The house is ours! But also closing date question

[SusanBAnthony]

We got it.  They accepted our offer.

The bad/weird news is that they will not close before April 28th.  They are relocating and can't get into their new house until then.  They absolutely put their foot down and said take it or leave it.  The date is fine with us (we are month-to-month in our rental) and hey, 3 more months to keep saving is always good, but I am pretty sure we won't be able to finalize any mortgage stuff until 8 weeks or less before closing.  So that makes me nervous.

I will post pics in a bit when I get time to upload them all to tinyurl.

[McGavin]

Congrats! What's your question? About the mortgage stuff?

[SusanBAnthony]

Feb 3, 2013 19:42:04 GMT -5 McGavin said:

Congrats! What's your question? About the mortgage stuff?

Yes.  Or, has anyone else dealt with a long closing, and did you have any problems that I should anticipate?

[SusanBAnthony]

Formal dining room aka sewing room:


Kitchen:  Granite counters are kind of busy, I wouldn't have chosen that color, but I am happy with that vs. a laminate that I have a higher chance of destroying.  No fancy kitchen counters are to be seen in our price range.  Appliances are all new, which made me happy.

[SusanBAnthony]

Living room:  Fireplace turns on and off with a light switch.  I need some kind of child-proof mechanism bc the kids will be turning it on and off all July long.


Stairs.  You can see the front door and study/den.  


Boring master bath:


Boring hall bath:  What is up with the hotel-like towel rack over the toilet?  Yikes.

[McGavin]

I worked in a real estate law office for a long time (in Ontario, some things are probably different) and we always had long closings. I would consider 3 months about normal. A lot of the mortgage papers might be last minute if your rates are changing but it's not a problem.

It looks awesome, you must be so excited! I'd love a sewing room not in my dark basement!

[SusanBAnthony]

Bonus room:  We offered to buy the pool table and they said no.  We will put a door on it at some point so it can be a real bedroom.




So in summary, the whole house is beige, boring, and builder basic.  But, we really like it, and are glad that the colors are non-offensive, so we can take our time to paint and make sure we get it right.  I have about a million little things I would like to do (and a few big ones like wood floors) but the budget is going to be very tight until I am working, so we will have to do things very slowly.  I am hoping for something like 200$ a month for house projects, and that will have to include paint and supplies like that, as well as furniture purchases.  Thrift stores and garage sales, here I come!  We currently are living in a rental a third of the size, so some rooms are going to be empty for quite a while.

[munkii]

Congrats, Susan! That house has great potential.

[McGavin]

It looks great, my mind would racing with all the possibilities!

[april37]

Great house, congrats! We had 2.5 months from offer to closing. The only thing we encountered was that we had to wait before we could lock in our interest rate.

Once they find out how expensive it is to move a pool table, they may come back and want you to buy it!

[SusanBAnthony]

Feb 3, 2013 20:05:32 GMT -5 april37 said:

Great house, congrats! We had 2.5 months from offer to closing. The only thing we encountered was that we had to wait before we could lock in our interest rate.

Once they find out how expensive it is to move a pool table, they may come back and want you to buy it!

Yah, I don't think we can lock a rate until 8 weeks before (if not 6 weeks).  But, interest rates are up right now, so we are hoping they will go down a little in the next month.

Sadly, I think an employer is relocating them, so they probably don't have to pay for the pool table to be moved  We were *sure* they would sell it to us (or heck, give it to us!) because seriously how do you even get a pool table down a flight or stairs and out a door?  I guess the legs might unscrew but it must weigh a million pounds.

[boiler717]

Congrats!! It sounds like you have great plans. We were able to rate lock 6 months out.

[rugbywife]

We had a long closing too (we bought in late March I think, didn't move til June 29th). We didn't have any problems at all (and we closed on our sale and our purchase on the same day, on the busiest closing day of the year). We had our mortgage rate locked when we signed. But we are in Ontario too, so maybe it's different. We wanted a long closing because we hasn't sold when we bought.

[McGavin]

Feb 3, 2013 21:17:32 GMT -5 rugbywife said:

We had a long closing too (we bought in late March I think, didn't move til June 29th). We didn't have any problems at all (and we closed on our sale and our purchase on the same day, on the busiest closing day of the year). We had our mortgage rate locked when we signed. But we are in Ontario too, so maybe it's different. We wanted a long closing because we hasn't sold when we bought.

