myJaxonIf we don’t go crazy once in a while, we’ll all go crazy. - Hawkeye

Jesse ranted about this a little while ago, but now it’s my turn.

We decided to buy a house instead of renewing our apartment lease. We’re both ready to have someplace be ours. Someplace we can build upon, live, and get comfortable with. I know Jesse is getting tired of moving and we really need to get Ian into his own room. With this in mind, we started looking for houses back in February and we found one in March. We put an offer in on March 19th and we’re still waiting to hear whether or not the bank accepted our offer. You heard me write, it’s been 3 months since we put in the offer and they still haven’t given us an answer in writing. When we put the offer in, we asked for an answer within 72 hours and a close date of May 15th. The owners accepted the offer right away, but because it was lower than what they still owed on the house, they had to get it approved by their bank. So we knew we had a good chance of getting the house, so we stopped looking until we heard yes or no.

Three weeks go by and we still haven’t heard anything from the bank, so we call and find out what’s going on. We’re finally told that the offer has gone to a negotiator who will have the final sale, but it’s not going there until the 26th. So we have to wait another two weeks before another guy will even look at it. Fine, whatever, at least we know something is going on.

At this point, we’re in May already and we still haven’t heard anything from the negotiator. He’s supposedly has had the offer on his desk for two weeks and our close date is coming up. We still haven’t heard anything. Finally, we hear that the negotiator has requested a Buyers Purchase Opinoin. Basically, he’s asking other realty agencies to assess the house to see if our asking price is reasonable. This makes sense to me. The BPO is set up and has been done and we’re told that the negotiator will have the report within 3 business days. We’re getting closer to my frustration level at this point. The negotiator has 7-10 business days to look at a sheet of paper(s) to determine whether it is good or not and he takes every one of those days. The 10th day is a Thursday and we still don’t hear anything until the next day, the 11th day.

We’re finally told that everything looks good and we should get a lender set up (which we had already done three months ago), but now the negotiator has to have someone else sign off on it. The guy who was suppose to have the final say is now saying he has to give the file to someone else and that we should have an answer by the following Monday. Finally, we’re getting some where.

At this point, I should mention that both the sellers and the seller’s realtor have been calling this bank on a daily basis to get them to hurry up with their decision. We’re not the only ones anxious about this offer. The house is close to foreclosure and the sellers know that they are lucky to have an offer on their house in this housing market. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the house, but it doesn’t have a garage and that’s generally a negative thing for most people. We’re fine with that since we do only have the one car and Jesse doesn’t mind shoveling off the snow.

Now, Monday rolls around and we don’t hear anything. By 3pm that day, the Realtor is trying to get a hold of someone and she’s been put on hold for 30 minutes before she has to go. Tuesday comes around and still no word, so she gets back on the phone with the bank and sits on hold for 2 HOURS and finally gets someone. She’s told she’ll have an answer by 9pm that night. Wednesday comes around and another 2 hours hold session and she’s told she’ll have an answer by 5pm.

Yeah, this place hasn’t really been good on their deadlines. We still didn’t hear anything by Wednesday at 5pm and that night I told Frank earlire that day that if we don’t hear anything, then we needed to start looking again. Jesse and I are both getting frustrated and the lack of activity in finding a house was starting to get to us. Thursday comes around and since there still wasn’t an answer, Frank sent us some houses, we looked at them and picked out 4 to see on Saturday. Friday comes around and we’re finally given an answer. Sorta. We’re told that the bank is faxing a pre-approval letter to the sellers. Our offer has been pre-approved and while I’m not sure what that means, it gave Frank enough hope that we called off the house hunt.

And finally, we receive some good news this past Monday. The bank sent an approval letter to the sellers. The bank approved the offer. Of course, this was all conveyed verbally and we still haven’t seen it in writing. So after waiting 3 months on a yes or no answer, we have a 90% yes.

I haven’t even mentioned the beautiful part either. The bank that took 3 months to give us a decision wants to close within 15 days. 15 days! They take their sweet time in getting us an answer, but they want it down ASAP. It normally takes 30-45 days to close on a house and they want to do it in half the time?! Granted, Jesse and I want to be in our house by the end of the month since our lease is up, so we’re fine with that, but just the fact that they said that is appalling. I laughed when I heard that. It still bugs me that these people who constantly told us they would give us answers by certain dates and then continually didn’t give any answers by their own deadlines want us to be out in less time than it normally takes for a mortgage to go through. They are extremely lucky that we have our act together and have given everything over to our mortgage lender and were only waiting on the purchase agreement. As it is, we still don’t have a signed purchase agreement. We’re told we have a house, but it’s not in writing yet.

I’m excited about getting a house, but I haven’t spread the news before this because I’m afraid the stupid bank is going to come back and say they’ve changed their mind. That whoever told us the offer was approved wasn’t allowed to do that or didn’t have the authority to approve it or whatever. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I know it’s a little pessimistic, but with this bank, it really wouldn’t surprise me.

Since I have been giving this bank a glowing review, I should probably say who it is so other people will know the crap they dish out. The bank is Indy Mac and I think it’s out of California. I’ve never heard of it, but Jesse did a Google search on it a couple of days ago and found some interesting articles about them. He actually found a forum where some of the staff talk about working at Indy Mac and some of their underwriting process (and none of it is good). Another site, Planet Feedback, has an article where someone was trying to cash out their $80k CDs and the bank wouldn’t release the funds to them. If you want even more reading material, just check out this RSS feed. I have yet to see an article stating this bank is any good.

As it stands right now, we’re on track for purchasing this house, but I won’t get excited until I know it’s in writing. Now I’m done. I can’t think about this any more. I really want this house, so I’m hoping everything comes through with the inspection on Tuesday.