Home #*&@ Home and 1993

On Feb. 10th, 2007 we moved from our home of 11 years to a new home. We put the house on the market on March 2007.

We went straight into the housing market from hell.

The house has been on the market since then.

In November, my husband was sent to Australia for one week during Thanksgiving. The day before Thanksgiving we received an offer on the house.

The offer was horrendous. I had to wake up my husband and consult him on how to deal with it before Thanksgiving. We counter-offered. Day after Thanksgiving it was accepted.

Then we started a long ordeal from hell that drained the life out of our marriage, our lives, our beings. The reason I hadn't been blogging much was because I didn't want to jinx anything or take my anger out at the world only to find that this guy is handicapped or something.

So here's the short story of it:
The guy's original offer was $19K less than our price, plus he asked us to pay his closing fees - $22K.
We said, "sure, why don't we even throw in an extra $50K because we don't know you and we love your negotiation skills."
Our agent worked tirelessly to get a good counter-offer approved by the buyer.
Buyer says "ok. Settlement date is 12/27/2007."
My husband and I sadly agree, though we understood it meant no Christmas presents for any of my family-in-law.
House inspection goes by okay (well, we had to pay $700 for two trademen to fix something as silly as the heater and the sprinklers, but oh well).
Then we get a call on Christmas Eve - "we have a problem. The buyer's lender found out that the guy just purchased a car with $800/month payments and they need to reprocess his paperwork to get the loan approved. Settlement won't occur on 12/27/07. Possibly a day later."

[Fucker! Who buys a new car the week before freaking settling on a house?!!! Your freaking credit is already so low that the lender is demanding 6.75% interest rate and 1 point on your loan, because she's been working with you for several months to get your credit rating up, and because she believes she deserves the profit from this sale, and then you go buy a BMW???]

A bunch of frantic phone calls later and we decide that we have no guarantee that this asshole's loan will be approved even before the new year! "Tell him that after Monday 12/31 - deal is off."
From Christmas Eve till today we've been living from one day to the next, with ten phone calls to our agent, signing addenda upon addenda, faxing and scanning documents back and forth before noon "so we can close tomorrow" (rolling eyes), only to find that the loan has not been approved yet, or conditionally approved, or whatever other status the lender decided to whip out of her ass.
Then the buyer's grandma was brought in as a co-signer.

Closing was finally set for today. At a huge cost to my health. I have been in serious stomach pains since Saturday, unable to eat. Then to supplement this stressful period - I caught another cold. My sixth one since August. Suicide is not out of the question.

This weekend we decided to clean our house from anything we left in good faith for the new buyer (you know, things like two lamps, extra toilet paper, seven packages of wood floor, three packages of floor tiles, light bulbs). In a childish moment, I programmed the address back home on my GPS to announce the arrival to...
[I wish I had a video with sound of this computerized voice pronouncing this...]

Before closing today, we demanded not to be in the same room with the buyer. We couldn't bear to see him or his grandma after the ordeal they had us go through. We came half hour early to sign the paperwork and left.

Our agent stayed behind to get the check after the buyer's signed the settlement. The poor guy had to deal with another last minute development during closing, when the bank announced that the loan has not been processed and it will take two more days, so they cannot give us a check yet. For forty minutes he walked around the building thinking how to break the news to us, before the bank called back to say "screw it, you already signed the closing documents."

Our agent planned on dropping by at the restaurant where we planned to have dinner so he can drop off the check and have a drink with us.

Because you see, today isn't just another day.

1993 is all my husband has to remember.

Then he puts the periods in the right place - 1.9.93 - and there you have it - today is our FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY!

We went to our favourite restaurant, where my husband had a surprise for me. When our agent joined us, he had the waitress bring it out. [Click to enlarge]

The bottle of wine is from our agent. We had an amusing exchange between him and us today. First we gave him a bottle of wine, then it turned out he had one. Then he came to the restaurant to give us a check, then we gave him a check in return because he put in money from his commission to compensate us for the delay in closing (which we didn't think he should have been penalized for), then when we got the check for dinner, the waitress revealed that he had picked up our check before he left to ...

celebrate his birthday!

A fantastic ending to a ten month ordeal. Our house is sold!

GOOBYE, ANNAPOLIS!