Selling a house — it’s a lot of paperwork

This is my first time selling a house and I’m just amazed at the number of steps involved in the process.

First, there was the decluttering and cleaning. Then we put the house on the market and waited for potential buyers to come look at it. We waited a long time, five months in fact, but then we had two parties who were both real interested. We hoped for a bidding war, of course, but that didn’t materialize. We were left with one poky buyer. After the negotiations were completed, we signed the purchase agreement. The next night we had to sign the disclosures; although we had signed them when we first put the house on the market we had to sign them again after the buyer signed them so that we all agreed that everything was still the same as it was in February.

My realtor told us things were still iffy until the home inspection, which we set up for a few days after we’d signed the purchase agreement. I let the inspector in and then had to leave the house for three hours; my fingers were crossed until we got the results of the inspection almost a full 24 hours later. (Yeah, he and the realtor were slow.) We had to resolve whatever issue there was within two days; luckily for us, there was a weekend in there. We had a big issue to resolve, but were able to resolve it without us, the sellers, having to put forth any more money.

I thought things would be done then until we showed up at the closing to sign the house over. I was wrong. There seems to be something new every day.

A week after the home inspection was the appraisal. A stranger came to the house and looked it over with a sharp eagle eye, making his assessment of what the home is worth. After walking quickly through the home — with me trying my best to sell the features and point out the upgrades we’d made — he sat in his car in the church parking lot across the street and made his determination. My realtor told me if it came in low, we’d have to renegotiate terms. I kept my fingers crossed again. The assessor had made a big deal about telling me that due to new federal regulations, he is no longer able to talk to loan officers about anything. Too many people had been abusing appraisals, apparently. Well, when the appraisal for our house came in, it just so happened to be at the exact figure the buyer was getting the home for. Hmmm... Sounds suspicious to me. I’m pretty sure there was some hanky-panky stuff going on between that appraiser and loan officer.

A man showed up in my yard a few days ago unannounced. I went out to see what he was doing there and he informed me he was from the title company. He was there to verify the property lines and make sure there were no encroachments. I showed him the two stakes standing in the back, and then the general whereabouts of the front two. He was there about a half-hour, leaving several flags behind. I guess I won’t need to worry about

I also got a few calls from the title company this week. Bonnie needed the account number and security number of my current mortgage with Wells Fargo. Uh-oh. Two weeks ago we packed up all our files into giant boxes and they were stuffed into a moving pod. I don’t even have a general number to call Wells Fargo. Without that account number there was apparently no way to make sure that the money coming from our buyer would pay off our mortgage. Uh-oh. It took a frustrating call to that big corporation to get my account number. And after that, Bonnie needed to verify what my name is now. Because I got married after building this house, I’m going to need to sign my name even more than usual on the documents, including as “formerly known as so and so” (just like Prince).

All of this has been on top of frantically searching for a new house, packing up the old and finding an apartment to rent in the interim. Whew. Did I mention I hate moving?

I am planning to call all our utility companies to stop service the day of closing, as well as my insurance agent to cancel homeowner’s insurance. And I need to drop into the post office to ask them to hold my mail until we find a permanant home.

Also, the day of closing I guess the buyer will do a walk-through of the house to make sure it’s still in good condition and he still wants it. The house needs to be completely emptied of our stuff before he comes, and we have to be gone by then. His realtor called mine yesterday to ask if they could do it the afternoon before. I said no. They’re a bit pushy. It’s not his until he signs for it, and that isn’t until Friday at 11 a.m.

I’m not sure what else is going to pop up in the final week before closing, but I guess I won’t be surprised at anything. There are a lot of steps involved in selling a home. Now I know.