Real Estate 301

Well, we are now the proud owners of 2 houses! The last week has been crazy, but it all worked out. It started on Monday when we found out we were getting final approval on our mortgage, but there was some disagreement about who was paying for closing costs. Evidently our mortgage guy M. and seller have some communication problems, despite working for the same company. I decided to just let them figure it out amongst themselves, and magically, it was resolved by Tuesday. Way to go, M., I knew you could do it. So then we're all set to go, until we get the settlement statement at 3:30 pm on Wed. (T minus less than 20 hours until closing), and it appears we've been shorted about $1200 in closing costs. Also, our earnest money and termite treatment are suspiciously missing from the statement altogether. And keep in mind here, I actually have no idea how to read this settlement statement to begin with. I feel like I'm taking the final exam for Real Estate 301, didn't study, and somehow missed the 101 and 201 courses.

Our realtor J. calls seller's realtor to get the termite treatment thing figured out, while I call the title agent B. to ask where our earnest money is, and if we can add termite treatment to seller paid closing costs. B. says no, we usually can't do this, so I say...actually, I think you probably can, let's see if you can figure it out (in the next half hour). Then, in what was a truly magnificent feat of communication, in about the next 10 minutes I got 3 calls (one from mortgage guy M., one from realtor J., and one from title agent B.) telling me that the seller has paid for our termite treatment, it has been added to the settlement statement, and we now have our new balance for funds due tomorrow. That was impressive. My real estate 301 course seems to have just saved us $1200.

So now Kyle and I literally run out of the house, because we have to wire the money by 6 pm, and it is now 5:15 pm. We get to the bank, and we are those people who come running in 10 minutes before closing hoping to do a complicated transaction, with a fussy one-year-old in tow. If you are ever on the receiving end of this sort of thing, please be compassionate, and don't ask why didn't you do this earlier? Because those people might be us, and they might have a nervous breakdown if you ask this question. We got the money wired, and were home free.

Not. At 8 am when I check my voicemail Thursday morning (closing day), I have a voicemail from realtor J. who says there's some addendum that we need to sign. Kyle and I decide that we're sure this can be done once we get there today, since we're walking out the door at this very minute. I call realtor J. in the car and she says sure, we can sign it when we get there. Then 10 minutes later she calls and says the seller needs the addendum signed NOW, or else we can't go to closing. Well that's really convenient, because we're in the car and we didn't pack our printer/scanner in the back seat with us. She asks if we can stop somewhere and do it...and we say, um, not really. She offers to sign it for us (I'm sure this is illegal), and we say that sounds great.

When we get to closing, we are half expecting some sort of huge problem to happen at 12:59 pm, because that would be fitting given all that has happened in the last 24 hours, but everything goes smoothly. I actually don't know what I'm going to do without my daily conversations with mortgage guy M. and realtor J., because I have talked to them more than my friends or family in the last 2 months. We're good buddies.

So now, we finally get to be relieved that we will not be homeless this fall. Our yard looks like a jungle, and the house is a wallpapered nightmare with no working toilets...but hey, we signed up for this.