On March 12th, Monica and I closed on our first home. At least that€™s according to the official documents. If you€™re just joining us, you may want to read part one in the series, which sets up the following chain of events. This is final article of a two part series.
A couple of weeks go by without even a phone call from anyone. Monica and I proceed to head over to the house, where low and behold we find the house unlocked. We head in to inspect when we find that the house is being shown, nearly four weeks after we had an agreement. Our realtor explains that they€™re still taking bids as the house hasn€™t been set to pending in the MLS, and that she had requested they remove the lockboxes which the selling realtor did not do. I convinced her to take the key out of the lock box.
Five weeks had passed by, and we were no closer to making this deal reality. After being brushed off by the selling realtor (‘you€™ll just have to wait, the bank has a glitch’) and our realtor doing nothing (‘I can€™t talk to the bank, that€™s the selling realtors job’), I took matters into my own hands. After digging up which bank owned this house (of which neither realtor would tell me), I contacted Option One Mortgage Corporation. If you€™ve never heard of Option One, they€™re basically a sub-prime lender formerly owned by H&R Block which lost loads of money and recently sold.
I called Option One. I spoke with one of their reps about the problem and was told that indeed there was a glitch within their system that was preventing the contract from being generated and sent. When I asked them when this would be resolved, the reply was dismal: it€™s hit of miss; could be a week or could be a month, they just didn€™t know. Undeterred, I asked how I might help resolve the glitch, and was told that the selling realtor should be working with an asset manager to resolve the problem. When I asked who this asset manager was, I was rebuked and told only realtors talk to asset managers. It didn€™t matter, I had all the information I needed.
Knowing full well that I needed to talk to an asset manager, I again called the main Option One switchboard, and one by one, went through their directory leaving messages. Eventually I was bound to find someone who could fix this problem. I then dug around on the web and found email addresses, and sent kind emails asking for assistance.
After a day full of phone calls and emails, I sent an email to our realtor explaining that if the selling realtor Ken didn€™t get on the ball, so help me I€™d close this deal without him and he could kiss his commission goodbye.
Two days later the contract showed up. Coincidence? I think not; executive email blasting and phone calls has been shown to work (see Consumerist). Once we had signed the contract, we told them we needed to close as quickly as possible; both Monica and I had put in our notice with our landlords based on the original close date, and the clock was ticking.
The contract called for an exact amount to be sent to the escrow service in Southern California to kick things off. Again, no problem. Cut check, gave to our realtor to send to escrow along with contract. Called the loan people, said get ready to cash out, send everything over to document department. Everything was rolling.
After the loan paperwork went to their documents department for finalization and sending off to escrow, we received a call asking for verification of income and a letter detailing mismatching addresses on a credit card I had. This severely irked me; this could have been done a months ago. We had offered to provide tax returns, pay stubs, the whole nine yards. They said it wasn€™t needed. Even now, they didn€™t want those things, they just wanted to talk to the place we worked. After having called our places of work, they asked for no verification of our actual gross pay. I could have given them friends€™ phone numbers and they wouldn€™t have known the difference. This delayed the paperwork a few days.
Finally after much delay the paperwork just needed to be signed and notarized. I called our realtor to set it up, but she had become worthless at this point. She didn€™t know who to call, and although she had the escrows name and number, offered no assistance. She instead points us to a local title company whom is supposedly the agent for the escrow company. Turns out they don€™t have the paperwork but are supposed to transfer the title later and offer no assistance.
I get on the phone to the escrow and schedule a mobile notary to bring the paperwork to us for signing. To our amazement, the final wire amount for our down seems heavily inflated. After a call to the escrow, the error is found: they hadn€™t received the good faith payment with the original signed counteroffer contract. I call our realtor and sure enough she hadn€™t sent it. Needless to say, we were not pleased. I give her the address and tell her it needs to be there tomorrow.
After wiring the remaining money overnight, our side of the deal was complete. All paperwork had been signed, the money in place, insurance setup, and we were good to go. As per the contract, the house was set to close just five days later (five days after the approval of our loan). We begin making preparations to move into the house March 1st, two days after closing. However, the house didn€™t close on February 28th. Remember I said the house closed on March 12th? Yes, sure enough the selling realtor and the bank had misplaced the actual title, and could not transfer. You heard that right, they wouldn€™t take the loan money or our money. After two days of phone calls to the title company and the bank, nothing had been done; the title company lied to us on several occasions, at which point the escrow service stepped in to resolve the matter.
With the bank in breech of their own contract terms, our realtor and the selling realtor having been completely worthless in the process, the title company basically lying to us, we decided to take matters into our own hands. After verifying that the insurance start date was in fact February 28th we convinced our realtor to give us the key to the house. For those that don€™t know, they€™re not supposed to give you the key until you close.
First thing we did: changed all the locks. It wasn€™t hard; called the locksmith and he didn€™t even want proof we owned the house, just the key. He re-keyed all the locks within an hour. As a bonus, he also took the bank and realtor key boxes off the door. Next, we setup all the services. Within a day, every service in the house (water, electric, gas, satellite, phone, internet) was on and in our name. Again, it€™s amazing how little you need to prove you actually own or are living at the house; in only one case was I asked to show paperwork, and even then I didn€™t show it. I said I had forgotten my escrow docs in the car (which was true) that I€™d run out and go get them, and that was all the social engineering it took. No need they said, we believe you.
It was at this point we moved in the weekend of March 1st. I stopped calling the title company and the bank, I stopped calling the realtors and we decided if they want to screw around they could knock yourselves out. We had paid them, and as far as I was concerned we owned the house. I feigned interest via email but I stopped the hard push.
When March 12th rolled around and the house actually closed, we didn€™t hear from anyone. Robin the loan officer had told us March 10th that the loan had funded, but it wasn€™t until something came in the mail that we knew on March 12th the title was filed.
For those keeping score, from start to finish, it took 65 days to close this deal. The bank was in breech of their own contract by 18 days. The selling realtor didn€™t come for the key boxes and the for sale sign until 28 days after closing. We gave them their sign with a storage bill; we told them to go talk to the locksmith for their key boxes. They weren€™t happy, but I had a grin on my face.Our realtor pleaded that she was trying hard to get it done, but in reality Monica and I in the end had to do all the heavy lifting.
In summary, we now own the house and are happily building a home. If you take one thing away from this (long) story, make it this: when it comes down to it, do not be afraid to get in the fight and get things done.