So a year ago, literally, we thought Daddy's job was all worked out and we would fulfill the American Dream and buy ourselves a home. The days of easy house buying are gone given current economic and housing market conditions. Thus the year long tale. Feel free to skip to the bottom. If you want the basics (the details are even more frustrating!!) feel free to grab some chocolate (in honor of me...go dark!) put your feet up and prepare for drama.
It seemed like great timing for us...low interest rates, lots of available housing with great prices and we dreamed of spending the summer in our new home. Then we learned about the word "drama," something we generally try to avoid, and got a good long lesson in patience.
Problem number 1: Where to Live
He works at the U of U (almost an hour from where we are now). We drove and drove and picked a few nice nearby cities (Sandy, South Jordan, etc). And we looked at house after house after house. We were fortunate to have an AMAZING and PATIENT realtor who was so much fun and soooo helpful. We realized that in our price range we needed to get a small older house closer to his work or a newer nicer house with a longer commute. Daddy decided he'd take the longer commute so we began to look in a new town called Herriman (near Kennecott Mine). And we LOVED the first house we saw and put an offer on it that day and dreamed of the wonderful summer.
The house was a short sale but we were told it could close quickly. We continued to look at other houses and got really excited about Herriman and put a few other offers out (EVERYTHING was a stinkin short sale which takes FOREVER to even have your offer be accepted so it is common for people to put out multiple offers and most houses have multiple offers on the table for months). I kid you not we went to SOOO many houses with a VERY patient realtor and were grateful that the kids thought that house hunting was fun.
We waited, and waited, and waited and searched and searched and searched literally for a few months until finally the house that we really wanted was taken off the market to be rented. And none of the other offers were accepted. At the same time Daddy was supposed to start receiving income from an awesome grant that he was awarded. And then we found out essentially that the HR person (whose name has been cursed often the last 6 months) goofed and we were only bringing home out 40% of his paycheck (the rest went to the University). And it would take a month or two to fix the problem. His professor was planning to supplement Daddy's grant income with another grant but again there were problems which required a 3 month waiting period. And all house hunting stopped. And were grateful that we didn't buy a house because we had a HUGE reduction in income a few weeks later. And were grateful that Daddy's parents were willing to put up with us a little longer.
We regathered ourselves, signed the kids back up for school which started 2 weeks later and dreamed of Christmas. And dreamed. And got frustrated at HR people. And dreamed.
During this waiting time we did some thinking. Since Herriman is so far west of the freeway it was the same distance from work as Lehi, the town my parents live in. And the prices were better. So with one income problem solved and the promise of the other one to be fixed soon we began to look, again. This time in far north Lehi and as close to the freeway as possible (trying to keep Daddy's commute shorter). We finally narrowed the search down to 3 neighborhoods. And we prayed. And we checked the listings daily. Our incredible agent jumped anytime we said "maybe this one?" and we were off to look at a few more houses. And of course they were all short sales so we put several offers out and waited. And prayed.
And finally *poof* this great house in one of the 3 neighborhoods we liked went on sale AND IT WASN'T A SHORT SALE!!! We quickly went to see it, loved it, had an offer in that night and were delighted to have the offer accepted. We dreamed of moving Thanksgiving weekend.
And then it turned out that the homeowner was just finishing a nasty divorce and there were 3 mortgages on the house and she was just a LITTLE short but enough to make it go into a short sale. The agent had verbal acceptances from 2 of the banks and was working on the 3rd and expected it to be quick. We've heard that before.
So we wasted no time and began house hunting AGAIN looking primarily at non short sales because this had been dragging on soooo long and we were ready to be done. Daddy left out of town and a great house 2 blocks away from the other one went on sale. And it was better. Although it had a little less total square footage it had more finished square footage, had brand new carpet and paint, was on a cul-de-sac and had an AWESOME backyard. And we loved it. It was a foreclosed home but had finished the process and was ready to sell quickly at a great price. We submitted the offer and heard 2 days later literally as we were sitting down to the Thanksgiving table that our offer had been accepted!!!! AND that the OTHER house had accepted our offer (the short sale...the bank had to accept it). It was a great Thanksgiving weekend thinking we had 2 houses to choose from, and we began to dream of Christmas in our own home.
And FINALLY all of Daddy's paychecks were straightened out and we had big smiles on our faces...we were on our way!!!
Things moved quickly. The short sale house was still waiting for approval on the third mortgage sign off so we just put it on the back burner just in case things didn't work out with the foreclosed house. We quickly had an inspection on the foreclosed house that we wanted (now referred to as OUR house) and were pleased with the results...some things that would need some work along the way but no house is perfect and we were confident we could handle the problems quite easily. And the loan paperwork was started and since we have a simple life and easily qualified for the house we didn't expect problems. Obviously we hadn't yet learned!!!
Everything was accepted by the bank that owned our house and things moved quickly and Christmas looked within our reach...until our loan application was denied. We were ALL shocked!!! And embarrassed and frustrated. It turns out that this really wonderful grant that Daddy won was considered self-employment income and since he hadn't been self employed for three years we couldn't get a loan. His award was a 2 year "gift" that technically he doesn't HAVE to work for so he isn't technically employed. Too bad he leaves at 6:30 in the morning and gets back at 6:00 at night and as far as I can tell he's up there working!!! No one expected this problem since his paychecks come from the U of U but thanks to all the new regulations it didn't matter. A detailed letter from his professor guaranteeing his income for 5 years from his own grant wasn't sufficient either. And a myriad of other letters and documents, all of which took time to get, proved sufficient to get a loan. Christmas came and went. An awesome neighbor is a loan officer and we asked him about our situation...he was okay with it, one of his underwriters was okay with it but the other one said "nope we can no longer use income with the word "grant" in it." Case closed.
