Blood pressure...RISING....

[bzarcher]

No, you fucking idiot, calling me to say that the earnest money can't be used at closing, and that I'm going to need a larger certified check AFTER THE BANKS HAVE CLOSED is not OK. Especially not less than 24 hours before closing! This is information we needed LAST Monday, or at worst, Friday!

I really like Harvey (the Agent), but if I buy another house and he's involved, I will never, ever, ever use the title or financing he reccomends ever again.

Comments

[las.livejournal.com]

D'oh. I'm sorry to hear that happened -- I didn't use his affiliate financing company, so I didn't know how it was. (The bank I did use due to an OSU discount, Ohio Savings, displayed some borderline dodgy policies and sold my mortgage to another company later on, so I'm done with them).

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

We'll be OK. This guy just seems to keep forgetting to tell us very important things. Ah, well. Tomorrow, with luck, it's all over for the best.

[valkyrwench.livejournal.com]

And the earnest money can't be used at closing...why, exactly?

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Earnest money comes back as a buisness check from the realtor. The closing money has to be in the form of a certified check.

[valkyrwench.livejournal.com]

Interesting - ours came off the sale price at closing. The only thing we were supposed to get back was the option check we had to write in case we changed our minds after the contract was accepted. That was a whole 'nother fun ball of wax, getting that money back :)

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Well, the earnest money in our case is the same thing as the option check in yours.

With any luck, that comes back to me at closing, and I give it back to my parents, since I used their gift money to pay that originally, and they're providing another certified check today to make up for not being able to use the earnest.

[remotesensing.livejournal.com]

Our main mortgage on our house has been sold 7 times in 6 years.

[las.livejournal.com]

(Not sure if you meant to reply to my comment or not; proceeding as if you were)

Yeah, that's dead common; I meant to say that they'd done other things that were dodgy (namely, they decided I wasn't paying attention to my interest-bearing savings account, so they blocked my online view/access to it, and started charging a $5-a-month fee), and then they sold the mortgage, so I no longer have to deal with them directly.

[valkyrwench.livejournal.com]

Hey, we closed on our condo in July, and made exactly one payment to the original mortgage company before they sold it.

[glitterkiss42.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that they told you the earnest money could be used at closing. We were told definitively that it could not.

We also had the seller pay all closing costs so that could be a difference.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

According to the agent, that was going to be quite normal. Apparently, no, it's really only normal if people do ARM loans, and that's the situation where you see that.

[flying-landon.livejournal.com]

It's silly how many hoops there are to buying a house.

I've simplified it a lot.

Person A puts a house for sale. Agent Q offers to do the legwork for an agreed percent of what the house sells for.

Person B wants to buy the house. Bank R loans them the money for the house.

Person B gives A the money from R, which Q takes his percent, A the rest to do what he will.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

I like this plan.

Ah, well.

[flying-landon.livejournal.com]

My mom works for a real estate agency as a secratary or however it's spelled. Trust me, I know how frustrated you are. :P

[felislachesis.livejournal.com]

Wish it was that easy. All of the fees and forms and red tape and little things here and there and... oye... just so many little things... blah.

BZ, yeah, it's been a wonderful *rolls eyes* process. But it's getting there. We're getting it all sorted out :)

[flying-landon.livejournal.com]

Oh I know, I know.

The sad thing is, there is no point to any of the BS.

[felislachesis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there isn't, but everyone wants a cut of their pie in every transaction. I'm looking at the complete breakdown now of all the money. The agents' commission, the Mortgage points, credit reports, appraisal fees, inspection fees, application premiums, service contracts, flood certification fee, underwriting fee, processing fees, hazard insurance, taxes, closing fees... the list goes on and on.

The thing is, everyone who had a hand in this, no matter how minor, now has a hand out asking for their fair share of the money that's being transferred.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

We are, we are.

Honestly, I think (aside from the fact that once again we didn't get a straight answer, AGAIN), the part that angered me the most was calling me back after 5pm, when I asked for clarification about 2, and the person in question had to know that all the banks in the area would be closed.

Ah, well.

[joriel.livejournal.com]

Wow, you're experience is a lot different from mine there. We were allowed to sign over our earnest money at closing. Also Tom(our agnet) told us he wasn't allowed to recommend anyone for title(we already had our financing in play before we even started actually looking, so there was no recomendation oppurtunity there) he was only allowed to tell us names of some of the places in town, and if he had worked with them or not before. Since our bank didn't particularly care who we worked with for title, we just picked the first off the list.

Could you maybe grab a money order for the difference? They're gauranteed like the certfied checks.

[felislachesis.livejournal.com]

We got it sorted out. The wierd thing is, my share of what needs to be paid is no where close to what I had available, so what we've done *SHHHHHHH* is that I "loaned" BZ's mom $500 so she could "loan" BZ the exact same $500. The only reason we did this is because the money had to come from his mom. The earnest money is now "un"officially my contribution so when it gets sent back to us, I'll just stick it in the house fund.

With the extra money, I'm thinking we use that to really spruce things up. Get the necessities: lawn mower, gardening supplies, fix the gutters, etc. Then the rest might be new paint, keeping things in order, screen windows, and the inevitable baseball through said window >.

[joriel.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I hear that. I closed out on my house like three months ago, and I'm still working on my todo list, and haven't started painting at all yet.

I hope to start painting that in the next few months. They have this nifty paint stuff I picked up at walmart last time that you put in your gallon of paint, and it's an air freshner that not only overpowers that wet paint smell into something almost pleasant, it freshens the room from the wall for a year. :) I loved it.

Some of the rules they have are just so weird, like the mom trick. :) I had to get all our old medical bills settled (my husband had an unexpected bout of a form of benign cancer that required suprrise surgery and six weeks of radiation, and man did the bills pile. So I got help from my grandma and had a dont' ask don't tell kinda thing going on with my financier. Then my dad got involved and made it all crazy. LOL Family.

Congrats on your new home guys! Post pictures. :)

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

That's braindead. We had $2K down as our earnest money (I forget what it was called, I think it had a different term) and that was deducted off the sale price before the mortgage was applied.

Bwah?

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

It was very braindead, but this way, it buys skarlette a new bed, so what the hell.