buying a house, closing week

it looks like the last entry on our house purchasing process was a bit overenthusiastic, as we were unable to close before the end of the month and now we're rushing to close on friday, 2/6/2009.

our selling bank, by all accounts, is a bitch. i know this process usually takes a long time but their realtor has been especially unresponsive and irresponsible. more and more i wish we at least had fredson on board, so he could do a lot of the interaction with the sellers, but more importantly, could have earned some of the realtor's pay that is now going 100% to the seller's realtor, who doesn't deserve it.

in finalizing the closing of this property, i've been talking with two separate parties who have actually been very cooperative. john mcsherry is the mortgage consultant who we've been working with to approve the mortgage. he has been in charge of organizing our paperwork (financial documents, proof of funds, etc) in order to get a mortgage approved. he has also been the one to find pricing for the loan - getting a good mortgage rate, and also paying for extensions.

i've also been working with lynda mooney, who is the lawyer for the mortgage company and is in charge of scheduling the closing, and working through a title search. They've recently cleared up some problems with the title history (which wasn't a big problem to begin with) and only today was she able to talk with the selling bank's lawyers. currently, she has received some documents that she is sending out to get final approval. I have no idea what these documents are, but in 3 days the banks (which one? i dont know) will approve it and thus we should be able to finally sit down together and sign some forms. she is also "ordering" the funds for the mortgage and that will be ready in 3 days. it's like amazon prime shipping!

so if all works out, and though we have learned to be pessimistic it's almost something we HAVE TO do by friday, there will be a HUD (which is a document that itemizes all the monetary transactions) that is approved by friday and which we will get together and look over and sign. finally we will be rid of contact with mass realty advisors, and have the house for ourselves.

i think soon i will have to create a separate blog just to document the full purchasing process that we went through, because the next house i buy will be greatly dependent on my current experiences.