When Tom and I decided to try and buy a house, it was with the thought of increasing the joy in our lives. We thought, having a house would strengthen our creativity, increase our unity, and provide a wonderful haven for friends and family to gather. What we didn’t realize was that the processes of buying a house would first disrupt our peace of mind, agitate or nerves, annihilate our patience, and introduce a measure of rage into our systems.
Monday we returned home from a lovely weekend in NY to receive a message on my phone from our loan agent saying, “I suppose I should have called you early, but for reasons I won’t go into I am no longer working at Wells Fargo, in fact I haven’t been in the office for a week. . .” “WHAT! Excuse me? A week? So who has been working on our loan that was supposed to be closing that very day?” Well, no one. I check my e-mail to find that our realtor is asking us to sign a document asking the bank to make an extension until the 30th of JULY, as we obviously weren’t going to be closing that day as planned. I was irate. Now when I get angry I cry, well I cry whenever I fell any intense emotion, but fortunately, that also applies to anger. So I cried for a good while, and then drying my face I called Wells Fargo. I called anyone who would answer and through whimpers asked what was going on, who was going to finish up our loan, and where our loan stood. The response- we’ll they didn’t know, they would call me back. Which they didn’t, until finally I called another wells fargo agent who finally called me back, to report that he would be taking on our loan.

I asked where we stood as far as closing went, and he said he wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t guarantee anything because their office was so overwhelmed with loans. I explained that our loan has been “in the process” since the end of May, that we had been told it would close by the end of June, then the 7th of July, then the 15th of July, and now the 30th of July. I told him our father and uncle were flying from Arizona on the 19th and that we wanted to make sure we had the house by then. He said he would do what he could. I needed to e-mail him a document, so I did and further familiarized him with our situation by explaining, that we were paying for an extra months rent, that Tom was commuting 2 hours everyday which was becoming increasingly more expensive, that I chose not to get a job as I had planned on working on the house all summer. . . .

Fortunately, our new loan agent has been doing a great job. He promised to call me everyday with an update. And he sent our application into their top processesor. The end result- he is going to try his hardest to make sure our loan is closed by Friday the 19th. So, what does that mean? That I won’t even be here, but in Utah. That we won’t have any plumbing when Stan and Tim come, and that I have another week to “prepare” to move into the house. How much can you really pack when you don’t even know when you’re moving? We have three major appliances that we are scheduled to pick up this Saturday- as we thought we would be in the house- now where do we take them?

This whole ordeal has been a great eye opener into the “real world” I suppose. I’ve learned some great lessons, like:

• Never trust that your loan is progressing, call and check everyday.
• Never plan on deadlines being met.
• Stand up for yourself and don’t let your case get swept under because you’re too willing to say “It’s okay.”

I have to admit I was very close to not sending in that extension form and just letting this all fall by the wayside. We could rent a tiny apartment and live carefree for another 4 years.
One piece of good news is that the seller finally got the appraisal done (After he had waited a week to get the contractors bid- that I had sitting in my inbox, if anyone had just been working on our loan to ask for it!) The house in it’s current state + the contractor’s repairs which is updated electric, completed plumbing, new roof, chimney cleaning and re-crowning, and other small repairs- without any change to the cosmetics came to a whopping $135,000! Hopefully if we do a good job with all the cosemetics and other updates we can sell for $150,000 in four years.
Man, I hope this is all worth it!