I just got up from a three-hour nap in the recliner, so I’m a little disoriented… but I had to share with you today’s homebuying insanity.
Keep in mind: from the beginning, John from NOIC—our lender—has been stressing upon us that we’ll need to bring some money to Closing, even though our loan is technically zero percent down. He said we’d need a few hundred at the least, to cover pre-paid interest and lender’s fees. See, we weaseled the seller into pitching in 3% of the home’s price toward closing costs, but that doesn’t necessarily cover everything. We have to foot the bill for whatever that 3% doesn’t pay for.
So, what’s this “pre-paid interest” crap, you might ask (as we did at first)? I’m still not sure I’ve got it completely straight as to why, but when we buy the house, we have to pre-pay the interest on the mortgage from that day of the month through to the end of the month. For this reason, closing at the end of the month is good; closing at the beginning of the month is bad, as far as the amount of money we’d need to bring to closing. Therefore, had we closed on February 27th like we’d hoped, we would only owe two days’ worth of pre-paid interest.
Closing on March 1st, however, makes for a whole new ballgame. The difference? About $500.
We didn’t realize how much of a difference that would be until John called today. See, while John had been telling us one story, Rebecca the Realtor had been giving us an entirely different story: telling us that, if anything, we should get money back at Closing. We were all for that, obviously. So when John called today to give us a ballpark figure of what we’d need to bring to Closing depending on which day it would be held—$500-600 vs. $1100—I got kinda nervous. And I really, really hoped we’d manage to close on Thursday or Friday instead of Monday.
But no, first their lawyer couldn’t make it, then our lawyer couldn’t make it, then they couldn’t reach our lawyer to reschedule for sooner… and all the while I’m having kittens because I don’t know if we’re going to have to pull a grand out of our asses on short notice. Finally, it’s agreed by all parties that the closing will be on Monday, March 1st—and, boy, was John apologetic about it. Hey, though, whatcha gonna do? *defeatist shrug*
This was my entire morning and part of my afternoon at work today: fretting, freaking, and generally getting my nose out of joint. Aaron was wonderful and tried to calm me down until we knew for sure that, yes, we need to come up with $1000+ in the course of three days. Then he started to stress out, too. 🙂 Ironically, that was when I kind of calmed down a little; knowing that it had to be done and figuring it out was less stressful to me than not knowing if it would have to be done and just generally worrying about it. At least, once we knew for sure what was going on, I could sit down and actually apply myself to the problem.
So, we came up with a few ideas. Plan A: Take money out of my 401(k). I’ve got enough in there to cover the closing costs, and I haven’t been contributing for very long, so it’s not like I’d lose much ground, retirement-wise. Plan B: Scrape together money from Friday’s paychecks, which would cover closing costs, and pay rent and some bills late. It’s our last full month’s rent, so what are the Smiths going to do—kick us out? 😉 Plan C: Yelling for help, a.k.a. The Dad Loan. Although we’d vastly prefer to be self-sufficient, we know that Aaron’s dad would be more than willing to float us a loan if ever we need it.
I looked into Plan A. (Didn’t get much actual work done today at work, you know?) Turns out that a 401(k) Loan takes two to three weeks to process, so that’s right out. Aaron did the math on Plan B, and saw that we’d actually have enough to cover closing costs, though we wouldn’t really be able to eat for a week. 😉 So, we opted against pursuing Plan C and decided to just force ourselves to make it through on what we’ve got.
At this point, there was a karmic kind of turn of events, under the category of “doing for those who do for themselves”—Aaron found that our income tax return is due to be direct-deposited on Friday. OMG. That took a load off. It’ll still only cover half of what we’re required to pay, but that still takes the pressure off… and lets us eat for the next week or two.
What a draining day. What a roller-coaster.
On the good side, though, it turns out that the seller has a place to live and is moving out right now. We might get possession sooner than 30 days, which would mean moving at our convenience, and not having to extend our lease.
Also on the good side is the fact that I get free Cashier’s Checks, since I work for the bank. So, either Saturday morning or Monday morning, we head out to the bank and get a Cashier’s Check for the amount the Title Agency will disclose on Friday. Monday morning at 11am, we’ll meet at the house for a final walkthrough, then go to the closing at 1pm (hopefully with some lunch in between?). —Oh, yeah, I took Monday off of work, too. Yay for personal time. I’m also planning to take a personal day to finish packing and start moving, whenever that ends up being.
Unfortunately, my little nap this evening took the place of the cleaning and reorganizing I had been going to do in the bedroom, in preparation for packing. Gah. I hate it when I sleep away my time at home. It feels like such a waste.
Anyway, on a lighter note, check out my completed eBay auctions—in particular, the Super 8 stag films. Holy shit. Not bad for a bizarre five-dollar garage sale find.