December 2015 - Againt All Odds, We Bought a House

December started out rough with a stomach bug for Pierscen. It was really bad. He has thrown up a couple of times before, but he's never had a bug like this. He puked and puked and puked. And slept and slept and slept. It was not a fun bug. But thankfully he made a full recovery. 

Back to the park! We spent a lot of time at the park near our new home. Well, we spent a lot of time at our new house period. The title agency called the bank and the bank called us with a signing date of December 8th. We couldn't do any real work on the house before then, but I did go over a few times to clean and/or meet with contractors. 

Cruising the back yard and more pictures of the house. Some of them are pretty much the same as before, but oh well. 

With Christmas just around the corner, we told Pierscen he could ask Santa for three things. He thought long and hard about those items, then he wrote his letter with a detailed drawing of what he wanted.

Those different colored lines that are all connected are Lincoln Logs.

In the center of the picture drawn in yellow is what looks like a rolling pin. This represented Playdough tools. The scribbles all over the page is a puzzle. I think he did a pretty awesome job. 

I can't get over how adorable the envelope is. He was pretty proud of himself. 

We visited the zoo and gardens, of course. This picture below was pretty funny. He climbed on the komodo dragon and then announced that in case he started to fall off, he would just stick his fingers in his nose and that would keep him up. Haha

One of Pierscen's favorite things about the botanical gardens is the miniature trains that cruise around. Some of the trains change periodically, and below is one such train. This particular visit each little car had a little stuffed animal in them. It was pretty cute. On other visits, they carried giant bugs advertising the "bugarium" that was set to open that fall. I think it opened in November, but they didn't really finish it until spring time. It is pretty cool though. 

The big day finally arrived - a double duty big day because it was signing day AND Devry's 1st birthday. Ryan had originally been scheduled to be out of town on business that day, but was able to rearrange things so we could sign. We started the day with breakfast at Denny's. Here's the birthday girl sporting her birthday outfit from Grandma:

After dropping Ryan off at work, Devry had her one year check up. I cannot find her stats, but she is tiny and healthy. The shots always stink, but she was a champion. 

Signing was supposed to be at 11. As we left the doctors, I thought it was strange that I hadn't heard anything to confirm this. I texted our loan agent to see what she knew. She gave me the title agency number and told me to give them a call. When I reached the girl that was in charge of our paperwork, we got some interesting news. She had no idea what I was talking about. She wanted to know who had called to schedule the signing because "we" meaning, "they" weren't ready. She had documents that she hadn't even requested yet that had to be there in order to sign. She was not kind about it. 

I was flustered, understandably, and near tears. But this news was only PART of why I was emotionally on edge. 

Let's rewind to the previous night. I received a text message from our real estate agent stating that he had just gone over the closing paperwork and noticed that his commissions were WAY below what he expected. Granted, for a foreclosure, they don't typically get their normal commission. That's because the bank is paying it, not the buyers and the bank tries to pay as little as possible on everything. I will admit that yes, our agent was getting the short end of the stick. But it had nothing to do with us. We have no control over it. In this text he asked if Ryan and I would be willing to pay out of pocket to "make up the difference" in what he would normally get paid. Something to the tune of a couple thousand dollars. 

I was so shocked by the text that I didn't even know what to do. My heart was hammering and I felt sick to my stomach. A. Because I didn't want to shell out that much extra money, and B. Because something about him asking for it this way felt really wrong. I showed the text to Ryan because I was so frazzled by it and he was livid. Absolutely livid. He told me not to respond to him. So I didn't. That night. 

The morning of signing I texted him back telling him he needed to talk to Ryan. In the mean time, Ryan called his brother-in-law's dad who is also a real estate agent and told him what was happening. We learned that asking for more money like this is illegal and that our agent could actually lose his license for it. If we had signed a contract with him, then there likely would have been a clause stating that if commissions were less than expected, then yes, we would have to make up the difference. But we didn't. And you don't have to sign one. In addition to all this, we learned that if we did pay our agent out of pocket, the bank could come after us for that money because everything has to be in contract. There is no skimming around the edge on this. 

Knowing this made me feel a lot better, but at the same time, we were still in a pretty awkward position. I honestly loved our agent up until this moment. He did so much for us. And I felt horrible that he wasn't getting paid more. But it wasn't our fault! 

Ryan began communicating with our agent and at first tried to put him down softly, but our agent wasn't taking no very well. So Ryan called him out on it. Told him we did our research and softballed the fact that we could report him for this and he would lose his license. Seriously guys, it sucked. He was a fantastic agent all the way up to this point. I understand that this is how he makes his living. I get it. But man. This was not good. He back pedaled a bit, understandably, but still made suggestions like we could make payments over time, or do gift cards or something weird like that. But Ryan stuck to him guns and said no. It wasn't just on our agent. If we paid him, we could be in serious legal trouble. So it was as much about protecting ourselves as it was about the principle of the thing. 

