Look at this nice, relaxing photo before you read on. I took this of my daughter and her rabbit Minerva McGonagall back in April for my baby's birthday. So cute. So loving. If Minerva looks frightened to you, it's because she despises being touched. But as my daughter's teacher said, my daughter has a tendency to kill people and things with kindness.
We spent Thursday evening packing and rounding up toys, clothes and getting suitcases for the week ready. One week left. We were supposed to close on the new house on Friday, June 6th. Yes, you caught the past tense correctly.
Our mortgage loan was from a secondary market and therefore had to follow the FannieMae/Freddy Mac guidelines. Apparently one of them is a tight regulation about finding comparable home sales for the appraisal. And wouldn't you know, there were no recently sold homes that had 8 bedrooms like the unique, rural home we were supposed to buy. (The family we are buying the home from is a second marriage and had a total of 12 children all together. It was Brady Bunch times 2!)
While every mortgage product has their own interpretation of the regulations and the underwriters can show their own discretion, I'm sure you can guess the outcome of this story: one week before close, I was called on a Friday afternoon and told that the mortgage fell through.
There is hope though; we may be able to find an in-house mortgage product with a local bank. They may be able to be more flexible with the terms for comparable home sales.
But for now, there are packed boxes everywhere, the children are asking when we'll be able to move, and since it's the weekend I can't even find an answer for them.
I know, I know...if there was a hashtag for this, it would be #firstworldproblems. All things considered, I feel pretty blessed that this is the worst problem I've had to face in a while. Compared to sickness, joblessness, homelessness, this is really a trivial issue.
What I find so frustrating is that we're only one week away after having signed the offer in February. We've had three and a half months for things to get worked but nobody realized the complication until one week until close. While we may be able to find another loan, we most certainly will not be closing and moving June 6th. There are lots of schedules and appointments to cancel or change and a whole loan process to go through again.
Does anybody else find the increase of government regulations suffocating? These restrictions on mortgages held to FannieMae/Freddie Mac standards trickle down from those federal regulations. Maybe I'm too grumpy right now to see how anybody benefits; I can only see the inconveniences.
Did I mention this is the second time this has happened to us? The first time happened a week before we moved to Portland, causing our purchase of a downtown condo to fall through. In retrospect, all ended well; a good friend scrambled to find an apartment for us to rent. We ended up being in a great location and had the time of our lives that year.
But having gone through that experience, we made sure we were well-prepared this time. We thought we were covered and yet, one week before close and we're left in the same situaion. Now that I've used up 600+ words in complaining, I won't speak of it again. Breathe in, breathe out, release. Things always work out for the best; I know that.
