Closing In

Well, there's good news and bad news to report as our closing date draws near, only 5 days away.

The bad news:

It is so AGGRAVATING to be unable to trust *anyone* who works for you not to goof up in a huge way. We've had two near-misses that could have resulted in us getting seriously financially screwed due to negligence and carelessness:

* In the final Good Faith Estimate, Truth in Lending, and Commitment Letter that our loan officer and underwriter prepared for us, there were several errors, the worst of which was that -- despite being locked in at an interest rate of 6% the previous week -- all the paperwork showed the interest rate as NOT LOCKED and at 6.25%!!! I just about had a heart attack, and we had to get our loan officer and underwriter to send us corrected versions of the paperwork not once, but TWICE before it was completely accurate. Couldn't they have just been more careful about it the first time and spared us all the trouble???

* Our attorney has been consistently difficult to communicate with and obtain information from -- he never answers his phone directly, leaving that to a receptionist who adds no value whatsoever beyond automated voicemail apart from indicating that he is on the phone or providing rough estimates as to when he might get back to the office. He tends not to return phone calls for hours, sometimes even an entire day, often necessitating a second call to convey urgency (which even then sometimes needs to be supplemented with an e-mail), and we keep having to remind him over and over to copy us on the correspondence he exchanges with the sellers' attorney (something that should be fairly basic, we would think). In short, getting anything out of him requires a massive expenditure of time and effort on our end. At one point, there had been some confusion over where to send our down payment, and I ended up calling the sellers' attorney directly to resolve the issue because ours was, as usual, unavailable to speak with us. What a contrast the office of the sellers' attorney provided! His assistant was completely up to speed on our case, and was able to furnish the information we needed right away. We also noticed that all his correspondence -- which is consistently professional and courteous -- automatically CCs the sellers, versus the correspondence from our attorney which CCs only the realtors (and even then, we had to remind him to include them). He also tends to just add handwritten replies to what the sellers' attorney sends, rather than creating a new letter. Next time, we're hiring the sellers' attorney! Funny the things you learn. Our attorney's one redeeming feature apart from a pleasant personality is that he does tend to give good legal advice. There have been about three instances in which we weren't aware of protections we had and measures we could take to retain them that he brought us up to speed on, for which we were grateful. But one big oversight on his part was that he almost forgot to close the loop on the specific dollar amount we would be getting for the radon remediation credit -- that discussion had been postponed until the inspection phase, and when the inspection phase ended, he was just about ready to declare everything wrapped up before I reminded him that the dollar figure was still outstanding. He said he had thought it was settled during attorney review, which it clearly wasn't. He's somewhat of an absent-minded professor type. Couldn't he have just taken an extra few minutes to look at our file???

The good news:

* Despite the recent concerns of our loan officer and underwriter, we were in the end able to get our lender-paid MI at the originally promised down payment rate of 5%. WOOHOO!!! This obviously makes a *huge* difference, since having to put down 10% would have required twice as much upfront cash.

* The appraiser's report confirmed that we were buying the house at below market value, even with said market value being somewhat depressed relative to what it would have been 6 months to a year ago. It was really gratifying to see that the offer price we had clung to based on pure gut instinct in the absence of any decent comps, despite all the pressure, ended up being just the right amount to be getting an unequivocally good deal on the property, versus coming in close enough that there could have been a chance of slightly overpaying.

* When presented with our inspection report, the sellers agreed to offer us a credit of $500 towards repairs in addition to (after we reminded our attorney to follow up) the full amount of the figure we requested for radon remediation. This was a pleasant surprise because technically, apart from the radon issue, none of the concerns the report raised were strictly the sellers' responsibility and they could have gotten away with offering us $0. We had also expected that they might quibble with the radon estimate because $250 of it was contingent on closer examination of the electrical wiring, and may or may not be necessary to pay. But they didn't.

So, now it's just a matter of getting details of the where and when of our closing from our near-absentee attorney, doing a final walk-through of the property, and making arrangements to acquire all the necessary contractors, housewares, and transportation to take us through the next couple of weeks. Forward ho!