Regina Rourke

If you've been following my series, "New Mexico Short Sale as a Buyer", you know Jim and I closed on our Tijeras, NM home about 3 weeks ago.

Man, am I exhausted!

I've started referring to this as "buyer fatigue".

I've noticed this phenomenon in friends who've recently purchased homes. As I got closer to my own purchase, I realized it was happening to me as well.

The fact that homes aren't closed until they are really closed has taken on an all new meaning. Relentless questioning by lenders, repeated copies of documents: check stubs, bank statements, employment, employment again, proof of your existence by the IRS. It never seems to end.

A coworker of mine described sitting at the closing table like a zombie. He signed and signed papers, then just sat, with his head propped on one hand, as the keys to his brand-new home were slid across the table to him. He sat with a blank expression, not believing it really was over. The closing agent assured him he really was done but he said he and his wife just sort of gathered their things and left. They went through the motions of closing with no excitement. He told me, "They nearly made me prove WHY I was a man!"

Our situation was nearly the same. We jumped through every hoop offered and some of them repeatedly. Our home did have a few extra details, shall we say, as a short sale. But I think the result would have been the same if it wasn't a short sale. We got the word we were "clear to close" and went through the motions with not much more than a huge sense of relief. Only in the last week or so has some giddyness set in.

That's sad.

Is anyone else seeing this? The excitement and anticipation is beaten out of buyers. Is it just a fact of life now? We've purchased real estate before. Going to our lender, filling out a mortgage application, providing documentation was never such an ordeal.

But now....sigh...I'm going to go find a margarita and a sofa!!

Friday, April 22, Jim and I boarded the plane for Kansas. We hadn't closed on our little Tijeras, NM home for sale. It wasn't ours and we weren't sure it was going to be!

We had debated on whether or not we should proceed with the trip. But we had the time off work and needed to spend time on our home in Kansas to prepare it for sale. It was a gamble but we figured we could stash our stuff into storage if the Tijeras home deal continued to drag on. That's always a possibility, especially with a short sale!

We connected flights in Denver and had a message from our Realtor, Rich Cederberg, that BOA had approved the extension. They would "likely" approve the HUD on Monday.

We arrived in Kansas and worked on the house all weekend. We wondered if all of the closing documents would make it out and back (via Fedex) in time for funding and recording by the time we arrived in New Mexico Thursday evening.

Late Monday morning, BOA gave its blessing to close the deal. Two sets of closing documents were sent by Fedex. One set to us in Kansas, the other set to the sellers in Illinois. Mobile notarys were scheduled for Tuesday.

Our notary brought our paperwork Tuesday about 1pm. We signed everything and had her follow us to the bank for our certified funds. It was odd handing such intimate paperwork (and a large chunk of money) to some woman we'd just met. We watched her drive away with, I'm sure, strange looks on our faces!!

As we packed the trucks on Wednesday, Rich called with word that our documents had arrived. The sellers had missed a couple of papers so they started the process again. But we were on our way to funding.

Thursday morning, we left Kansas with a UHaul towing a car and our dear friend Mike with his pickup, towing another car. We stopped for lunch and fuel in Dalhart around noon. At 12:24 p.m., we got the call. April 28, 13 days after the original closing date, we were funded, recorded and ready to move in!

There were woohoo's all around! Almost a feeling of stunned numbness I've taken to calling "buyer fatigue", but alas, that's another post..

Would we do it again? Sure, we would. It was the right house. We followed our Realtor's recommendation of keeping "backup" houses in case the deal fell through. There were times we stopped and thought, "man, the things we are doing to get this house!" But each time we asked ourselves if it was too much, the answer came back, "nope, we want this house". Patience and persistence will pay off!!

We couldn't have surrounded ourselves with better people than we had in our Realtor, Rich, and our lender Patsy Bailey. They are creative, positive, problem-solving people. I think we all walked away with a can-do attitude toward short sales!

Now, I'm gonna go relax on my own sofa for awhile in my little piece of East Mountain Real Estate.

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me. If you have any questions, just give me a shout!

The appraiser signed off on our prospective piece of East Mountain real estate on Monday, April, 11^th, 2011. Closing was set for Friday, April 15^th. Bank of America, the seller’s lender, wanted to view the HUD for 3 days. We were not going to make the April 15 closing date.

An extension was filed to move closing to the next Friday. BOA accepted. Then the real fun began.

On Monday, April 18^th, I received a text from Rich Cederberg, our Realtor. He wanted to know how much money we expected to bring to closing. Apparently, the closing agent had an amount listed that was $4,000 more than we expected. We could pay it, but it severely cut into our moving money. We still needed to bring all our stuff and 4 antique cars down from Kansas!