At this point we were frustrated. We worked sooo hard to make it through school without debt, we have excellent credit, we picked a home with a very comfortable monthly payment for us that was well within what we qualified for, he had a great job with the promise of many more years there and we can't get a loan????? Really??? It really stinks when good people are punished because others made poor choices and ruined it for the rest of us. Rant closed. Thank you for listening.
At this point we had a few options. The first being to dump the idea of buying a home and renting until the market changed or until his grant was finished and he was paid differently. The other being to find a co-signer. Being people who don't like to bug or cause problems for others we prepared to rent. WE really began to pray and decide what would be best for our family. It was hard. But we really felt like we should just keep plugging on. We had to remember that feeling quite often during the next month!!!! Daddy's parents graciously offered to co-sign on the loan for us. They have bought several properties...before the market crashed...and were familiar with the process and were happy to help as their parents had helped them. However given the current market conditions the process turned out to be MUCH more complicated and detailed than in the past. On top of that the FHA loan regulations changed Jan 1 and we had to start the process over instead of just adding co-signers. So something that typically would have been pretty quick and easy turned into a giant mess that we were privileged to be the guinea pigs for as we were the first loan to go through the new process. And all of the underwriters were back up learning the new process. And one deadline after the other passed, extensions were granted and we continued to wait and see if we could get approved. And were grateful to know deep inside that this was right, we just needed to keep going.
More deadlines passed and is seemed like this would never end. The bank started to (understandably) get impatient. The president of the loan company was brought in to push our application through. Our INCREDIBLY patient and hard working loan officer worked like mad trying to get this through and get it done quickly. And then the loan was denied. And then the president of the bank had a little chat with the underwriter explaining that we were all overqualified candidates and let's re-look at the numbers together. And we waited. And cried. And prayed. And had lessons in faith. And prayed.
And went into hiding. Looking back I really haven't talked to anyone or posted on facebook or anything for the last month. I never knew what to say. Over the last year we had told people so many times we were moving, and then we weren't, and then there was another problem at Daddy's work, and then a problem with the house, etc and I was tired of telling people the current story, especially since this time we truly weren't sure if we could be able to get a loan. And all we could do was wait. And we would hope that we would know more of what was going on "tomorrow" and tomorrow turned into a week, and then another and it was all complicated. And I didn't feel like talking about it. Especially since people thought we were going to move over Christmas. And instead of saying "oh it's been pushed off a week" it was possibly pushed off for a couple of years. And while I was willing to accept that it was hard to know what to tell people since maybe it would all work out and we would get the house.
And the worst was the kids. We had taken them out to dinner a long time before that to celebrate getting a house. And told them that there may be problems but that it looked good. A few days later we said "remember how we said there could be problems getting the house" and instantly the oldest said "there were problems." And that turned into the story for the next almost 3 months. We stopped telling them details. They thought they were changing schools over Christmas, then just after, then we have no idea when. And they were sooo very patient but it was hard. They were so good!!!
And then finally...the loan was approved!!! There were a few internal conditions that came as a result of the new process but we started to dare to hope/think that maybe this was going to happen. Maybe. It was awfully hard to believe. It was hard to get excited since NOTHING in the last year had been easy. Our hopes had often been raised just to be dashed again and it was just really hard to get excited.
Another deadline passed but at least now we had an approved loan to show the bank. And of course if they told us that it "should" take 24 hours to get a paper it would take 48. And on and on.
Until finally I was shopping at Target and got a call...we were cleared to close!!! Really??? Could it be true?? For sure?? What else could go wrong...because it probably would. Nope...we were cleared to close and as soon as all the documents were printed we could close.
Honestly, it took a few days for that news to hit. We went to bed hopeful so many times just to be disappointed. We dreamed and it crashed and that repeated so many times...we were afraid to dream. But it now appeared that it was a matter of "when" not "if" and since we left almost ALL of our furniture back in CA we had better get to work. It would be nice to have beds for the kids to sleep on, a refridgerator, heck maybe even a couch to sit on and of course the big TV Daddy has been dreaming of since he got out of college (and all during college!).
Of course the ending hasn't been easy either. We were all set to close tomorrow but the bank that owns the house is back east somewhere and their employees have been sent home due to the big storms coming. Which means we may not get keys in time to move this weekend. But after ALL that we have been through I'm sure we can deal with this problem, too.
Although this last year has been rough with so many ups and downs we have a lot to be thankful for. We were SOOO grateful for the extra time when Daddy was actually getting paid his full wages (we waited a year for that) to be able to save. We were grateful for my in-laws patience. So grateful. And for all the family and friend support who shared our sorrows and frustration with us. For the lessons learned in patience and trust in the Lord. To know deep inside even when everything was difficult or falling apart to know that it would all work out, that the Lord knew what was best for us and that in the end it would be best for us. And to feel His love and comfort even during the darkest days. Lessons that will not be forgotten.
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO SKIPPED THE LONG BORING STORY THIS IS THE PART YOU CAN STOP AND LOOK AT :)
So the story ends happily ever after...we hope to move into OUR new home this weekend. It really seems hard to believe!!! So many people have worked hard to get us here, including Daddy who put a lot of years into schooling and family who have supported us. And the time is here! Of course we all know that although Cinderella's story ended "happily ever after" I'm sure things aren't perfect and we know that owning a home isn't always all that it is cracked up to be but we are excited to finally settle down and stay someplace for awhile and paint our walls if we want and enjoy OUR home...and now for the part you've all been waiting for......
