Finding the Right House - Part XIII: Closing Day
The Final Walkthrough
The day started pretty normally... we woke up, took a shower and got ready. With the cars already packed the previous night, we drove separately per my master plan and arrived at the house at 8:30am. Mary had called on the way informing us that she was stuck in traffic and would be late. She told us we can look around the exterior of the house in that time. The first thing I did when I got there was to take a picture of the electric & gas meters. I wanted proof of what the meters read on that day. While looking around, we noticed that a picket on the gate to the backyard was freshly broken.
Eventually Mary arrived at the house. She used her little realtor gizmo to get the keys to open the door. At that same time the seller's realtor pulled up and pulled her "For Sale" sign out of the yard. I was actually hoping to get a pic of the house with a "SOLD" sign in front of it but her office doesn’t put up “SOLD” signs (forcing the interested party to call the phone number and get a “Sorry that house is under contract, can I interest you in this house instead?" ) so that didn't happen. After we walked in I realized that the empty 1960 sq. ft. house looked REALLY BIG that day.
Having attended Kay's final walkthrough, I knew what to look for. I was looking for any problems with the house and its contents that were NOT there during the inspection in November. They left the place pretty clean. It was clear that once the carpet was cleaned and the bathtubs/sinks/toilets/counters/tile floors were all cleaned (they were clean and the carpet was only 6 months old but it was more of a mental thing than anything) we were good to concentrate on the move.
We ran the dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, stove, oven, all of the sinks & flushed all of the toilets just to make sure nothing had changed in their working status between the inspection and now. Everything worked okay but there was a noise when we ran the washing machine. It was a sort of thud sound every few minutes that was coming from somewhere behind it in the wall. Mary didn't waste any time, she grabbed her cell phone and called our inspector to ask him about it. He assured us that the noise was coming from the ejector pump and that it was normal. You could pay to have it silenced but it doesn't affect the working of the pump. All was good. Having been the first time either of us had been inside the house since November we were eager to take our time. It seemed like time flew by. Before we knew it, we had to leave for the closing.
The Closing
We arrived at the seller's attorney's office at 10:02am. After walking in we were shown to a long conference table which already had the sellers, their attorney, our attorney and both realtors seated at it. Our lawyer introduced himself to us and we sat down on the remaining open seats.
Then it was time to sign our lives away with paper after paper. The lawyer explained what it was that we were signing and told us to initial where we should initial and sign where we should sign. That part was pretty fast. The entire process was over in 45 minutes.
It was then that the day took a sudden turn to the worse. The Heritage Title lady double checked our paperwork and said, "We're all set. We're just waiting for funding."
The wait began. The Title Company wouldn't give us possession (although we did get the keys already) until the wire was verified. Due to this, the closing on the seller's new house was also on hold because they couldn't close without the money from our purchase.
Our lawyer hung around an additional hour. He did make himself useful by calling the lender and the broker's company to yell and get to the bottom the delay. Apparently instead of sending the wire sometime on Friday they wouldn’t send it till first thing Monday morning. That means no earlier than 11:00am Central time which would have been more or less right on time if they sent it an hour after the closing began. He was upset by this and spoke to the upper management of both parties.
While it was completely beyond my control, I still felt bad for the sellers… it was our mortgage company that was holding everything up. I felt bad until Mr. "Seller" expressed his anger and peeled out of the parking lot with his car on their way to lunch. On his way out he made some snide comment about how at least HE verified his wire was sent over the weekend! Implying that we should have or we even knew we had the ability to do that. The looks from even his realtor implied she thought he was full of shit!
By noon we were told that our lender had sent the wire. I wasn't aware at the time but apparently all wire transfers of a certain size must go through the Federal Reserve in Washington D.C.
Our lawyer left. The sellers were out for lunch. Their attorney was gone. All that was left was Mary, the Seller's Realtor and the two of us.
We called ChemDry to tell them that there was no way we could do the noon appointment.
Mary urged us to go get something to eat but there was NO WAY I could eat as stressed out as I was. The four of us just sat there chatting about real estate.
The seller's Realtor informed us that she listed both the sale of the house we were buying and the purchase of the seller's new house. She told us the story of her experience listing the new house our sellers were buying and described them as just as unreasonable as our sellers. She told us about how she was yelled at for turning all of the lights on in their house for the showing of it. They were really offended for some reason and she even offered them $20 to cover the hour of electricity that was used just to calm them down.
Somewhere in our conversation we were also informed that if the wire wasn't processed by the Fed by 4pm Central that it wouldn't happen till sometime the next morning. Both Realtors told us that it's rare, but has happened before. If that happened we'd be screwed and it would CERTAINLY cost us extra money with the movers as they’d have to be moved to the later afternoon. Not to mention that we’d also have to pay for all of February at closing instead of just the last day of January.
