the other buyer.

I think DH and I will probably have to go on househunting hiatus for a few months since I don’t want to be moving just before or after the baby is born. I’m giving myself a deadline of Thanksgiving to make any house purchase offers, otherwise we’ll wait until after the baby is born.

I have felt increasingly distressed over the past few days about not being settled in a house before the baby comes. (Or more specifically, distressed about being crowded in our small 1-bedroom apartment when baby arrives and my mother is also there to help out. But I think the benefits of my mother visiting will far outweigh the negatives.)

I am feeling better now. I spent a couple insomniac hours last night brainstorming about how we can rearrange the apartment to accommodate Baby comfortably. And besides, maybe in the next week we’ll find a house to buy.

Yesterday, DH and I put in an offer for another house during its second day on the market. This one has me nervous because I anticipate a lot of interest in this house. I saw a lot of other people looking at the house while we were there. Now just to wait and see.

This house is nicer than the one we bid on before, but the neighborhood isn’t quite as nice.

An excerpt from today’s L.A. Times (full article ) I wonder if something similar is going on in our situation.

I smell a rat

The selling agent told us we lost out to a buyer who offered a lower price but agreed to an all-cash purchase. Win some, lose some, I thought.

But after a couple of days, it all seemed strange to me. I had not put in an all-cash offer, but my offer did not have a loan contingency, which was in effect the same.

Then I remembered something else vulture investors had told me. Sometimes, brokers selling houses for banks tell favored agents in advance about houses they are about to list. This allows the favored agent to submit a can’t-miss offer immediately after the house is listed.

I suspected my offer was never shown to the bank selling the house. When I called the selling agent to ask, he wouldn’t answer my questions directly and quickly hung up.

I sent an e-mail to the head broker of the firm selling the house, telling him I wanted proof that my offer was shown to the seller or I would file a complaint with the California Department of Real Estate.

The broker, who had recently come off suspension by the department, phoned me and pleaded with me not to file a complaint. He offered to find me another house and said he could even put my agent on his list of those he notified of upcoming houses for sale. But he didn’t provide proof he had presented my offer to the seller.

I filed a complaint with the Department of Real Estate and am awaiting a hearing.

If you believe you have encountered an illegal practice by a real estate broker, you can check the complaint procedure on the department’s website at www.dre.ca.gov.

It won’t act as a court, so it can’t award you damages, but it can discipline the broker or agent._

The listing agent keeps claiming the documentation submitted with our offer is insufficient, when our Realtor and others think it’s fine. Is there some funny business going on? DH and I decided yesterday to forward our offer on to the bank that owns the property, even if the listing agent claims it’s incomplete. Hopefully the bank will examine the documentation for themselves. But at this point I don’t know whether the offer has even been passed on to the bank, which is very frustrating. We first tried to submit the offer on Sunday, so this is getting ridiculous.

Having this situation so drawn out is really hard on me. By my nature, I like to think about the future and I keep imagining living in this particular house. If we end up not getting the house, the longer it takes to find out, the more disappointed I will be. I’ve been pretty depressed about the whole situation for the past few days, and it’s been making it hard to focus and be productive.

Well, hopefully it’s been successfully submitted by now…

DH and I saw a house on Saturday that we like, so we sat down with the Realtor on Sunday to write up an offer. It’s a REO so the bank is particular about certain supporting documentation to submit with the offer. We found out Monday that we needed a letter from a different mortgage lender. So, after scrambling and some miscommunication I think we’ve finally got the documentation we need.

Now to keep our fingers crossed that nobody else comes along and tries to submit another offer over us before ours is accepted.