Adventures in House Buying

It's been a while since I posted anything. I've been incredibly busy with lots of stuff. The main thing that's keeping me busy is the fact that I've been teaching lessons 5 days a week, there also seems to be something going on for most of my days off. The other thing that is occupying my life right now is trying to close on this house. Actually, the main thing it's doing is adding to my stress. Why you ask? You might be sorry you asked.... here's the story.

Hubby and I decide, hey, we're going to be in Michigan for a while (5-6 more years) and the government has this thing called the Federal Housing Tax Credit. Basically, as first time homebuyers, we can earn a tax credit of 10% of the price of our house, up to $8000. This is not a tax deduction, it's a credit, which means we would get a check. This credit made buying a house not only appealing, but much more within reach for us.

We find a fabulous realtor. Joan Fletcher  is awesome. She took us to house after house after house. Even when we found a house that we could have been happy with, she took us to just one more. And then one more. And we made an offer on a house. Instead of letting us get suckered into paying too much, she helped us find another one, a better one. So we found the house we really wanted. A great house. We can see ourselves here for a while. We didn't really have to compromise much either. It just felt like the right place.

So case closed, right? Nope. We decide to change brokers so we can deal with a local broker. Even though our bank is fairly local, their broker is in Rhode Island. So we get a new broker who seems like a good guy. He has to work with an underwriter. Underwriter was apparently born without a brain. Doesn't like how we make money. Basically, they end up asking us for every piece of financial information they could come up with, and then some. College transcripts and diplomas, even! I had to give them a letter saying that my husband is allowed to use the funds in our joint accounts and that he's not expected to pay it back. Also had to get a letter from employers saying that we're not expected to pay back salaries! (Isn't that a given???) More than that, the problem was that the underwriter asked for one. piece. at. a. time. Over several weeks. We got them everything they asked for when they asked for it. If they could have asked for everything at the same time, the process would have been much shorter.

A little background on the house. It's an estate. Mom died about two years ago and sister #1 became executor of the estate. Sister #1 doesn't pay the taxes, doesn't take care of the estate. Apparently she also took quite a bit of money out of the estate that was owed to other people too. Judge says, okay, you aren't doing your job taking care of the estate, Sister #2 is now the executor. Sister #2 lives in Wisconsin. She makes some improvements on the house, gets things together, puts house up for sale. Sister #2 is under contract on house with us. 

Our original closing date was April 23rd. Underwriters take too long, so it's moved back to April 29th. In that period of time, Sister #1 comes back into the picture. She decides she wants to make sure she gets the money she's owed from the estate (even though she took the money out of the estate when she was the executor) so she puts a LIEN on the house. She throws a fit and comes to terms with Sister #2 and respective lawyers that Sister #1 (even though she's not the executor) will sign for the house at closing. Seems strange to me, but I just want the house. So we're now in Probate.

As if things weren't slow enough, the Probate judge who needs to sign the paperwork to allow all of this to happen.... it out of town. Not back until May 3rd. Okay. So May 3rd rolls around. We can't just have the judge sign off, there has to be a hearing. Hearing is today May 6th. Hopefully, we will know something this evening.

Just to throw a crazy twist into an already crazy situation, Sister #1 is the treasurer of the county we live in. An elected official. Who didn't pay taxes on a house she was responsible for.

So here we are 2 weeks past the closing date on our purchase agreement. We have to be out of our apartment by May 30th. If we don't close by May 30th, we don't get the tax credit (without which, we probably wouldn't have ever decided to look for a house). I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a week to move. We've really got about 2 weeks to get this deal done. I don't know if it's going to happen.

So now you're up-to-date.