I think I'm going to scream. I need to rant for a moment. Here's why:
So I recently finished graduate school and took a job doing research at another university in another state. After finishing at the first place (end of May), I moved my wife and children to my parents' house temporarily because it's only 3 hours away from my new job, until we we could get a place and move to the new city. I've been staying with some friends in town during the week and going home on the weekend. It was supposed to be only until sometime in July when we could move into a house. To facilitate a quick transition, we started house hunting the first week of June and made an offer the second day of house hunting. In the next couple of weeks, we ended up switching houses and since July 1,we've been under contract to buy the house we're still trying to buy.
Now is where it gets to the soul-sucking part. Since we are first-time home buyers, we are using the Rural Housing program administered by the USDA. It turns out that since the housing melt-down banks won't loan money to anyone without a pay stub covering 30 days or 90 days, depending on the bank. That delays us a little, but we just had to wait until Aug. 1 when I would get that pay stub. Not a big deal, we should still be able to easily get into the house by the time my kids start school on Aug. 20. My mortgage broker tried to get them to take the application without that pay stub and process it, so that once I had the pay stub they could just put final approval on it and we could move forward. They wouldn't do it. So, I get the pay stub early, on July 29 and immediately send it off. The bank does their thing and sends it off to the USDA. Typically, the USDA has about a 1-3 day turn around, as it was at the beginning of July. Well, when they received our application on Aug. 3, that time had increased to 10 days. It actually took 11 days, so it came back today. And, they wanted a small change on the contract, so we had to get the real estate agent to draw up that addendum, my wife and I had to sign it, and then send it back. Now we're still waiting.
When we started all of this, we had PLENTY of time to get moved in and settled before the kids start school. Now, they start school in two days and we haven't even closed yet, or even know when we can close. The best case scenario now is that we can close on Friday which puts us taking possession of the house on Monday. I can take time off to move this week, but next week I have things at work such that I can't take any time off. Forget having any time to clean the house before moving in or paint the two rooms that are hideous. What's more, so that the kids don't miss the first few days of school, my wife and kids need to move down here tomorrow. We can't afford to stay that long in a hotel, so we'll be living in a campground until we can move into the house. Most of our camping equipment is buried at the back of the storage unit where we are storing most of our stuff, so unless we can borrow a tent we'll be sleeping under the stars. At least I can get to the sleeping bags and there's a nice campground with showers and flushing toilets not far from the house.
Oh, and to top it off, we're losing $75 per day that we don't close because the original contract had a deadline of Aug. 5.
Sorry for the rant, but I think I'm about at the end of my rope.
So I recently finished graduate school and took a job doing research at another university in another state. After finishing at the first place (end of May), I moved my wife and children to my parents' house temporarily because it's only 3 hours away from my new job, until we we could get a place and move to the new city. I've been staying with some friends in town during the week and going home on the weekend. It was supposed to be only until sometime in July when we could move into a house. To facilitate a quick transition, we started house hunting the first week of June and made an offer the second day of house hunting. In the next couple of weeks, we ended up switching houses and since July 1,we've been under contract to buy the house we're still trying to buy.
Now is where it gets to the soul-sucking part. Since we are first-time home buyers, we are using the Rural Housing program administered by the USDA. It turns out that since the housing melt-down banks won't loan money to anyone without a pay stub covering 30 days or 90 days, depending on the bank. That delays us a little, but we just had to wait until Aug. 1 when I would get that pay stub. Not a big deal, we should still be able to easily get into the house by the time my kids start school on Aug. 20. My mortgage broker tried to get them to take the application without that pay stub and process it, so that once I had the pay stub they could just put final approval on it and we could move forward. They wouldn't do it. So, I get the pay stub early, on July 29 and immediately send it off. The bank does their thing and sends it off to the USDA. Typically, the USDA has about a 1-3 day turn around, as it was at the beginning of July. Well, when they received our application on Aug. 3, that time had increased to 10 days. It actually took 11 days, so it came back today. And, they wanted a small change on the contract, so we had to get the real estate agent to draw up that addendum, my wife and I had to sign it, and then send it back. Now we're still waiting.
When we started all of this, we had PLENTY of time to get moved in and settled before the kids start school. Now, they start school in two days and we haven't even closed yet, or even know when we can close. The best case scenario now is that we can close on Friday which puts us taking possession of the house on Monday. I can take time off to move this week, but next week I have things at work such that I can't take any time off. Forget having any time to clean the house before moving in or paint the two rooms that are hideous. What's more, so that the kids don't miss the first few days of school, my wife and kids need to move down here tomorrow. We can't afford to stay that long in a hotel, so we'll be living in a campground until we can move into the house. Most of our camping equipment is buried at the back of the storage unit where we are storing most of our stuff, so unless we can borrow a tent we'll be sleeping under the stars. At least I can get to the sleeping bags and there's a nice campground with showers and flushing toilets not far from the house.
Oh, and to top it off, we're losing $75 per day that we don't close because the original contract had a deadline of Aug. 5.
Sorry for the rant, but I think I'm about at the end of my rope.
