Today was our New House Orientation and walk through. I went in, with a good attitude, but prepared to be let down in sorts. I don't mean this as bad as it sounds, but I was prepared for flaws, after all, as we all know, there is no such thing as perfection. Perfection, however, is what we all seem to want, especially when it comes to things that really matter to us.
I stopped going over there after my last post about the house just because it was becoming a negative thing for me. Seeing flaws- once you see one you start to look for more and then before long I was upset. BUT, the best analogy I can give you about the house is this:
I make spaghetti all the time and everyone in this house loves it, never any complaints and we all clear our plates every time. Every time I make it, the recipe is the same. I got my recipe down several years ago- no tweakin' it now! :) Anyways, as I'm making it, one kid comes in and sees me cutting onions, and says "I hate onions, you aren't putting THOSE in the spaghetti are you?" Then the next kid comes in and sees the bell pepper, and says "I hate bell peppers. You aren't putting THOSE in the spaghetti are you?" Then your husband comes in and sees the tomatoes and says "I hate fresh tomatoes, you aren't putting THOSE in the spaghetti are you?" They're all so convinced they don't like something, that they don't even realize that once it's done and I'm given an opportunity to do MY 'thing', that they indeed DO like those things...at least in spaghetti. :)
See what I'm saying. If you come in to a project while it's still being worked on, before everyone is given a chance to fix mistakes, and put it all together, you have to realize that you are in a work of progress. I had a hard time with that.
Anyways, we went over there today and walked in and my jaw dropped. HoP is absolutely gorgeous. They had been in there all over the past week fixing, mending, and finishing our house and I couldn't have been more surprised or pleased with the job they did. They fixed things and completely re-did things that I hadn't even noticed- a small seam in the wood on the fireplace, a piece of flooring they didn't like that I still have no clue why, tile in the back splash they say was uneven- I had looked it over multiple times and never saw a thing wrong with it, they went crazy in there!
They have a 10 page, 300 point inspection list that gets done twice, by two different people. Steve, our project manager gets the chance to go in there first and go through the list. He then has all the work done. Then another person from the warranty division comes in and does the exact same list again. Evaluating the entire home again, as well as any repairs that may have been done. Then Steve goes back in and goes over the list a third time, making sure all further repairs pointed out by the warranty guys, which are ruthless, have been handled.
That then brings us to our part, today. Not only was the day spent learning how to run all of our new systems and appliances and such, but also gave us the chance to go back over that same 300 point list and tape anything we still didn't like at that point. We taped a whole 2-3 items. There was a squeak in the floor in Bella's room and then a seam in one of the dining room sconces. I thought it was a crack, but it was just where they had joined the blown glass together- I asked if they would just turn it, so the seam was facing in, I didn't expect it to be replaced, so that was easy. They also had a few things taped that still needed completion. One of our windows had a minor scratch in it, so they have ordered a new one and that will be here within a week and then there are a few paint touch ups still, but all in all there was very little to be corrected and that is amazing.
So that was the good news- the bad news is that I also got a phone call from the mortgage company yesterday. They messed up. Despite me having told them and even emailed them regarding the fact that both Louis and I had foreclosed homes in the past- it STILL slipped through the cracks. So here's the deal- Louis foreclosed on a house in Seattle in 2008 or 2009. It then sat there, completely empty with no one doing anything about it until 2014. Apparently Bank of America said they 'lost the title.' Anyways, Louis tells them no problem, since it was still legally his house, he was just going to go back and get it and have a real estate agent sale it. Well, within about 24 hours the title was amazingly found and the trustee sale was instantly under way- the date of sale was 11/23/2014. We both knew we had to wait three years from the date of the trustee sale in order to qualify for an FHA loan again if that was the route we wanted to go. So, last February, we started working with a mortgage company and we were told pretty much what we already knew and that we needed to wait until November 2017. No problem. Then one day in September, Louis gets an email- it was a credit notification saying that 7 years had elapsed on his Bank of America home mortgage account so it was being removed from his credit report. We both wondered- since it was off his credit report, were we good to go? I emailed our original mortgage lady and she didn't respond quick enough, so then I called the current mortgage company we are working with now. Explained the situation and asked the question of whether we were good to get things started a few months ahead of the three year mark on the trustee sale. We were told to send in an application and we could go from there. So that's exactly what we did and we were told it shouldn't be an issue. They even emailed me saying the underwriter wanted to talk about my foreclosure, even though I'm not on the loan. At that point I took the time once again to explain BOTH of our foreclosures, luckily documented via email, and it STILL was told it wasn't a problem. So fast forward to today, three days before our closing, and there Gabe is on my phone sighing, saying we have a problem. He wanted to know about Louis' foreclosure. Huh? Why weren't they told about it? Why wasn't it declared? etc. I was shocked. What did they even mean? Long story short- they ordered the FHA number and started all of our paperwork one month prior to that three year mark, and apparently it's just now an issue. It's been through the underwriting process I don't know how many times and they say it just 'never pulled up' until they did one last QC audit and suddenly it pulls up on that one? I don't buy it. I think someone isn't doing their job and it slipped through the cracks somewhere. Luckily, I've kept every. single. email and have it documented that I told them about this not only plenty of time in advance, but the fact that I did indeed tell them about it, up until I found the email it was just me saying yes I did tell you, yes I did tell you....etc.
So, what it means for us is this- a delayed closing. The mortgage company is pretty sure they can get it done by the end of the month, but we were pretty disappointed. Not a whole lot to be done, but sigh, and move on, but we were all ready and good to go for Friday. Hopefully, maybe, possibly, some sort of good fortune will come our way and things will align and it will still be Friday, but we have accepted that it, more than likely, will be Wednesday. They have to get new FHA numbers ordered and assigned to our stuff and then apparently the appraiser back out there to do another appraisal. The mortgage company has said they will be covering the cost of this appraisal due to the oversight on their part. At least that was good- they easily could have told us we had to pay another $600 and what else could we have done, but pay it? So, here we sit and wait, on the edge, for a date when we can finally go close.
