We found out on Wednesday that our builder took out a line of credit to finance another one of his projects and used our house as collateral (completely legal and within his right to do). As a result, there was a lien against our house. The loan pay off, lot release and mortgage release forms had not been completed or signed off on and, accordingly, we would not be able to close on Thursday as planned. (Six weeks after our initially scheduled closing date, by the way.)
After dropping off the kids at preschool, Joe and I drove to the company that held the line of credit and sat in the CFO’s office while she drew up and signed off on the paperwork clearing our builder’s loan. Our attorney spent the day chasing down title information. Our bank still hadn’t provided a turn around time for closing.
Due to staffing issues at our bank and with our builder’s attorneys we found out that both were too short staffed to close yesterday so even though we ran our asses off getting the paperwork cleared, we had no choice but to ride it out in the hotel again through the weekend. Fantastic. Regardless, I’m glad we did the legwork because had we not, I swear we wouldn’t have had all the pieces in place to close for another week to ten days. People were *snail mailing* each other documents when their buildings were less than 3 miles away from one another. Our presence in so many offices encouraged the use of couriers and sped things up considerably.
It has been clear throughout this process that our closing was only an emergency to us (duh). But sitting in someone’s office and explaining to them that you are living out of a hotel with 3 kids under 2 makes people a lot more compassionate.
By the time our bank got their poop together with wire transfer information and clearances, we had missed the ability to schedule a closing for Monday. Perhaps they would have been more expeditious had they been the ones footing the bill for our extended stay hotel, but I digress. Anyway, our closing is officially set for Tuesday morning. This whole experience has honestly been a nightmare. As a type-a, get it done kind of person, feeling helpless is not my forte. I’m not typically emotional, but I broke down crying several times this week. I blame the postpartum hormones.
We did our final walk through last night and except for a few very small, very insignificant punch list items, the house looks great and we’re thrilled with the end result. Now my priority is getting us unpacked as quickly as possible so that we can get the house ready for the holidays. For a while there I thought we’d be spending Christmas in an extended stay hotel.
