I should have just made this part of the last blog post, but to avoid dragging it down with some of the less fun details, here's one of the first crazy things we encountered with buying this house.
As mentioned, there were no appliances of any kind in the house. When we applied for the loan, the appraiser had to come, then give his report to the lender with his findings. With a conventional loan, at the very least, you have to have a stove. We opted to do a non-conventional loan to help us get around the issue. When the inspector's report came in, there were two flags on it that caused us no small amount of grief. The first was that the garage door would not operate. Well, we knew that. It was off it's track and most of the rollers were gone. So yeah, we knew that. But we planned on fixing it. However, there's some clause that I'm still not 100% sure I really understand. Basically, in order for the lender to sign off on the loan, they have to be able to gain access to the property - besides the front door. I do not know why. The loan officer said something about livability, but that didn't jive with me either. Lots of people live without a garage. Or only use their garage for storage. But whatever. Point being, we would have to fix the garage door before they approved the loan. Yup. But that was only part one.
The report also noted that we didn't have any appliances. Supposedly, according to this report, we would also need to install a stove, have it rechecked (which we would have to pay for), and then if all was in working order, then they would sign off.
Okay, hold on. To say I was angry is a little bit of an understatement. Though I will say I remained rather calm while arguing about this on the phone with the loan officer. First off, we specifically got the non-conventional loan to avoid this nonsense. When I explained this, she hemmed and hawed and just kept saying that the type of loan had nothing to do with it. Um yes, actually. It does. I may not know how to do her job, but that much I do know. Secondly, in what universe does it make sense on ANY level for a prospective buyer to have to purchase a stove, pay to have it installed, then pay to have it reinspected BEFORE the loan is even approved? The house isn't mine. Why would I put any money into it? She suggested buying a cheap junk stove that technically works and then taking it out after the inspection. At least she agreed with me that I wouldn't want to buy a nice one and install it because, well, you know, the house isn't mine. Uh huh. Sure, buying a cheap stove would be one solution - but it's still 100% wasted money. We went rounds on this. All she could say was that "that's just how it is."
So I called my agent and explained what was going on. He was baffled. And angry. He backed me up on everything, but ultimately I ended up telling the two of them to work it out because I was not going to play the go between.
In the midst of this, the bank's agent got some crossed info and was under the impression that we wanted to bank to do x,y and z, which they had stated in the contract they would not do, therefore, let's negate the contract. What?! No, no, no. I don't even remember what that non-sense was about, but we resolved it thankfully.
After some intense back and forth between our agent and the loan officer, it turns out that oh - yeah, I guess you don't have to have a stove. The way he wrote it on the report made it sound like you did. "We had to go up several levels of command to resolve this one, but we did resolve it for you." Oh, how sweet of you to do your job. Sorry, sorry. I know that's not Christ-like of me. But I was so frustrated. There were a number of things like this where the loan officer would make comments like how she had gone out of her way to get things done, like she was doing us some great favor, when really, it's just what should have been done in the first place. I am grateful that they resolved it though, and I'm grateful that our real estate agent basically threatened to walk from using them as our loan source if they didn't resolve this. We did, however still have to fix the garage. If the sale didn't go through, we would have lost the money spent to fix it. Then we had to let them know it was ready for reinspection, and pay for them to come back out and prove that yes, the garage now opened.
What was that argument she made about the appliances before it was resolved? Again the livability thing. She said, "Let's pretend you got into the house and couldn't afford to buy appliances. Then a few months down the road you go into foreclosure and the process starts again." Really? Do people buy foreclosures and go months without putting in a fridge, stove, microwave, etc? Does this actually happen? Cause this sounds like the biggest piece of made up junk I've ever heard. And let's just go along with this scenario. Let's pretend we lived here for months without putting in any of these things and then went into foreclosure. Well, it wouldn't be in any different shape that it already is, now would it? So why should I be responsible to pay to install these things in a home that isn't even mine yet? Not just not mine, but not even prospectively mine?! Oi yoi yoi! The whole thing was baffling.
But it resolved. Despite my anger and frustration, our Heavenly Father was merciful in helping us through this. There were several "special" things that happened, but we felt that everything would resolve and we would get the house - it was just a matter of when and at what cost. We knew that this was the house for us and that Heavenly Father would help us. And no doubt about it, He did.
Craziness. Thanks for sharing
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