As soon as the seller's Realtor realized that it may not be until the next day that she will receive her check, she instructed them to mail it to the office and she wished us luck on her way out.
I later learned that we had 4 things working against us...
1. We had a morning closing.
2. The Lender is based in California. (2 hour time zone difference)
3. Closing is on a Monday.
4. Closing is on the last day of the month. (the most popular day to close because you only have to pay one day of mortgage at the table)
Oddly we soon realized that the 3 of us were left completely alone in their office while everyone was out to lunch. The phone rang several times. Any one of those calls could have been the lady from the title company telling them that the wire is confirmed and we're all set to take possession and leave. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was tempted to answer the phone on several of those occasions.
In what felt like HOURS AND HOURS later, the secretary arrived back in the office and we eagerly waited for her to finish checking the voice mail system.
"Are you for the "Seller's Last Name" closing?", she asked.
"Yes, "Seller's Last Name" & Miller closing.”, I replied.
"Oh, we just got funding for the "Seller's Last Name" and "their new house seller's" closing. It looks like we are still waiting on your funding.
Ahhh… really... my watch reads 2:30pm… The seller lied in his snide comment before he sped off like a little whiny bitch for lunch... smoking tires and all.
Every single time the phone rang we looked at the secretary and awaited her reaction.
ChemDry called back. They might have to reschedule for another day if we don't get possession soon. That too would cost us more money since a house with furniture costs more than an empty house.
The phone rang. We looked at the secretary. She looked at us and shook her head no.
The clock struck 3:00pm. Zero Hour. If we didn't get funding in the next 59 minutes, we'd be screwed till tomorrow. That in turn would probably change our very annoyed, high strung seller into a raving psychopath. My NRA training may come in handy.
We spent the time chatting it up with Mary. Valerie called my dad to tell him we would need to have him pick up the kids from school. He was most accommodating.
The phone rang again. The three of us looked at the secretary. She looked back and again, shook her head no.
ChemDry called back and said they can’t wait any longer and that we would have to reschedule. I begrudgingly agreed.
The phone rang once again. Mary, Valerie & I looked at the secretary once again. Her eyes lit up and she gave us a thumbs up. She started writing things down and confirmed with the Title Lady that she was to give keys to the proper people and disperse the checks. We already had the keys so we were FINALLY good to go.
A whopping 5 1/2 hours after we first walked into that lawyer’s office, we were on our way to our first house. I wish we had time to savor the moment but we were in a big hurry. We said our thank yous and goodbyes to Mary and we raced like a bat out of hell to the house calling ChemDry on the way. The lady told us they were still in Cary and she would radio to the van for them to turn around and head back to the house.
We finally pulled in OUR driveway... As expected, ChemDry was already there. We unlocked the house, let them in to measure the rooms with carpet and unpacked our cars.
ChemDry quoted us a price of $357 and change to clean and protect all of the carpeting in the house. I wanted to keep it under $300 and was tempted to say screw the protectant ($100+ extra ) but I was worn out, stressed out, and just happy for the closing to be finally over. I said okay.
While they went room to room to clean the carpeting, Valerie started cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms and I started changing the locks. My master plan suggested that we get in a few trips back and forth before spending our final night in Buffalo Grove. I wanted to bring my computers, my home theater stuff & some fragile Christmas stuff... things I didn't want to have the movers touch. But since closing was just so long, all of that had to change. We only had the time to make one trip. At around 8pm we headed back and stopped at Chipotle on the way. Neither of us had eaten all day long so this was a much needed break.
Valerie picked up the kids and the dog and I filled up the Blazer with all of the dog stuff and as much other stuff as I could and we headed back to the new house.
I took the opportunity during the drive back to fill Dave & Kay in on the events of the day.
30 minutes later I pulled into my driveway. This is the first time the kids were able to go inside the house. They were quite excited!
While I finished up on the door lock for the garage utility door, (a couple of holes had to be drilled) Valerie and the kids put Carpet Shield Carpet Film Protector on the hallways, stairs and a little path leading every room to protect it from the movers. I was quite impressed with my little $12.00 purchase! With so many things to do time flew REALLY fast... Before we knew it, it was after midnight! It was time to leave.
We got Bailey all set up in the laundry room to be the first member of the family to spend the night in the house. Valerie moved her car into the garage and we packed into the blazer had headed back. We had to be up in the 6:00am hour to get the U-Haul... the kids were still excited about the house and the decision was made to keep them out of school for moving day. They wouldn't get much sleep anyway. Once we got home, I crashed right away... knowing that less than 6 hours later, the start of a very busy day would begin.
Back to Part XII --- On to Part XIV
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