It's ours! ...kind of. :)

So yesterday was a busy day... The sellers initialled the increase, so its all up to the bank and the inspection. So, its ours as long as the stars align.

I signed a Consent to Lock form locking in our interest rate. Which in a way is annoying because we were told our interest rate would be 5.8%, then 5.99% and now when we are actually locking in its 6.125%. I wish we could have locked in a while ago but I guess you can't until after you have a purchase agreement, oh well. Another thing we didn't know - when the rate gets locked in. So Mike signed that yesterday to make it final (they only needed one signature to lock it in) and now its official as soon as he faxes it to her.

We also set up our inspection. Its taking place on Sunday. I think as soon as that happens and it turns out ok, I'll be more excited to tell people its ours. I haven't told many people yet because I'd hate to tell a bunch of people and get all excited about it and then find out the foundation is crumbling or something. You never know with old homes. It will be fun to see the house again and I hope to learn as much about the house as possible from the inspection report. It will be good to know what needs to get addressed first and what can wait. Hopefully there's nothing scary or surprising that comes out of the inspection. We need a ton of copies of it too, so I hope that its not too big. Mike has to fax one to Kevin and we need to give one copy to Loona for loan purposes - glad she mentioned that the last time I was there because she had never mentioned it before.

You know I can understand the City Living Program is ever changing especially amidst the "housing crisis" but really? There's got to be some consistency - there has to be enough that they can give new home buyers a pamphlet of things to expect in the future - Something that tells new home buyers what paper work is due when and what things to expect. A timeline or something. I feel like every time I see my loan officer there's something else she wants that I didn't know was required before.

I feel like even when people know your a first time home buyer people still expect you to know whats going on and to understand all the terms... HELLO - Just because you do this every day of your life doesn't mean I do. Slow down, explain things to me that's what I am paying you to do - I really am getting annoyed by this woman - sign this, send me this - WHY!? What am I signing? It's like she hasn't taken any time with me, I think I deserve that. I was really impressed with her at first, which is why when we heard we could get a really low interest rate and she seemed extremely together and knowledgeable - we didn't check out the Well's Fargo people who have the same program which in the end I am now regretting. Well - At least she's better than the TCF kid - He was a JOKE! "I'll call you tomorrow and let you know what you qualify for." 6 weeks later, he still hasn't called back. *SIGH* No wonder there's so many problems with home loans - there's no customer service - no attentiveness - just come in let me take your money and get out and keep paying me for the rest of your life.

That's why I like Kevin Bosley, he sat down and explained everything to us. We went through the purchase agreement line by line. He stopped periodically to answer questions and was super helpful. Whenever we need anything he's always willing to help. He's been terrific. He's always willing to give us his opinions and suggestions too when we want another person's opinion. I'd definitely recommend him to others.

I am excited for the inspection - Vicki and John recommended with glowing reviews after purchasing the townhouse and their home. So I am hoping for good things from him.

All I know is the faster this all gets done, the faster we get the house - there better not be any delays because we have to close on the 21st at the latest - I am not sending in a new offer.

Lonna ordered the appraisal yesterday so interested to see what its worth. The city of Minneapolis has it listed at $310,000 which is well above what we are paying for it. Mike's irritated that we have to pay a PMI when we obviously have 26% equity before we even buy it. We can get rid of the PMI in 2 yrs but again Mike is irritated because we have to order a new appraisal so the first one is kind of a waste, other than for the purpose of ensuring the bank that the house is worth what we are paying for it.

Ugh, what a pain, at least its all getting done and the last time I talked to Lonna she said we could get it done on time. It better be! I don't think anything else will come up today and with me going to Megan's wedding over the weekend I don't expect to get back to this until Sunday when there will be a full update.

The Call about The Offer

Mr. (Kevin) Bosley, our agent and the father of the best man, called! Good and bad news... Good news is it's basically ours, the sellers are meeting tomorrow at 12:30 to initial the increase. Then Kevin is sending our loan officer Loona the last page so she can get going on the last steps of the loan.

Bad news is all of a sudden our loan officer needs more time, which is bogus. I think she's really irritating Kevin and she's really ticking off Mike. First she doesn't know if we need a PMI or if we can do two loans (80%/15%) - we found out later we do need a PMI, which is lame because she waited to the last minute to tell us. NOW, she needs more time to complete the loan which is lame because she initially told us 2 weeks to get things done then from that point 2 weeks to close. Now she needs 3 weeks to 30 days to close and she doesn't know if she can close on time. Why did she tell us one thing if it wasn't right, we would have written our offer different if we would have known. *SIGH* If we had time at this point, I'd look for a different loan officer, but at this point we don't have that kind of time. Thing is, Kevin says if she can't get it done in time... we have to give them a new offer. A NEW OFFER!? We have to do this process all over again? And on top of it, they liked our offer because it had such a quick turn around. ARGH, its so irritating. Plus, Kevin can't book his trip to the cities until he knows for certain what day we are closing. So the longer she waits the more expensive it gets. She's kind of screwed us twice now. Mike wants to give her a bad review. All I know is this loan process is a lot more annoying than I thought it would be.

I have always heard that the first house is the hardest, the next one better be all down hill...and years from now.

We were hoping to get this done before the 21st and now it may push out beyond that. Its just kind of disheartening, we are so eagar to move in and start painting and deforesting. :) Just got to stay up beat.

The Offer

So we've been to the first time home buyers class. We've been to the bank. And finally we decided on the house... Now we just got to get it. We were a little worried when we found out that the one house in the area that we were even interested in had a "LOW" ball offer already in on it. So we offered a fair price. We understood that it might take a while to hear back about our offer seeing that the bank is involved because its a "short-sale". (Realestate speak for: Just about in foreclosure, so the bank and seller are working together to sell it at a price they can both be happy with -- As quick as humanly possible.) We were prepared to wait a week or two to hear from the seller and their bank, because banks are SLOW, but hours after placing the offer we were already countered by the bank! Which was great because the counter offer wasn't too bad, so we accepted it. Then the sellers accepted the counter and it was all up to the bank accepting our acceptance of the counter, but when it got to the bank - they decided to counter again!? Apparently the loan officer who made the counter thought it was good enough but when the bank got it they decided they need $1,400 more. Really, at $1,400 you think it wouldn't be worth their trouble to counter, but I guess it was. So we accepted and now we are waiting to find out if they will accept this acceptance, but our realtor (and friend) says they will since it was the BANK who made the last counter, and not a loan officer.

Moral of the story: When working with bank owned properties, or in our case nearly bank owned properties, don't be surprised if there are a few bumps in the road. It happens.

And don't worry, even with the counters we are still basically stealing this home.