When Bob and I started looking into buying a house, I was hesitant to say anything to anyone else about it. I didn’t want to jinx it. Every time something is going right and I open my big mouth, something tends to come along and blow it up in my face.
Things fell into place pretty smoothly when we found “our house.” The offer/counter offer process only took a matter of a couple days. Everything just—worked. The inspection went well. We locked our interest rate. We set up our closing time.
All that was left before closing was to get the appraisal and review the homeowners’ association documentation to make sure they didn’t have anything weird we couldn’t live with in their rules.
Tuesday, April 5th, our mortgage broker called.
There was a problem.
A couple problems.
One we could deal with.
One that could derail the whole thing.
First, the appraisal came in lower than the price in the purchase agreement. Which meant, the house wasn’t worth as much as they were selling it for. That was fixable. It would mean an addendum to the purchase agreement if they wanted to actually sell that house.
The other problem was much bigger. After reviewing financial statements from the association, it was found that they were over 20% delinquent in their association dues. That means 20% or more of the home owners in that development are not paying their monthly association dues.
We’re getting an FHA loan. FHA will not write a loan on a property with an association that is that delinquent. It can only be 15% or less. They consider it too much of a risk to invest otherwise.
We could still possibly get the house if we went with a conventional loan, but that would require us to have at least a 5% down payment (of our own money) and we don’t have that much money. At least not in the time frame we’re working with.
There was still a chance we could get the house if April’s numbers improved. If the delinquency went down to at least 15%, we could get the house, but we’d have to wait a week (Monday, April 11th) until those numbers came in.
So in the meantime, we decided we needed to start looking again. Our agent and our mortgage broker assured us we still had time. If we could get a purchase agreement by the end of April, we would still have time to close by the end of May when we have to move out of our current place.
I agonized over the situation all week. Bob handled it all much better than I did. I didn’t cry, which is very surprising, but there were a lot of f-bombs flying and I felt like shit-warmed over for several days.
We lost our house.
I suppose we didn’t really “lose our house”. It wasn’t ours yet. But in my head it was already “our house.” I’d already grown far too attached to it.
Friday we went out and looked at four different places. There were two we liked. One we picked over the other. We had to wait until Monday to see what kind of news came in before we could write up an offer.
Monday came and the numbers and the news came in.
The delinquency? GOT WORSE.
The house is officially gone.
We were prepared for that. We didn’t really expect people to actually start coughing up the money they owed.
But even though we were expecting it, it didn’t make it suck any less.
And then we found out that the “new” house we’d found on Friday—had an offer on it. If we wrote one, it would only be a back up if the first offer fell through.
There’s still the other house we liked on Friday. Granted nothing has gone wrong since then. I’m not holding my breath.
Or we keep looking.
And hope like hell something right comes along in time.
Worst case scenario, we find an apartment to rent for a year. Not what we want, but it’s not the end of the world. Before we flung ourselves into this home-buying adventure it was our plan to rent an apartment and stay there for at least a few years.
My excitement is gone. Replaced by nothing but stress and uncertainty.
And if we do find another house in time? I’m not going to get attached to it until those keys are in my hand on the day of closing. (Wishful thinking I’m sure. This is me we’re talking about.)
And for the love of FUCK. If you live in a townhouse? PAY YOUR FUCKING ASSOCIATION DUES. Not only are you risking a lien on your house by not paying them—you’re likely screwing someone else out of a home as well. Because you’re an asshole.
—