Happy Palm Sunday! If you are anywhere in the state of Missouri then you get to enjoy the Sunday before Easter with about 9 inches of snow... I think this may be the latest snow storm I can remember. It is hard to believe only a week ago it was 80 degrees out. I'm really sick of having to ask Curt to shovel our driveway :). Anyway, I hope you enjoy the post. A lot of craziness has happened since our last meeting. Enjoy!
The last time we chatted Curt and I had finally found a house. We were going through the closing procedures to become first time homeowners. Everything was going pretty smoothly and we didn't have any real reason to worry. Let's take a step back into time to a week prior to last Friday. I'm sitting at work getting excited about the Happy Hour gathering a bunch of my friends were attending that evening along with us. I'm basically reading the menu in my head trying to figure out what to order. At about 3:30 PM I get a call from Curt saying our realtor, Karen, needs to see us immediately after work and it could not wait. Uh Oh............. So I'm going through all of the of the scenarios in my head as to why we need to have an emergency meeting with her. Everything has been going so well! We had our inspection and everything was already repaired, all of which were minor. I mean the seller lady even gave us a new garage door when all we asked for was a new wheel and bracket. She is the perfect seller! She is so easy to work with. How did we get so lucky? We cancel our plans and head over to our realtor's office right after work to find out the emergency. We go and sit in a conference room with our realtor who begins the conversation with informing us that something has come up with the house and she has not seen this in her 12 years of selling houses (and she sells a looot of houses) and it she was unable to sleep the night before over the discovery.. Great...... This is exactly how I want to start any meeting. When we signed our contract our realtor took the time to explain every single paragraph of the contract because she said we need to know exactly what we are signing. I remember her going over the section regarding title insurance/liens and her advising this is necessary but she has never had anything crazy come up.. Until now...... Apparently our lovely, fantastic seller avoided foreclosure two years back by restructuring her mortgage by including an approximately $16,000 lien on top of her mortgage to the house. Curt and I just sat there and really had no idea what this meant.. This means the seller legally can't sell this house with this lien secured to the house unless she pays it off. Well I can assure you that Curt nor I will be adding $16,000 to our mortgage due to this situation. Basically the seller had two weeks until the closing date to come up with $16,000, find a bank to make this loan an unsecured loan or she has to walk away because she can't close on the home.. Uh what? I asked our realtor how can the seller think she could sell a house with this extra lien/loan. The seller informed our realtor that she had "forgot" about the extra loan. Do people really forgot about an extra $16,000 they owe someone? I am not buying it.. Really? I wish I could "forget" about some of my student loans but the federal government will not ever let me forget them.. Ever..Here we are sitting here with a house secured and now we learn that we won't be able to get it?! I already had the place decorated! Uggggggh! In hindsight, when you ask someone to replace a wheel and bracket but instead they replace a whole garage door, a red flag should pop up about money management procedures..
We technically today are still under contract with the house until 03/29/2013. Our realtor is working tirelessly to somehow salvage the sale but she also is realistic in the changes of the sale happening. We are sadly back to square one in house hunting barring some bank/loan miracle which will have to be completed by Friday. When Curt and I walked out of the office two Fridays ago we tried to find a silver lining with this whole ordeal. We had to because everything was completely out of our control. This may be the most helpless feeling for me. The feeling that everything is spinning out of control and I can honestly do nothing. Anyway back to the silver lining. I had to come up with something positive to avoid a crazy Hannah epic meltdown. We decided three things about this ordeal. First, we decided that we would much rather know now about all of the problems while we still have an apartment until the end of May and haven't loaded up a U-Haul with all of our items. Second, we aren't in the seller's position and have to pay an extra $16,000 before you can do anything. Finally, we will find something better and it just wasn't meant to be. Divine intervention or something I suppose. I must pat Curt and I on our backs because we have really held it together better than I expected. It is now a story we tell and laugh. We figured if we can laugh at the situation then really it will get better. I'm a little stressed about not finding a place before our lease runs out (they already have our apartment rented) but people thus far as been so generous. So many people have offered us a place. It is really awesome to know we have some great family and friends. We will figure it out and everything will come together eventually. Our realtor assures us that we will never have this bad of a house buying experience again. I can only hope that is true. Plus now we have a story that can top anyone else's house buying experience. :)
Thanks for reading my post today. I'm hoping the next post will be bring happier/positive news on the house front. I hope everyone has a nice Easter holiday. If my Mom is reading this post, I can't wait for my Easter basket full of candy :)
H
