This has been one long drawn out process. After getting the purchase agreement on our old house at the end of December, we started the appraisal and loan underwriting process with our bank beginning of January to buy the new house. Little did we know how much of a headache this would all be. First, the appraisal came back significantly lower than our offer price. Problem is there are mostly custom built houses that are never sold in our new neighborhood. Makes it hard for the appraiser to find comps to use. Our realtor even gave our banker some comps from houses in other golf course communities to give to the appraiser. He was not able to use any of them as they were too far away according to appraisal rules and keep the original appraised value. We let the seller know that we would not pay above appraised value. Surprisingly he accepted and we all signed an addendum to amend the price. So, that turned out to be worth all the stress it brought along. The second problem was not so easy. The house we are buying was the OLOL Hospital Miracle Mansion, however the winner of the home never took possession of it. It was his intention to leave the home in OLOL name until the day before our closing. He would have it transferred into his name then the next day use the proceeds from our closing to pay the income taxes on his profit. However, our bank's underwriters considered that "flipping" a house and would not loan us money on a flipped house. They said he had to own the house for 90 days. Also, OLOL could not sell it to us directly because it would void their gaming license. What? This was Tuesday the 26th, we were closing on our house on the 28th and had to be out by that weekend. Our realtor checked with other mortgage companies but all were saying the same rule applied. So, onto Plan B, as we had to have somewhere to go. The winner would take out a loan to pay the taxes, have the property transferred into his name and lease the house to us for 90 days until we could buy it. So, that is what we decided to do. We hated to rent something we would eventually own but it beat having to move into an apartment for 3 months then move here. We signed lease documents and a new purchase agreement since the old one expired and moved in on the 29th, spending our first night here on the 30th.
Then, a few days later, our realtor found a bank that did not have the flipping rule. So, application and underwriting are almost complete and we are supposed to close on February 19th. We are keeping our fingers crossed! So ready for it to be "ours" so we can start buying furniture!
Pops and Cooper playing basketball...
Happy girl...
Thanksgiving Day
1 year ago
