I happen to live in an area where the effects of the recession are limited.  It appears that where people are pulling back, it is much more from the unknown than from true harm.  Even still, my area isn’t untouched.  There are people who have fallen on hard times and there are foreclosures.  Recently, I found one of those foreclosures.  It has turned out to be a wonderful deal—about 40% less than comparable houses.  And, it turns out, it is in really good shape.  The realtor was surprised.  The home inspector was beyond surprised.  It turns out not only does the house look good,, it has few flaws and is even highly energy efficient.  Give myself a pat on the back; we were looking to move anyhow.

It started with the realtor.  I don’t seem to have much luck with them.  They don’t return phone calls or emails.  I tried realtors who were friends.  I tried realtors who were recommended by friends.  I tried realtors who were active I the area.  Never any luck.  This was all before we found “the house” though.  I knew I wanted this house and I needed someone.  We finally decided to ask someone we knew, but not well, who was in the business.  She sent us a recommendation.  And all seemed well at first. 

Until the point we found this house, we were looking fairly casually.  I didn’t want to go through with any loan applications until knew we had a house we wanted.  After seeing the house, we found out the house was a foreclosure.   Until that time, we just thought it was some great deal—perhaps someone avoiding foreclosure; it wasn’t listed as a foreclosure for some reason.  So what we discovered was, we were going to have to work very quickly and we set forth on our journey at lightning speed.

My husband has never purchased a house before.  When we met, I already owned a home and we’ve been living here.  Now, the last time I purchased it was thirteen years ago and I had my parents walking me through the whole thing since I was so young.  To say the least, I don’t remember much about the process.  I was told to sign here and show up there at this time.  Since it was my father, I felt it was pretty same to trust blindly.  So, with the need for speed in getting everything together, we took our highly recommended realtor’s recommendation for a mortgage broker—one she highly recommended.

Well, were working through this—and shopping loans still. The interest rate has dropped back to what we were told, but the loan isn’t such a done deal. My husband works a side job. A very profitable side job. He actually makes more money at his two days a week job than his regular job, which isn’t a slouch. But lenders won’t look at that side job because he has only had that job sixteen months and they want to wait until it has been twenty-four months. A letter from his employer stating the job isn’t going anywhere won’t help. So, anyhow, they won’t look at 2/3 our income even though we have a high (700+) credit score, have never paid a bill late, have a huge amount sitting in the bank, have very little other debt (mainly my husband’s student loans) and have no worries that in reality we can pay the mortgage easy. We could handle it with just the regular job, but it puts our percentage to mortgage off. It just doesn’t bode well on our realtor since she recommended so highly. It is going to work out, but in the end, it isn't so easy and we are on a majorly ticking clock.  The important thing here is to note that it is a knock against realtor’s, specifically my realtor’s, recommendation. 

Then next big thing that has come along and this is where I just can no longer trust our realtor.  The contract was signed and executed.  We went by the house in the morning to check the utilities and show my kids the house, and it turns on the gas is not turned on.  Now, my realtor tells me she’ll find out what is going on and will get back to me.  When I don’t hear from her by the afternoon the next day, over twenty-four hours later, I contact her.  They’re not sure why the gas is turned off.  Very nonchalant, like it’s no big deal. 

I can’t have the inspections done without the gas turned on, and since it is a foreclosure, I have seven days to get all the inspections and appraisal done or we lose our earnest money—a very high amount of earnest money since our realtor recommended that since we were giving such a low offer on an already underpriced home.  So by that night, very late, she sends over an amendment to our contract to sign to get them to start the seven days once all the utilities are turned on.  Which, she doesn’t bother to send out for another day and a half!!  Needless to say, the gas was turned on at day six in the afternoon, leaving me one day to arrange inspections and appraisal.  And the appraisal can’t be arranged until the inspection reports arrive, which can take up to twenty-four hours.

As far as getting an inspection done in one day…  Doesn’t happen.  Most inspectors were booked several days to two weeks.  One took pity on me and said he would be able to come out on Sunday; he understood about foreclosures and banks.  But even that, without the signed amendment, wasn’t good enough.  We ended up having a friend call in a favor and had a friend of a friend send out an inspector to our house.  We weren’t even sure how good he would be, although we were assured he was good.  It did turn out he was very good. 

We haven’t gotten our appraisal.   And, if we don’t get the amendment, we’ll lose our earnest money since we won’t get the loan, if for some odd reason, the appraisal doesn’t come out.  We get no communication from our realtor, or our mortgage broker.  However, our mortgage broker feels comfortable giving our financial information out to the realtor.  Is that even ethical?    I hope we do get to dump the mortgage broker in the end.  All I know is it is a great house at a great deal.  It even has location, location, location.  All I hope is when the loan is finalized, we can push for an early closing just to be done with it.  I guess the moral is, no deal is ever that good of a deal.