There was much strife that afternoon as we compared our good faith estimate to what the closing agent had put on the HUD. Late that day, Rich called again. The closing agent had only “really” completed the seller’s half of the HUD so far. Our numbers were imaginary. What the???!! Three days from supposed closing and we are working with pretend numbers? Not only that, but it was sent out to all parties to the contract??

The HUD was hurried to BOA, who promptly decided to make changes. They wanted certain numbers on certain lines and, of course, not on the lines that the closing agent had put them on. That cost one day. The next day BOA noticed that the original closing date, April 15, was still on the HUD. That cost a day.

By Thursday, we were all getting twitchy. Would BOA give the go ahead to close? We needed to close by 2 p.m. Friday so we could make a 5 p.m. flight to KS for our stuff. Rich had the listing agent ask for another extension, just in case. We sure didn’t want our home returning to the list of Tijeras homes for sale!

In a monumental exhibition of bureaucracy, BOA stopped everything in its tracks. Once they received the request for extension, they would no longer consider the HUD until the extension was approved. I don’t think I’ve seen Jim as aggravated as he was that evening. If they would just approve the HUD, the extension would be irrelevant!!

Alas, logic doesn’t matter when you’re a big bank. So us little people had to wait. We got on the plane Friday and still hadn’t closed.

I’ll keep you posted…

Surprisingly, the buyers agreed to fix the broken pipe. However, the plumbers discovered several more breaks in the copper when they turned the water back on. Albuquerque NM homes all over suffered greatly from record-breaking cold earlier this year. Empty houses, like our short sale, fared no better.

This time, there was sheetrock involved. Negotiations began and we agreed to split the cost of repairs.

Four big holes in the sheetrock and repairs got done. Our lender told us the appraiser would not like the gaping holes in the wall so these were repaired at our expense, too.

Our inspector returned and despite a minor drip at the original repair and at the dishwasher drain hose, gave us the thumbs-up. He finished the septic system check..all working properly. We were ready to move on to appraisal! It was March 29. Two weeks left until April 15 closing date.

We paid for the appraisal March 30 online so it would be quickly scheduled. After three attempts to finish inspections, April 15 was starting to seem a lot closer!

April 5 was the scheduled date for the appraisal. It’s amazing how quick the days were starting to go by!

On Friday April 8^th, we get the next stomach lurch on the short sale roller coaster ride. Good news, appraisal was $58,000 over agreed sale price. Yippee! Bad news, there’s no stove. The conversation with Rich, our Realtor, went something like this:

Rich: Appraiser says there’s no stove

Us: No kidding

Rich: The stove is required for an FHA loan

Us: Oh, so they worry that you’ll be able to heat up that rancid food you will have without a refrigerator?

Rich, Laughing: Exactly! All FHA requires is the stove in and working.

Of course, we knew the house had no appliances except a 1980’s built in dishwasher. We had been acquiring them over the last few weeks on a gamble that we really were going to close. But we hadn’t bought the stove yet.

So we went stove shopping. No point hauling some $30 stove clear out to our choice of Tijeras NM homes for sale, then replacing it in a few weeks. Monday, April 11^th, the stove was installed. Appraiser signed off on it that afternoon. What’s next?

I’ll keep you posted…

Inspections, Again

By the end of our first try at having our prospective piece of East Mountain Real Estate inspected, we had a plan.

As the home is a short sale, the sellers aren’t able to help much. The listing agent’s office was willing to pay to have the power turned back on for a day. The inspector agreed to come back out the following Wednesday, March 23, to finish up his work.

The next week, we reassembled at the house. Our home inspector went right to work, powered up the well pump and promptly created a flood situation in the first floor. Broken pipes!

Albuquerque real estate has had some ferocious cold this winter and an empty house is even more susceptible to winter damage. Right where the main line came out of the slab toward the pressure tank, there were multiple splits, cracks and plain old breaks.

Our agent began the phone calls to the listing agent about how to and who would get the pipes fixed.

The inspector, ever resourceful, discovered that there were threads on the water pipe and there just happened to be a nearby garden hose. He hooked them together and began running water out onto the spring bulbs in the flower bed. He could at least get a pressure reading and a water sample.

After completing an examination of the electrical systems, there still needed to be a flow through, I guess you could call it, of the septic tank. Though the tank looked good, the inspector needed to ensure water flowed from the house and to the tank. For this, naturally, we need proper plumbing function.

We set a tentative date for the following week and called it day, again. Round three of the home inspection would happen after the plumbing repairs.

Almost a month left until the closing date, no sweat..right??

I’ll keep you updated!