Fast forward to siting outside Devry's pediatric appointment. The title agency claimed that they no idea we were supposed to be signing and that they weren't ready. Remember what that meant for a rate lock extension? Did I tell the title girl about this very fact? Yup. What did she say? It wasn't her problem. 

So I called our loan agent. This is where I will give her all the credit due for "having our best interest at heart." She was livid. She had spoken to the title agency. The agency was the one that set up the signing time. Best she would figure was that the title had messed up and was trying to shift blame. We discussed at length the problem we were having with our real estate agent. She confirmed that he could lose his license for that stunt and urged us not to pay. Then she said she would call the title agency and figure out what was going on. 

After a while she called back and found that yes, it was the title's fault. There was a form from the HOA that they needed that she had never bothered to request. To get it expedited would of course cost US money. But she desperately did not want us to get hit with another rate lock extension - probably because she didn't want to face the wrath of Diana. Haha, just kidding. She genuinely was a nice lady and she didn't want us to have to pay for junk that wasn't our fault. As it turns out, in addition to our HOA paperwork that was missing, our real estate agent was throwing such a tizzy over the commission (again, not that I blame him) that it was stalling our paperwork. Largely because according to the new laws we are supposed to have the closing documents in hand at least three days before we are allowed to sign. So if anything changes, that would push back the date. I told her that Ryan had had to rearrange his work schedule and that he was supposed to be out of town that day, etc. The whole thing was one giant vortex of problems. 

At this point there was nothing to do, except cry a little, and let Ryan know. And then wait. And wait. 

I went back to Sharon's and prayed and hoped and cried, and screamed (inwardly) and did my best to go about the day like it was any other. 

Around 4 pm, when we were getting ready to go pick up Ryan, I got a call from our loan agent saying we could come sign the paperwork. She said there were a few things that still needed to happen, but that we could sign our end of things and that would help us to evade the nasty rate lock extension. 

Prayers are answered! I picked up Ryan and didn't even tell him where we were going. I just drove to the title agency. He was super surprised, but very happy! 

The HOA documents were expedited, at our expense, but they were there. Thankfully our real estate agent was NOT there. We were still a little too upset to want to see him in person. Miraculously, they were able to adjust some things to get our agent closer to what he deserved. It may have come out of something the bank was going to cover for us, I don't know, but regardless, he got what he deserved and I am grateful for that. At least he hasn't harassed us for more money since. Our loan agent was there, which was a little awkward, because at the end she had us fill out a form rating her and the loan institution we had used. I felt like that was super inappropriate for her to be there for that. Ryan answered a few of the questions but left the harder "would you use this agent or this institution again" questions to me. She was awesome in a lot of ways, but I ended up saying no to both. The institution mostly because there were so many extra hoops and mailing info back and forth - OH! 

That was another issue I didn't mention. We went with this bank because they are a bigger name and we figured they we would be like a well oiled machine. Quite the opposite. Because they were so big, all there departments are spread through several different states. You sign something in Albuquerque, and it get shipped off to somewhere in Arizona where it has to be processed, then mailed back. (Which takes MANY precious days when you are on the clock). In the mean time, they couldn't get our address right so things were going to the wrong place, (they sent it to Casper) no matter how many times we tried to fix it. Wow it was special. Yeah - and that was during one of the time sensitive portions of the paperwork too. Let's send all your info to a different state to a home we know you just sold! Ugh. When we bought our house in Casper, we went with a local bank and had ZERO issues. If we ever move again, I plan on going with the little guy. 

Anyway, so aside from feeling super awkward about filling out a "no I won't use your services again" form in front of the person it was for... 

We closed on our house! 

Sort of. Once we finished it was past normal business hours. The bank would sign in the morning and then once it was recorded, then it would officially be ours. 

But that was good enough for us. We did it!!! We got our house!!! 

We celebrated by driving down the street to Jimmy John's for dinner followed by Menchies for dessert. 

What a night! What an experience! In summing up this adventure... wow. Just wow.

The next morning I had some balloons for Devry to play with to try and give more attention to her birthday.

We nervously waited for the official "it's yours" message to arrive because they told us we were absolutely not allowed to "do anything" to it until it was ours, but I had already scheduled painters to start that day. Or someone. I have been discussing with Ryan who it was and we aren't 100% sure, but point being - something was supposed to happen that day. Haha. We had tried to schedule a furnace tune up, but they wouldn't even schedule it until I was the official owner. So I know I called them and set that up the next day, but I don't think it was those guys we were waiting for. It doesn't matter. We got the message that it had been recorded and we were officially able to change the locks! Woot! Woot!

That night we celebrated Dev's birthday with a traditional messy dessert. This time I opted for an eclair. Not too big, but delicious and plenty messy. :) 

It's good to be one! This little girl adds so much joy to our lives. She is happy, energetic, sweet, undemanding, and full of life. I can't imagine our lives without her. I feel bad that so much for this huge mile stone was overshadowed by the chaos of buying our house, but hey - how many one-year-old's can say they got a house for their birthday? ;)

Stay tuned for the first big changes in the house. AND... if you thought the house drama was over with signing... boy were you wrong!