This is a bit of a venting post. Also I wrote it a couple of weeks ago, so it may be outdated. Thank you for reading it!
Thomas and I were really in over our heads the minute we started to look for a place to live in. We had (have) vastly different expectations of what we wanted and we are in a time period where it is a seller’s market. Together these two things have made the last 2-3 months very stressful. Currently we are in escrow for the 2nd time, with hopefully better results than the first time.
The first time we started looking at homes we went with a friend of Thomas’ dad. He’s a nice guy but I just didn’t feel very comfortable with him and I didn’t think he had our best interest in mind. After everything we’ve been going through I’ve realized how important it is to have someone who absolutely has your best interest in mind. After pulling out of escrow the first time I wanted to change realtors and find someone who would give us some credit towards closing costs.
My brother suggested we call the woman that manages his condo. She agreed to give us a $1,000 credit toward our closing costs. We thought that was great and so we told her the home we wanted to put an offer on. Thomas and I had already gone to see this place and just wanted to see it again and put in an offer. We did that… but unfortunately that fell through, followed by another rejected offer. Finally we found the condo we are in escrow for right now. I will add here that I found this condo, not the realtor.
At first I had no problem with this realtor, we’ll call her Jane. She was nice, seemed excited for us and appeared to be looking out for us. Unfortunately as the weeks have gone by it has become apparent that she is not very good at her job. I’m not sure if she does not sell/purchase homes often (maybe she dedicates her time to simply managing homes?) or what the problem is, but we have had some pretty big lack of communication going on.
I won’t go into every detail of what has been going on, but let me get out the things that have been major headaches for me:
/ / Because it is currently a seller’s market we offered full asking price for this condo. We made the offer after seeing it and with the seller present. We knew that we had a good shot at this place (I’ll explain why in a future post). When the seller responded to our original offer they requested a few things. One of them was to remove the loan contingency after 10 days. Which basically means that the seller wants to make sure we go through with the purchase, so they ask us to remove the loan contingency. This contingency basically says that if we don’t get the loan we can back out. Removing it means that the $7,700 we put in as earnest money towards the down payment is lost if we don’t get the loan.
Thomas and I know we will be approved for the loan. When we had started to buy the previous home in January we were approved for a loan. That home cost about $180k more than this one, so we know we will qualify. But we can never know what the bank does – whether it will be slow or quick in processing paperwork. We replied to their 10 days with 15 days or less. Luckily they accepted this. I say luckily because Jane made us lose 6 days!
As soon as we had a purchase agreement I contacted our loan officer to let him know so he could start the loan process. I gave him our relator’s information and I gave our relator his information. Our loan officer e-mailed Jane on a Friday to get information for the loan. She did not respond. He e-mailed her again on Monday and still no response. I was curious about what was going on so I e-mailed him on Tuesday. At this point he informed me of her lack of communication. This was 6 days later. SIX of the 15 days were used up because Jane couldn’t reply to emails. When we confronted her with this she simply told us that usually the escrow company handles this. Even if that is true, if someone is e-mailing you requesting sensitive information you need to respond to them.
The last we heard the seller is nervous and her realtor is contacting our loan officer directly. I’m thankful for this because he is much better at getting information across and he can let them know they shouldn’t worry, we will get the loan. The whole thing makes me anxious because they can pull out if they want and we can be left without a place to live and out the cost of the inspection.
/ / The second thing that has really bugged me (among many others) is that she will tell us one thing and then change her story the next day. I think this is partly because she sucks at communicating and doesn’t mean to tell us something but does. We requested the seller fix some things that the inspector found. She responded with offering us $1,000 credit. We responded with okay, but let’s get $500 for cleaning the place professionally (the tenants are very dirty people). Jane called me and said that they didn’t want to give us any more money but that they would get it cleaned professionally. Thomas and I agreed to this. Then a few days later we get an e-mail from her saying that they will not be getting it professionally cleaned.
There are several other things that have angered Thomas and I. Things that should not have happened but did for no good reason.
Phew. I needed to get all that out. I had a migraine last Tuesday because of all of this. Luckily I made it through the work day, but I ended up going home and going to sleep in a dark and quite room.
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