The last Friday in June was the worst!!!!  But our deposit to the bank with all the mortgage checks was very impressive!!!!

[rugbywife]

Feb 3, 2013 21:42:59 GMT -5 McGavin said:

Feb 3, 2013 21:17:32 GMT -5 rugbywife said:

We had a long closing too (we bought in late March I think, didn't move til June 29th). We didn't have any problems at all (and we closed on our sale and our purchase on the same day, on the busiest closing day of the year). We had our mortgage rate locked when we signed. But we are in Ontario too, so maybe it's different. We wanted a long closing because we hasn't sold when we bought.

The last Friday in June was the worst!!!!  But our deposit to the bank with all the mortgage checks was very impressive!!!!

Yeah, the legal assistant at our lawyers was quite busy....she was writing up our papers on the Sunday before we closed, she had so many closing a to prepare for that week. We didn't do it intentionally, it's just the way it worked out.

[Deleted]

That is a pretty blank slate. It looks great. Congrats!

[lightbulbsun]

We had a 5 month closing (not a short sale, the seller just had a lot of issues, and then left the country...). The only main issue we had was locking in the mortgage. We actually had it locked and then it expired, so we had to do it again, and sign some papers again.

[Susie]

We had a similar situation - and actually a longer escrow period.  We went under contract in May (a few years ago) and didn't close until September.  We spent a little more than 4 months in escrow.  Our sellers were building, and put their house on the market when they broke ground.  It was a hotter market than they anticipated, and we went into contract a week into their build.

We went through 3 or 4 mortgage commitments in that time; they kept expiring because we did a 60 day lock, then a 30 day, then another 30 day (I think?), then we switched lenders (with the same broker) for a better rate, and then we finally closed.  It sucked, because we had to get the mortgage commitment in May per the contract, but no lender would lock a rate through our anticipated close date.  It also sucked that the best rate we locked at was the commitment in May that expired in July.  Oh well.  We refi'ed two years later anyway.

The only alternative would've been to close early and rent the house back to the sellers, but that isn't perfect either.  A lot of homeowners insurance policies require that the house be owner-occupied sooner than we would have been able to.  Plus we ran into a problem where our sellers were delaying our closing with us because they were holding up closing on their build with nitpicky things with the builder.  After a couple weeks of delay (after 4 months in escrow), we said enough was enough, it's time to close.  We would've had a much tougher time holding them to the timeline if we were just their landlords.  Evictions take too much time.

[SusanBAnthony]

DH absolutely refuses to do the rent back to the sellers thing, for the reasons you outlined Susie. The mortgage commitment but not being able to lock a rate seems like it will be the only issue, and hopefully rates will come down a little in the next month of 3.

[pitterwoo]

good for you, congrats!

[tarheels]

I'm so glad you've found a house!!

I think that kitchen would look lovely with a mocha paint color on the walls, something picked out of the granite. Kinda like what I did in our second house. It was all khaki before, and that little bit of color really helped things without overwhelming the space.

[ktzmoh]

Congrats! That's great. Sorry about the long closing time - hopefully it will work out in your favor in the long run.

[lemondrop]

Feb 3, 2013 19:54:00 GMT -5 McGavin said:

I worked in a real estate law office for a long time (in Ontario, some things are probably different) and we always had long closings. I would consider 3 months about normal. A lot of the mortgage papers might be last minute if your rates are changing but it's not a problem.

It looks awesome, you must be so excited! I'd love a sewing room not in my dark basement!

My experience (not in a law office) in the US is that 3 months is pretty normal.

[heygrey]

Congrats! You will have so much fun decorating that space, its such a perfect blank slate.

[kitty]

We closed in one month and that was stressful just because there is so so much paperwork now (and BOA sucks of course). Hopefully the rates will go back down.

I think the house looks like it has a ton of potential to make your own! We have similar granite in our kitchen and I feel the same way about it. It does camouflage crumbs well. I think it looked a lot nicer once we changed the floors to a darker color.

[downtoearth]

We closed 60+ days out from signing and were still able to keep our rate (but our broker made sure to check it before we closed so if it went lower, we could use that).

Granite is nice and the house looks great. Oh and one way to combact busy granite is to remove the granite backsplash and paint the wall behind (i.e. no backsplash) or use a matte or simple tile. I saw it on a blog once, but can't remember who did that. Was it one of you girls?

Kind of like this...