Closing is an Uphill Climb

Closing day is finally here today!  We've given ourselves a break from seeing the house for the last couple of days, knowing that Brandon is busy taking care of the last minute dink items.  I knew that the painting vendors will have their work cut out for them with alot of the rework to include sanding out the roughness out of the closet walls and the rework on the bannisters.



Todays 900 lb gorilla is NVR Mortgage.   I had printed the Fidelity information that Dean had asked for and shot it over to to Pam to finish up our end of the processing.  In true John style, I accompanied it with a strongly worded email on how trivial it was to have to prove the same amount of money over and over again.  Pretty much, this was the same rant in yesterdays blog entry.  So, with a small delay in the morning, the remaining paperwork was scanned an emailed out.   About 10 minutes later, Pam calls me, saying that they (the underwriters) are going to require a image of the check that I recieved from my Fidelity account that I used to make the earnest money deposit.  



Most people have a breaking point, and I think Pam found mine.  I saw red and told her to tell the underwriter what I thought about his/her request.  How am I going to get a copy of a deposit check on the day of closing from my bank accross town.   This is ridiculous.  When was this scruitny going to end?  This money was not from laundering, drug cartels, prostitution, nor foreign governments.  Why were they doing this to me and at the last minute?   I had been jumping through hoops like a circus poodle in getting these requests fulfilled so that we would have a smooth closing.  You ask, I fulfil.  It was as simple as that.  But somehow the fact that their inefficiency becomes my emergency seems OK.   Look, I know that scruitny has gone up exponetially since 2009.  But, you had 4 months to do this and it's my problem?

So, Pam is subjected to my rant about where they can stick their request and how I'm walking on this.   While seeing all red, I apologized that she and Dean were not to blame on this just some jerk of an underwriter whom I don't know.   She said that she would pass this to her manager.

Also at the same time, there were problems with the appraisal.  VA had screwed up about 8 items on the appraisal and NVR had sent it back.  They promised corrections by noon today.   Pam was waiting to get it to send to the underwriters and she was feeling some frustration because of this appraisal too.  She did ask if I would object to not closing today. So, told her that yes, yes I would.  Why is that?  Why was alot of this falling to the last minute?  True, I can't blame them for the VA screwup.  But we account for these things to arrive at a reasonable closing date, right?  

While this is all flying at fan speed toward the NVR managers office, I gave First Title, the site of closing a call and tell her that there may not be a closing today.  I'm just giving her a heads up.  Kim was pretty nice on the whole ordeal and didn't act surprised.  I guess she has dealt with here share of high strung home owners before.

After some simmering down, and noting that legally, refusing to provide information may not legally get me off the hook of walking away from the whole deal, I called Amy to order the Fidelity check image from the bank.  After lunch had dissipated some of the urge to punch out NVR underwriters, I called Pam to see if the VA appraiser had come through with the changes.  As for the check image, PNC requires 6 hours to process.  Can't do anything about that.

Pam tells me now that the check image is now a non-issue and that the underwriters are busy with the appraisal and preparing the letter to send to the closers.   Maybe the urgency is to get rid of us once and for all.   Closing at this point, was still a maybe, I wasn't holding my breath. 

So I went home early as planned.  Pam had called my house on the way home and said that we were on for closing.  Time to get to the church on time.



We were delayed getting out of the house, and as luck today would have it, there was a wreck on the highway on the way to the closing site.   What an uphill fight today has been. ARRRGH.   After alot of pounding on the dashboard and pushing a minivan to it's mechanical limits, we arrive at First Title 5 minutes before 4 o'clock.   Brent, at First Title was the only one left at the office as we were the last closing of the day.  Let's do this!



The closing went quicker as planned.  Copies were made and we were given a pile of papers and a ton of keys which in this process means we survived!   Yay!  A homeowner at last.  Now this home (or rather, this mortgage) is ours.   Now the sky was blue, the birds were chirping, it was 80 degrees and felt like a true Spring day.  Peace in the universe has now been restored.